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encouraging parents to provide healthy food in their child's lunchbox
Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:11 pm
by AlliG
Hi everyone I work in a Junior Kindy room where the children are aged 2.5 - 3.5 years. We are concerned about the amount of food and the poor quality provided for children for their lunch and afternoon tea,(morning tea is shared fruit). Many children have not enough food and a lot of highly processed packaged food that is high in sugar. Today we were shocked to see two children with green cordial in their water bottles and this promoted the director to ask me to make a poster with lunch box ideas from the food groups to display in the room. I want to encourage parents to provide their children with healthy lunches but do not want to offend parents , any ideas on how I should tackle this situation and present the poster display would be much appreciated.
Re: encouraging parents to provide healthy food in their child's lunchbox
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 4:46 am
by Lorina
Having children bring their own lunches causes problems for centres, especially when you're trying to promote nutrition and healthy eating within your centre! Often parents are busy in the morning and don't have time to pack a "healthy" meal together, so this is how all those processed snacks and sweets get thrown in the lunch box as a quick fix.
It's best to start with a friendly reminder of "acceptable" foods that you can recommend to the parents to bring in for their child's meal times. Maybe you could add these to your poster as a reminder... You should also includes quick healthy foods that can be picked up from the supermarket...
There is also a similar topic on the forum that I thought you might find useful you may be able to get some ideas from it:
Children Bringing Junk Food For Lunch
Hope this helps,
,
Lorina
Re: encouraging parents to provide healthy food in their child's lunchbox
Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 11:30 am
by linsaa fdc
Hi AlliG,
This is a huge problem in FDC. We hand out brochures, put it in emails, talk to the children, but at the end of the day the parents buy the food they want their children to eat. It got to the point where I just said to parents. Morning tea is "Munch and Crunch"..ie, fruit, vegies, nuts only. Lunch is a sandwich, roll, crakers and cheese etc with a healthy topping not Nutella and a yoghurt. The two are not negotiable and then they can put whatever they want for afternoon tea and they will only eat the junk food in the afternoon. I find when the children eat a healthy morning tea and lunch they are not that hungry for the sometimes up to 4 junk food items they have left for the afternoon, they are also usually in a hurry to play with the school kids before home time. I think we are all in the same boat with an ever so busy and hectic lifestyle.
Linsaa fdc
