Photo courtesy Stockvault
Today marked the day of our office’s annual cookie exchange. Shortbread, pecan sandies, and thumbprint cookies piped with chocolate hazelnut or eggnog filling; it’s not a gathering for counting calories, but for counting blessings and good friends to share it with, year after year.
Similiar holiday traditions no doubt are practiced in your schools and offices … or maybe not, as recent policies have put focus on health promotion and stemming childhood obesity.
Many of you already know and may have been part of creating wellness policies for your district a few years back, a requirement built into the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act.
Other than developing physical activity and nutrition goals, in concert with the public, school systems were given wide lattitude on how to implement and ultimately illustrate wellness in their community.
For a primer, check out our archives for our special report “Getting to Wellness.”
While some districts did the bare minimum, others took wellness to the Nth degree, removing junk food from vending machines, banning bake sales as fundraisers and telling parents not to bring sweet treats and cupcakes to celebrate birthdays and other occassions.
Which brings me to today. I’m stuffed and slightly lethargic, now that I’ve come down from a sugar rush after sampling a co-worker’s snickerdoodles and another’s gingersnaps. I can see why this wouldn’t be the most productive state for learning at school.
But I’m not sure I can say definitively that prohibiting all sweets and treats from classrooms is the right message either. A healthy lifestyle means having a healthy relationship with food; not one that demonizes and labels certain foods as “bad” and others as “good.” All that does, as any adult can tell you, is make that food more tempting, when we should be teaching kids how to make smart food choices.
So, during the holidays and other festive times, I say let them eat cake … just not as much as I just did. ZZZZ.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
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