One of the extensions we did was to have a local chef who is committed to sustainable food practices videotape herself shopping at our local farmers market and discussing the choices she was making and what was available. We love that students are learning about the social and economic impacts of food in addition to the nutritional aspects.

I also wanted to share some of the responses from students with you. When we were talking about processed food, one boy raised his hand and said “So basically McDonalds is using our bodies for profit?” Talk about higher order thinking! A response to one of my test questions about school lunch was “It’s unhealthy! I want there to be different choices of fruits and veggies. And I would like it if there were REAL fruits and vegetables and not fruits and veggies that have been cut up and soaked in sugar water and wrapped in plastic. I don’t want food that has been soaked in grease and has so much fat that we need a longer recess to burn all the empty calories off. Don’t get me wrong, I love Taco Tuesday just as much as the next guy, but how about a whole grain shell, real 100% meat, and FRESH VEGGIES! Plus, who needs packaging? We could use glass plates and silverware. Instead, the landfill is getting bigger and bigger.”

One thing that was challenging for me was learning about our school district food service policies and how difficult it is for us to ensure we meet food safety standards. We don’t have a commercial grade kitchen thus all of our food is made off site and delivered via truck and stored in a warmer. Most of the schools in my district are in the same position. We don’t even have a dual sink at my school thus making it a code violation to prep food in our “kitchen.” For students this was challenging because they are excited about their new knowledge and want to affect positive change. When I looked in to the feasibility of converting our kitchen, I found that the cost would be prohibitive, around $50,000.

The following are Dropbox links to some videos students made during our unit:

Weighing it Out: http://db.tt/NyhgZmYT

Chef in the Classroom:  http://db.tt/VOwb7taO   A local chef and farmer came to class and helped us make spinach and kale calzones from scratch and a tossed salad with student-made vinaigrette using ingredients from our school garden and our local farmers market. We roasted red peppers for the sauce on the Bunsen burners in a science classroom.

Jen Vena Levesque
Sixth Grade Social Studies and Language Arts
Spring Harbor Middle School
Madison, WI 

For some of you, classes have already started but for others there’s just a few more weeks. Back to the books, early mornings, the stress of handing in that assignment on time and the long nights studying for exams. In the midst of all the school year excitement, studies show that most students lose track of being healthy. Instead of getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep which is essential for kids and teens, their getting 6 hours of sleep, skipping breakfast in the morning and going through a 7 hour school day without having a proper meal. Being a student myself, I know there have been days where I’ve skipped breakfast in the morning, and by the time 11:30 hits, I’m burnt out. Skipping breakfast is the start of an unhealthy and unproductive school year because no breakfast means no energy. No energy means your most likely not focused in class which means stress around exam time.

According to Healthychildren.org “Many older teens are busy until late into the night with homework, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs. They go to bed late, then get up and rush off to school, too frantic to eat.” A great way to avoid skipping breakfast in the morning is by making it the night before and heating it up in the morning. It saves you a ton of time. Breakfast with protein and carbohydrates are extremely good to eat in the morning because it fuels the body to go through the day. Some great on the run breakfasts can be dried fruits, granola bars or fruits like apples and bananas.

Sleep!!! It can be so hard to do during the school year with all the anxiety, stress and work load but it is very essential to students, especially during the school year. Eight hours of sleep is said to be a healthy amount of time to make it through the day but the reality is most teens aren’t getting that. A great way to maintain the right amount of sleep a day is creating a schedule for yourself, the same way you schedule all the other activities you have during the day. Avoid taking naps during the day because it will prevent you from sleeping at night.

As crazy as it may sound, a daily excercise routine will energize you and help you get through a long day of school. Excerise helps in maintaining a healthy state of mind and staying physically fit. Thirty minutes of physical activity is all you need to maintain a healthy body. You don’t necessarily have to go to a gym to get excercise, you can run around your backyard or the block, dance around in your room to your favorite music, take your dog for a walk or maybe even a run. The most important thing is that your getting at least 30 minutes of physical activity during the day.

Another component to having a healthy school year can be taking some time out of the week or weekend to do nothing but something you truly love and enjoy. Push the books to the side for a day and just enjoy yourself. That enjoyable thing could be shopping, talking on the phone for hours with your friend, playing video games, going to the park, or going to your favorite restaurant.  Giving yourself time to just relax and be free gives your brain and body a boost of energy. Aside from giving you a boost of energy, it also relieves you of any tension or stress that may have been created.  Just make sure you know when it’s time to buckle down and get back to work.

Remember to eat right, stress less, excercise more, and get enough sleep because a healthy life style leads for a healthy and bright school year.

Enjoy the few days left of summer vacation!!!

“Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure are all diet-related health issues that cost this country more than $120 billion each year…. While the dollar figure is shocking in and of itself, the effect on our children is even more profound. Nearly a third of the children in this country are either overweight or obese….that number is just unacceptable.” – First Lady Michelle Obama on the state of children’s nutrition in America

The new USDA guidelines can only mean GREAT things for the nation’s school food system and its ever-growing childhood obesity rate. However, commanding kids to take an apple or some carrots at lunchtime will only have a beneficial effect if the kids actually eat the nutritional foods made available to them. Kristen Wyatt’s recent article “Healthy school lunches: How to get kids to eat them?”  provides some very helpful tips and research on how to fully implement the government’s guidelines for the kids’ AND the country’s best advantage.

Around 12 noon, or shortly thereafter, the hallways of most schools echo with the riotous sounds of kids stampeding to the cafeteria. Lunch is usually the one period of the academic day during which students are free from the confines of the classroom – a time to chat, convene with friends, etc. This kind of break is necessary to maintain the work ethic and preserve the sanity of anyone, regardless of their age. Lunchtime is essential, and should be treated that way. Studies show that presenting lunchtime as an invaluable interval of the academic day, during which kids should refuel their bodies and refresh their minds, helps promote healthier food intake among students.

Transforming kids’ understanding of what a lunch period means in relation to the rest of their day entails increasing their awareness of how food can either help or hurt both their bodies and their productivity level. Thus some schools have established “food coaches” to provide information on nutrition, samples and advice in cafeterias. Wyatt’s piece also offers an alternative to coaches who come in from outside (adults and often parents), who may be more relatable and approachable for preteens and teens. She suggests that middle and high schools appoint “food ambassadors,” or students prepared to mentor their peers on nutrition and healthy lunch choices.

In efforts to discover what draws kids to certain foods, and to better understand the decisions behind the contents of their lunch trays, some schools have gone so far as to film the food intake of their students and “test-market” new, nutritional cafeteria products by organizing menu surveys which distinguish how kids feel about the healthier food’s taste and sometimes even its presentation.

Colorado State University professor Leslie Cunningham-Sabo, provided enriching insight into the lunching habits of students when she conducted a study that involved “before” and “after” photographs of students’ lunch trays. Her work concluded that more fruits and vegetables were chosen and eaten by students who had lunchtime after recess, as opposed to before it. Schools should take experiments such as this one into consideration when making scheduling decisions.

A recess snack cart is another idea put forth in Wyatt’s article. Whether they are presented in a cart, on a table, or elsewhere, offering nutritious snacks to students during recess has proven to be an extremely effective way to promote healthy choices and enhance productivity (maybe even to avoid the drop in attention span which tends to affect most kids prior to lunch).

A final and relatively simple tactic with which schools could increase their students’ intake of fruits and vegetables is to display them in an accessible way right next to the cash register as supermarkets do with impulse buys like chewing gum.

It’s a new school year, a fresh start, so start it off right! Eat your fruits and vegetables and use food the way you should, to feed your brain and your body and to make your school day, your child’s school day or your students’ as productive as possible!

In our last post, we spoke about a fun summer activity you can do with your family and friends. We would love to know how your window garden box is coming along!

The term vermicomposting really stood out to us in our previous post. Vermicomposting is the method of using worms to turn old waste into an organic high quality compost. It is known for being the best way to get rid of kitchen waste. The worms will eat at the waste until it no longer looks like its original form and becomes a crumbly soil. The 100% organic strategy used for gardens is something anyone can do, not just New Yorkers. It may sound very tough to do but became very simple through the help of Gothamist.

Check out this article on “All You Need To Know To Compost” from the Gothamist.

Previously posted “It’s a really great time to be an urban farmer”

It’s that time of the year again. School is out which means the kids are home, it’s sunny outside and you’re in a festive spirit. Summer is the perfect time to stay active and healthy. If you’re not spending all day on the beach or traveling this summer; creating a window garden may be the perfect activity for family and friends to enjoy. A garden allows you to stay active, eat healthy and have fun all in little time. For those of us who live in a city, a backyard garden may not be possible, but a window garden box is. Deciding the size of your garden and the type of fruits or vegetables you plan to grow are some things to think about before starting. Popular vegetables to grow in the summer are; squash, corn, eggplant, cucumbers and tomatoes. Below are four easy steps from This Old House on how to create your own vegetable garden.

STEP 1

You can build your own garden box or buy a garden box from the nearest plant shop or department stores. If you were interested in building your own garden box, you should visit  http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/how-to-build/how-to-build-window-treatments3.htm for detailed steps on building your window garden box.

STEP 2

After you’ve decided on your box, the next step is to prepare the soil.  Soil preparation plays an important role in whether your vegetable garden will survive or not. There are three types of soil that you need to be familiar with; sand, clay and silt. Sandy soil is loose and helps the roots of plants breathe because it lets the air pass through easily. Clay soil absorbs water faster and keeps it inside longer, a soil composition that has more clay particles in it would be ideal for places that are too hot and the soil dries up quickly. Silt is a fine mixture of sand and clay particles. Digging up soil anywhere in the city to use for your window garden may be illegal, so your best bet may be to buy soil from your nearest gardening store or a home improvement store. When prepping the soil for your window garden box you should dig up the soil and loosen it up to remove the lumps. Take out any rocks, roots, and weeds while you’re at it.

STEP 3

Fill the bed with a mixture of soil and compost. Level out the soil and continue filling until it is 2 to 3 inches from the top of the frame of the box.

Note: You can use vermicompost, with the red wriggler earthworms. Vermicomposting is 100% organic, it is the process of having red worms and other decomposer organisms process our organic waste and turn it into a great natural fertilizer .

STEP 4

Once the bed is planted, water it thoroughly. Then cover the soil with about an inch of mulch. After you have prepared the garden box and soil, you should decide on the type of vegetables you want to plant. Keep in mind, some vegetables won’t survive next to other vegetables because they need their space to grow.

A window vegetable garden is a fun and rewarding activity for both you and the people involved. It allows you to teach kids where fresh food comes from and it inspires them to have healthier eating habits.

BE IN CHARGE WITH WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE!!!!

Most elementary school-graduates have experienced hair-contaminated, or at least just inedible school lunches. However, not many can claim credit for fundamentally improving the nutritional value of their school’s cafeteria provisions- before their 10th birthday. Through her blog, Martha did just that. NeverSeconds reached viral status within days of its creation, receiving praise from many thousands of readers including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. The subsequent media attention pressured Martha’s school to make some rapid changes to their meal program.

Just weeks after Martha started blogging her cafeteria observations, the local school council announced that unlimited fruits, vegetables and bread would be made available to its students from then on. That’s right, it took less than a month for one 9-year-old to transform and improve the quality of food provided to her entire school!

Martha’s blog and the progressive action it instigated exemplify the importance of individual efforts in order to produce broader, positive change. She has also been working towards global change through her Just Giving page for Mary’s Meals and by setting up Charity Children- a fund raising program at her school. After all, in her own words, Martha is “very lucky to have lunch at all.” She took a photo, presented the “truth in tasting” school lunch from her perspective, and prompted beneficial change in school cafeteria systems on both local and national levels. Martha’s story proves that we all have the power to make a difference- you can do it too!

Recently, Common Sense media did a review on “What’s On Your Plate?” and here is what they had to say: “Parents need to know that this engaging documentary is an excellent, kid-friendly introduction to numerous complicated concepts about food, both controversial and not basic nutrition. It was seen as a non-biased film which speaks about vegetarians but did not offend meat consumers.

Whether you’ve seen the film or not, you can read a more in-depth analysis from writer; Joyce Slaton who states “Kids interested in social issues, environmentalism, film making, and activism will find some great role models in this film, and potentially some inspiration for how to turn curiosity into a tool that can really make a difference.” The film’s review and the Common Sense foundation truly safe guards the gap between media and the quality of information received by our kids.

We talk about it everyday, probably type it into Google’s search engine twice a week and order tons of books on how to live a healthier lifestyle, but the answer is right in front of your face. Your Surroundings!! Back in 2009, First lady Michelle Obama launched her “Let’s Move” campaign which empowers young kids to fight obesity and live a healthier lifestyle. “Let’s Move” is exactly what it sounds like, a movement. A movement to get healthy through physical and mental activities. It’s all about healthy physical activity and eating right. As cliche as it may sound, being healthy is easy, once you put your daily surroundings to good use.

[If you were in New York City, you would have to walk 3 miles from Yankee Stadium to Central Park in order to burn off the calories from a 12oz can of soda]

Eat Right:

Know the facts about the food and drinks you put into your body because not all that looks and tastes good is good for the body and your health.

Get Active:

Michelle Obama states “Kids and adults between 6 and 17 need to be active 60 minutes a day, at least 5 days a week for 6 to 8 weeks.” Did you know taking the steps instead of the elevator is a step towards limiting your chances of obesity? Taking the stairs is inexpensive, adds years to your life and adds up to a weekly exercise.

Below is a List of  Easy Steps to Living a Healthier Lifestyle:

1) Get Active! Move more and lessen the risk of obesity whether it’s by going for a twenty minute run, a bike ride or taking the stairs. If you ride the train get off a stop before your actual stop and walk the rest of the way.

2) Become Educated!  The more you know about the food you eat helps you to make better eating decisions.

3) Replace soda with water and fried foods with baked or steamed foods.

4) Maintain a positive attitude!