Smoothies for thought
Posted: July 14, 2011
Categories: Good Food Ideas for Kids
Hunger has always been an issue in schools.
Whether students come from families that are rich or poor, there are always some who arrive at school who have not eaten well. Executive Director of Halton Food for Thought Executive Gayle Cruikshank remembers when school principals were the school nutrition program – they had a small basket in their office to help hungry kids one at a time. But the power of good food wasn’t harnessed when offered as emergency relief one hungry belly at a time, Mrs. Cruikshank believes. Her organization has helped to develop an array of school-wide breakfast, healthy snack, and meal card programs that make good food accessible to all students. This fall, Halton Food for Thought is celebrating the launch of its one-hundredth school food program.
The school food programs started in 1997 when a committee of school board and community members convened with the public health department to formalize six breakfast programs. In 2008, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services augmented funding to School Nutrition Programs, expanding the capacity of Halton Food for Thought. Now the region has a full arsenal of programs to wipe out hunger and to create opportunities for students to learn about eating well and eating as a community.
“It doesn’t matter what a kid’s upbringing is like, we are not stigmatizing children. We send a letter home to everyone inviting them to participate,” explains Mrs. Cruikshank. “As soon as kids or youth arrive they are all on the same playing field when you feed them at school. The camaraderie, the socialization, the friendships – they all start.”
Anywhere between ten and forty percent of a school’s students participate in the morning programs. “Breakfast programs are amazing,” Mrs. Cruikshank revels. “It is remarkable how many kids we are serving and what they are serving. There is a Rotarian who came in that the students called Dr. Smoothie. There is nothing he wouldn’t put into a smoothie. He was even putting spinach in there – and the kids were lapping it up!” These student-endorsements of healthy food may help to deflate the ballooning number of children who develop diabetes or struggle with obesity early in life, one of the aims of the programs. “We’re opening kids palettes and getting them to ask their parents to buy healthy stuff,” Mrs. Cruikshank says.
The cost to feed one child breakfast five times a week is about $160 for the school year. Some parents will donate that sum to the program when they sign their child’s permission slip to participate. Other parents will donate what they can in cash, in kind, or as volunteers; the region sees one thousand volunteers get involved in its programs. The program is based on a foundation of inclusivity – both for parents and students. “You have to give everyone some way to contribute,” Mrs. Cruikshank emphasized.
And when you bring everyone together around spinach smoothies and snacks of apples and bananas? “Kids will eat good food – you just have to make it fun! And you have to enjoy it with them,” Mrs. Cruikshank says. In a society that is fast food crazy, she is worried that we have lost sight of what is important to kids. “We don’t have the home economics classes that we had when we were growing up. We lost it. But with these programs, we’re coming back to it now.”
To learn more about the Halton Food for Thought and other Student Nutrition Programs, check out the resources below. Come back to the blog often for more servings of good food ideas for kids!
Ministry of Child and Youth Services’ Student Nutrition Program: http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/english/topics/schoolsnacks/index.aspx
Halton Food for Thought:
http://www.haltonfoodforthought.ca/