Dining Services and the Nutrition & Fitness Center are excited to offer Sargent Choice exclusive options at all of the student dining halls tonight beginning at 5:00 PM.  Sargent Choice only holds these nights once per semester – don’t miss out on a chance to try some delicious, healthy dishes!

New School Lunch Guidelines: Hold the Fries, Please

According to USDA Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, the school lunch program that serves more than 30 million children daily is likely to get healthier very soon.  The USDA is proposing significant changes to improve the nutritional quality of the school meals that are served to America’s youth. While American youngsters consume up to half of their daily calories at school, unfortunately, approximately 1/3 of American children are obese or at risk for becoming obese.

In today’s USDA news conference, the Agriculture Secretary stressed that the new school lunch program will increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals. The implementation of these new guidelines would result in meals that contain less sodium and heart-unhealthy saturated fat, without exceeding the child’s daily calorie needs.   A diet high in sodium and/or saturated fat can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death among Americans.  The availability of starchy vegetables, such as French fries, in the school lunch will be reduced over the course of the week.

The good news is that there isn’t any need to wait for the new and improved school lunch program to be implemented to start packing the kiddies in your life a healthier backpack lunch.

Here are my top Backpack Lunches ideas that healthy and kid-approved.  These are easy to create and guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser!

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently took the vital signs of Americans and declared that more needs to be done to combat obesity. Currently, 68% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Excess body fat increases your risk of heart disease, certain cancers, stroke, and diabetes — all major killers of Americans.

Taking gradual and realistic steps to change your diet and lifestyle is less overwhelming and more likely to be successful. To help you, try these 52 Small Steps to Losing Weight. Changes can be made……one small step at a time.

Joan Salge Blake, Clinical Associate Professor of Nutrition at BU’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, says these findings support recent moves to limit or restrict the use of licensed characters on children’s snacks:

“In this study involving 40 children, ages 4 to 6 years old, researchers asked each child to taste, and then rate, identical packages of pairs of graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and carrots.  The only difference between the pairs of snack items was that one of packages had a sticker of a licensed character stuck on the front of the label.  The results showed that the kiddies significantly preferred the snack with the cartoon character on the label, as compared to the same food without the sticker.   The stickers also had an influence over the perceived taste of the food, as the children were significantly more likely to rate the taste of the graham crackers and gummy fruit snacks with the licensed character higher than the exact same, paired equivalent.”

“Based on these findings, the researchers concluded that these influential licensed characters should be restricted on unhealthy junk foods marketed to kids.”

“Ironically, last month, the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity made a similar suggestion in their Report to the President. The Task Force recommended that all media companies limit the licensing of these child-friendly characters to only healthy foods and beverages.”

“Could licensed characters help improve children’s diets?  We only have to look to the very successful, Got Milk? Campaign to see how Hollywood influences consumer choices.  When the dairy industry noted a decline in milk consumption among Americans in the 1990’s, they painted milk mustaches on celebrities and milk sales increased.  If licensed characters were removed from the less healthy foods, and only plastered on Mother Nature’s finest in the produce aisle, perhaps kiddies would be screaming for Pooh Bear bananas.  It would be music to America’s ears.  It’s worth a shot as long as the consumer doesn’t have to pay extra for the sticker.”

Contact: Joan Salge Blake, 617-353-7470, salge@bu.edu

“This is a terrific first step in easing the constant visual reminders of the unrealistic, body weight often portrayed in the media and viewed by young, vulnerable individuals who feel pressured to be ‘thin at all health costs.’  Continued monitoring and viligence of these unhealthy media messages needs to continue to avoid a shift from television advertising to Internet advertising, especially on popular social media websites that are heavily used by this age group.”