A teacher speaks out
Dear Chef Ann,
I have been a substitute teacher here in the Tucson, AZ area for almost 5 years. Being very knowledgeable on the importance of proper diet and nutrition in my own personal life, I am really appalled at the food presented to our children in our schools. I teach various subjects K-12 and have made some very startling discoveries.
On numerous occasions, I have taught classroom instructions in the morning and then transferred to teach Physical Education in the afternoon. Several times I have ended up teaching PE to the same class I had taught in the morning and noticed a remarkable change in the behavior of this same group of students AFTER they had lunch. The same respectful, focused group before lunch became a somewhat defiant “off the wall” group AFTER lunch. The foods in our local schools are so bad I hardly ever eat lunch in them. They consist of mostly carbohydrates, processed junk food, and heavily laden with high fructose corn syrup. Even the milk served contains more sugar than is in normal milk. From 7 grams in regular milk to 12+grams in the lunch room milk.
Some of the schools also have a snack bar where kids can buy sugar laden icees, large bags of cheetos, pizza dough sticks with a processed marinara sauce and other such junk foods that make a profit for the schools. Most of the sodas from the vending machines have been removed and replaced with GATORADE. So from a 22 gram sugar soda to a 48 gram gatorade. Amazing huh?
In some classes I have discovered just how much the influence of large food companies have in our schools. In a math class I viewed recently, I saw where candy was used to teach math and the students got to eat their results. Often fund raisers sell candy at schools and have teachers serving at McDonald’s and other such happenings to lure the students into them. I think so much of these happenings would not happen IF the teachers and school administrators knew more about the effects foods have on a child’s ability to learn and focus. Anyone not believing this fact should teach classes the next day after Halloween. It will make a believer out of you.
I have talked with several other substitute teachers and other regular teachers who have also experienced personality changes in their students behavior AFTER lunch. I think that if parents were made more aware of the harmful effects of junk food on their children’s behavior then rapid change within the school’s lunch program would happen faster.
Thank you for all your efforts.
Charles Spillar
Substitute Teacher
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This is an excellent example of how poor quality school food acts like “second hand smoke” in the classroom. I can understand why many schools are not making childhood obesity a priority- a school’s bottom line is test scores. If schools could just connect the dots between junk food & behavior, they would see the importance of cleaning up the cafeterias & the rest of the toxic food environment (fundraisers, candy rewards).
I have just finished my student teaching semester and am working with students in 4th and 5th grade who are in a self-contained classroom because of behavioral and emotional difficulties. Yesterday, one of my students came in late, already having missed a manditory, county-required writing assessment, and the weekly literacy assessment. The only time for him to finish this work was after lunch. For once, he brought in his own lunch from home — a jelly doughnut and a fast food biscuit, washed down with cafeteria chocolate milk. It was not really a surprise that the work did not get completed. He could not focus on his work at all.
Next year, I have to conduct a research project as part of my Master’s degree in teaching. I’m hoping to find a way to document food intake and behavior/performance, and then take my findings to the parents, because as bad as school food can be, this child’s home food choices demonstrate that even bad school food can be better than what is given to them at home.
This is such a touching account of what I fear is happening all across the country. Thanks for sharing this!
How can kids learn when the garbage fed to them causes behavior problems?
I am more compelled than ever to get the word out through my e-book on achieving family fitness. Ann, thanks again for your excellent interview (I’m just wrapping up that chapter)!
-Liz
http://www.familyfitnessguru.com
I have a 4th grader in a So California suburban public school, one with high “marks”. I can attest to the garbage fed to kids, both from the school lunch program as well as in lunches sent from home (too often they are individually packaged products from membership warehouse bulk purchases). So little of the food kids eat during the day is real food from wholesome whole food ingredients. My son is sent to school with food I prepare in my kitchen from real ingredients, not packaged products.
And too much misguided effort is made to cut out the naturally saturated fats (which also contain the important fat soluble vitamins A, D, & K for proper mineral metabolism and growth, as well as nervous system development and growth), but not the excessive unnatural omega 6 fatty acids from plant oils. Even worse, the foods are laden with empty carbs from both simple sugars as well as highly processed “whole grains”.
So instead of giving kids the essential building blocks for growing and functional bodies and a physiologically better form of of energy (natural fats and adequate high quality protein), we load them up with inflammatory fatty acids and more carbohydrate energy they than will ever need for a day a desk, and then wonder why they have problems in school.
And the excuse that the brain only burns glucose is so misinformed. The body works hard to maintain no more than about 1 teaspoon of glucose in the blood at all times, but many if not most kids typically are fed around 75-125 teaspoons of sugar equivalent in carbohydrates a day (including so-called “whole grains” which are not at all essential). If dietary protein is adequate, in a pinch the liver can convert dietary protein to glucose, too. And the brain functions very well (perhaps better) on ketone bodies when it burns fatty acids for energy (NOT the same as diabetic ketoacidosis).
So instead of feeding our kids like stable long burning steady hot coal fires that only need a new log or two every few hours, we feed them like high flame kindling fires, that flare up, never really get hot, and burn out fast unless fed a constant dose of kindling.