Co-author is Professor of Health Promotion and Scientific Director of the Healthy Populations Institute at Dalhousie. Co-author is a PhD candidate in Geography and Arrell Food Scholar at the University of Guelph.
Hectic mornings of rushing around packing school lunches for kids could actually become a thing of the past for Canadian parents.
In the , Canada has finally declared its intention to work towards a national school food program with the provinces and territories.
The pledge is , although the government has not yet committed any funds for the program.
As researchers focused on student nutrition, wellness and national and provincial food policy, we see .
Food at school can improve children’s . To ensure this, however, the federal government needs to establish food procurement criteria and regulations to protect against .
In many countries, parents’ main focus in the morning is getting their kids out of the door on time because schools handle lunch as part of a larger health, education and economic strategy.
In France, , not a break from it. Children are served a four-course meal while sitting at a group table with a supervisor who teaches them about nutrition, healthy eating and table manners.
In Italy, , with special meals provided for children with food allergies, intolerances and religious restrictions. School lunch menus are sent home on a weekly basis to help parents avoid overlap at home.
In , where , lunches are cooked in school. In an effort to reinforce a culture of self-sufficiency students serve one another and when lunch is done everyone helps clean up.
In that integrates education, agriculture, health and food security while supporting family farming.
Health crisis spans economic divides
The last time the federal government seriously discussed implementing a national school food program was during Instead, Canada decided to provide a designed to ensure families had enough income to buy food for their children.
Since then, the pervasiveness of diet-related diseases among children may make today’s youth the first generation to have as found by a House of Commons standing committee on health in 2007.
Children spend a considerable amount of time at school for well over a decade of their lives, so schools are the ideal medium for . Preventing chronic diseases through improving nutrition among children and youth should, therefore, be a priority.
A national, for Canada. With adequate funding and national standards, it can be the powerful health-promotion program needed to reverse our current health crisis that spans socio-economic divides.
Universal, sustainable
in Canada have some form of a school food program (breakfast, snack and to a lesser degree lunch), but the type of program and quality of food served varies across the country. Existing programs largely rely on charitable funding because if there is any provincial and municipal support, it often only covers a fraction of the cost.
A national research team that my co-author was part of . Such a program would be:
1. Universal and offered to all students at no cost or subsidized cost, and administered in a non-stigmatizing manner.
2. Health Promoting, thereby focused on providing whole foods, specifically vegetables and fruits.
3. Respectful of local conditions and needs, serving culturally appropriate foods.
4. Connected to communities, supporting local food producers when possible.
5. Multi-Component and integrated with curricula to incorporate nutrition education and hands-on food preparation for the development of food skills.
6. Sustainable and so receiving ongoing funding, staffing and training along with regular monitoring and evaluation.
Economic opportunity
A national school food program isn’t just an expense; it’s an economic opportunity. Internationally, school food programs have an impressive return on investment — — including the .
School food could also be a fruitful emerging . Canada would have the chance to develop a made-in-Canada school food economic growth strategy, akin to what has pursued.
The economic burden and preventable cost of nutrition-related disease in Canada is estimated at . Treating chronic disease already consumes an alarming . Such expenditure levels could cripple Canada’s universal health care system. Yet, over annually if our diets complied with dietary recommendations, particularly for eating more fruit and vegetables.
Right now, more than for the implementation of a universal healthy school food program whose cost is shared with the federal government.
This is an official to the House of Commons — that means it was made available online on the House of Commons website after it was introduced to Parliament by on behalf of Debbie Field, co-ordinator of the .
The promise of a national school food program is an important step forward for Canada. The provision of adequate funding will ensure that it benefits all Canadian children.
An investment in a national school food program is and the leaders of tomorrow.
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