Schools across the nation are cooking up healthy breakfast recipes along with nearly over 28 states in the annual Sodexo’s 2016 Future Chefs Challenge. The company Sodexo, supplies food, chef coats and hats, and supplies for the competition. The challenge is part of the national initiative to encourage kids to eat healthier, be creative and cook, and is partnered with the first lady's Let's Move initiative to end childhood obesity.Students from the different schools will cook in front of judges, and be awarded first, second and third place prizes. Dishes will be selected to win prizes based on originality, taste, ease of preparation, student-friendliness and use of healthy ingredients. Many schools are already cooking up the competition in schools across the country. Brawley ...
Many kids are familiar with the smiley faces or "emojis" found on smartphones, games and computers. But can these smiley faces, which portray different emotions, help researchers find out what kids prefer in their school lunches?😋 According to a new study, emojis of smiley faces are now being used to survey preferred items in school lunches, where students can click on an emoji that helps them express exactly how they feel about spinach, soda, pizza and anything else being tested for school lunch menus. Researchers are testing out this survey process to help alleviate school's food waste, and encourage new healthier foods and recipes that kids will enjoy. Some of the different emoji's include a grinning face, smiling face with smiling eyes, a smile with the tongue out and a ...
Many states across the nation are working towards healthier beverage and health policies locally, but in moving towards healthier policies there are many topics and ideas that need to be evaluated. ChangeLab Solutions and Healthy Food America has created a space for best practices towards creating or developing tax legislation that will be effective and workable for different communities. Current resources include information that includes best practice recommendations for: understanding what type of tax to employ
defining beverages subject to the tax
defining the tax base
tax rate
exemptions for small businesses
earmarking tax proceeds To read in full about the resources offered by Healthy Food America and ChangeLab, click ...
The Board of Education in the Miss. Dept. of Education voted on Thursday, February 18, 2016, in support of the Smart Snacks Standard, making nutrition and healthy choices easier for students to access within the school. Part of the change allows the schools to ban junk food fundraisers, such as doughnuts, pizzas and candy bars. Along with this, small training grants will help boost school wellness councils that support healthy school changes. According to Preventobesity.net, the grants will give 100 schools a $3,000 grant to support healthy habits across schools. See how offering healthier options in schools for Latino kids may help their health, here! To read more about this change, click ...
"More than 40% of Latino children in the U.S. are growing up overweight, that's almost half of all Latino kids in the country, those kids are at risk of developing serious health problems like asthma, diabetes and heart disease," said Marissa Ortega-Welch of Latino USA on a recent radio show. In the mainly Latino populated school districts of Oakland, Cali. schools are taking healthier school foods a step further, banning junk food from school property. Most schools across the U.S. are working on implementing the standards of healthier school lunches but many kids and or parents still opt for lunches from home, allowing junk food to be a part of school's food environments. In Esperanza Elementary (98% Latino) most of the school kids are under the free and reduced lunches, so ...
A new study revealed that a natural sugar called trehalose helped prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)in mice. Dr. Brian DeBosch, MD, Ph.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist found that Trehalose, a natural sugar found in plants and insects, may help combat the toxic levels of fat that can build up in the liver. Mice in the study also lost fat, and had lower cholesterol, fatty acids, and triglycerides, but Dr. Debosch warns that there is still research needing to be done to address whether the mice lost bone or muscle mass as well. Dr. Debosch encourages his patients to always avoid foods like sugar-sweetened beverages that have added fructose as consumption of sugars, especially fructose found in junk food and sodas, can lead to fatty liver disease, diabetes, high ...
Tazeen Chowdhury, Food Services Director at Mt. Lebanon School, is helping to show the nation what kids love about healthy meals at school. Invited to meet with politicians in Wash. D.C, during the Senates reconsideration of the National School Lunch Program, Chowdhury has paved the way for implementing healthier foods into the Mt Lebanon School District. She has been recognized as an example to lawmakers of how a nutritional food program can be implemented for success. Chowdhury said in a recent article that she was happy that legislators and policy makers want to hear from people in the field, the ones actually planning the menus and preparing school lunches. Chowdhury has seen for herself how kids love eating fresh foods at the salad bar like kiwi, avocado, and ...
The taste of food impacts our eating habits and, in turn, our health from a very young age, even from the womb. On Friday, February 26th, Dr. Julie La Barba, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio and Medical Director of Culinary Health Education for Families (CHEF), presented to and discussed with pediatricians, medical students, and other healthcare professionals in San Antonio how taste and food preferences are formed and how these preferences can impact a child’s diet. Dr. La Barba is committed to building a healthier culture and showing how food and medicine can work together. The new CHEF program, under Christus Santa Rosa Health Care, targets practitioners and teaches them the importance of healthy eating and how taste applies to medicine and ...
Many restaurants offer the same sugary beverages on kids meals with unhealthy options like high-sugar sodas, lemonades and juices. Now Maryland lawmakers are considering a bill to help ban soda's and other sugary drinks from kids menu's in all restaurants. Wanting to help parents and kids make the healthy choice the easy choice, the bill would change kids menus to offer healthier choices like water, low-fat milk or 100 percent juices at regular price. "The choice that comes with 80 percent of restaurant kids' meals is a soda or a fruit punch, and in those cases families are always welcomed to ask for a healthy drink, but it sometimes costs $2 or $3 more to get a milk," Robi Rawl, the Sugar Free Kids Maryland Executive Director said in a recent article. According to the Center ...
