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Why is it important to teach healthy eating guidelines for school canteens?

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Why is it important to teach healthy eating guidelines for school canteens?

The school has a large population and receives children who are still very young, so it is strategic for the development of health protection and promotion strategies such as the dissemination of healthy food. It is a challenge for parents and educators to fill lunch boxes and school canteens with healthy foods. Check here, and your analysis why is it important to teach healthy eating guidelines for school canteens to address the epidemic of obesity and appreciation of healthy eating.

Healthy eating guidelines for schools

Even with initiatives like veto soda and fry in schools, there is still much to be done. Healthy eating is of prime importance for school-age students, as it can avoid or reduce deficits, shortages and nutritional excesses, as well as improving school achievement. The earlier the child develops knowledge and practices about proper feeding the better. Therefore, the early school years are a strategic period for establishing healthy habits.

Healthy eating guidelines for childcare

The school has a large population and receives young children, which makes it strategic for protection and health promotion, encouraging healthy human development.

The earlier the child develops knowledge and practices about proper feeding the better. Therefore, the early school years are a strategic period for establishing healthy habits. Sharing meals, learning in a group about food, new knowledge, food, etc. are unique opportunities. Changing a teenager’s eating habits is a much greater challenge than among young children.

Collective environments facilitate educational processes, so a school can help shape values ​​and teach practices that will have a multiplier effect, since the child takes home what he learns and can sensitize his family members, helps to create new habits.

Food is a contemporary theme, directly linked to self-care with health. It is a practical matter that has to be present in school every day in different ways and not just in classrooms. In fact, we need to educate not only children but the whole population.

What kind healthy eating guidelines for schools and nutrition education actions should schools develop to promote a healthy diet?

Food should be a theme present within schools. It is important to understand that it is not just a curricular item, which should be addressed only once. It is a pedagogical resource that should be part of the teaching process on an ongoing basis and extrapolate the classrooms. We need to come back to the theme in different ways, over time.

Teaching the subject should not be limited to addressing the biological or nutritional aspects of food. It is necessary to work with the teacher, to sensitize him and to show that he can use the theme for the development of other contents. It is possible, for example, to teach General History, starting with food, changing eating habits over time, food differences according to regions and different countries. Similarly, one can use the subject of food to teach other subjects such as mathematics, languages ​, and geography.

It is also essential to maintain consistency within schools. One can not teach the importance of healthy eating in the classroom and offer poor food in school meals or canteens.

Foods offered by school canteens have been a source of concern to many parents who wish their children to have a healthy diet. Have there been changes in the type of food offered in these spaces?

Now we have new challenges, such as providing adequate numbers of professionals to prepare meals, as well as maintaining an ongoing training process. School facilities also need to be suitable for preparing healthy meals.

In the case of private schools, there has been a movement to sensitize canteen owners to make them understand that it is possible to change the food offered in canteens, without this having to represent a decrease in business or lower billing. Our challenge is to raise awareness among those responsible for running these schools so that they understand that having a canteen that offers healthy products for children is part of the quality of teaching that is offered.

What should be the main government actions to improve school feeding and make the school environment a multiplier of healthy eating guidelines for schools?

Governments have a responsibility to develop health promotion actions, and these measures have to be articulated. An isolated measure is not enough to reverse a picture of the growth of obesity, for example. The compulsory purchase of 30% of food from school feeding in family farming is an important measure that must be maintained and expanded. It is necessary for schools to see this 30 % as the minimum quantity to be acquired and not as the maximum.

How can schools and families interact to disseminate healthy eating guidelines for childcare and control overweight and obesity among children and adolescents?

Food must be seen again as a solution and not as a problem. The practices of healthy eating have to be inserted in our daily life. We need to change the habits of families, to recover the tradition of preparing food at home, to value regional foods, to dedicate time to feeding the whole family, incorporating this care into our daily lives. The whole family needs to be involved in food and not just women.

Schools must intensify dialogue with families, making them feel part of the process of changing habits. We learn from life, from what we experience.

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