The challenge
I would like to propose a month-long challenge: During the hours of a typical school day, eat and drink only what would be provided to your child. That would be a half-pint of 1% milk and plenty of water, the standard options for breakfast with standard limitations and portions, as well as typical portion sizes at lunch. After school hours, the participant would be welcomed and encouraged to approach snacks and dinners as normal because this challenge would only affect food consumption during school hours.
Funding options:
There are two possible ways that the local schools could approach this challenge financially:
1.
The schools could head count how many children are not accepting their free meals, cut that number in half for availability, and charge parents for meals that would be otherwise wasted to be picked up before or after school. However, this may not be a feasible option for our public school's legal department.
2.
School staff could document a month's worth of meals in great detail of portion size, comparable brands, photos...etc. Then, during the month thereafter, parents could independantly purchase foods for their challenge based on that list.
Benefits of the challenge:
- This challenge would give parents a better insight on their children's nutritional needs once they arrive home from school.
- It would increase communication and empathy between the child and participating parent.
- It would benefit the school to witness the results of following a diet that is expected to accommodate people of all ages and activity levels.
- The documentation of how such a diet actually affects adults could be used to approach our district officials about proper nutritional needs within the school.
- It will strongly inspire parents and empower families to contribute as a community towards improving the nutritional needs of the students.
- This challenge may inspire a district-wide reduction of obesity due to public awareness of the positive nutrition that schools may already posses.
I think this is a wonderful idea. I'm just curious if the schools would be willing to promote such a challenge and how many parents would be willing to accept it. I certainly would, even though the boy takes a bag lunch to school. Please, leave your own comments and suggestions in regards to this challenge on this blog. I'd love to know what you think. Would you approach your local school with this challenge?
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