By Gretchen Morfogen
A profound oxymoron in most minds these days. Budgetary cuts have reduced most school lunch programs and health/nutrition education classes to next to nothing yet the school are still obligated to provide something….
With the maladies that have inflicted so many children these days, proper, nutrient dense foods are more important than ever. It is not any parents or the children’s fault they have diabetes, autism, food allergies, obesity out the wazoo, it is the result of generations build up of toxins, pollutants, additives in our food and environment that have shifted the core of our physiology and shared unknowingly to our offspring. Most of us have grown up on processed, prepared, convenience foods, which have in essence lost most of their quality via the processing itself. Switching to a nutritional regimen that includes food coming from a natural state and prepared by you for yourself and your family is the way to remove some of these detrimental obstacles in your overall health.
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It is no mystery that “healthy foods” are better for us than junk – but where do you draw the line? What constitutes “healthy” in this day and age. Marketing to the masses has the words, organic, health, nutritional, family farmed, fresh, all natural and more shoved down our throats- but it has no true nutritional significance. Do you think if they promoted long term generational illness, obesity, that they would sell anything? How do we educate the masses to take better care of their health? If we did, we may put the pharmaceutical companies out of business and our minds would have significantly more clarity without all the processed junk and Rx in our routine. Our children would have children free of the chemical onslaughts at least in the foods if not in the rest of their living environment.
Time to get better educated and take matters into our own hands- in my opinion. We need to teach ourselves to teach our children how to make better choices by setting an example of how to change or shift our eating patterns and getting to the heart of it by getting back into the kitchen and offering your family a self reliant way to get better nutrients in their bodies. Cooking together is a great way to share in the joys and virtue of freshly prepared meals. No more opening a box, ordering take out cardboard, ripping open a bag of processed frozen nothing. Spending a little time each day or week with your family discussing the week’s menu and shopping can bring you together, trying new things and checking out new recipes. Starting out, keep it simple.
The food network, easy to follow cookbooks and even phone Apps can offer an enormous resource for identifying foods, finding recipes and even making your shopping list for you. The demo stations at your local market can also be a place of information gathering. Time to reconnect with the foods you eat by getting more involved in where, when, how they were grown. Not your thing? Consider the alternative; poor health, bad skin, allergies, and other issues that could otherwise be non-existent with proper food intake.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a family with children, or live alone, the shift in your diet to a clear cognizant method of fueling your body for the better can be done regardless of socio-economics, you can’t afford NOT to do this.
Parent of school age children, in order to take matters into your own hands, send your child to school with a nutritional meal from home this year. Every day. Let them plan prepare and pack it themselves too. Help guide them in making the right decisions regarding their food choices. It will become a regimen for them, creating a self reliant, healthy child. They do better in school, sports, behavior and overall body function. The results are amazing.For additional information on a much deeper level visit www.foodpolitics.com, you can never know too much!