Why I’d leave the Takis on the shelf

dinamitaI am no nutrition Nazi. I have been known to eat that $1.49 McDonald’s hot fudge sundae. I buy half-price chocolates after Valentine’s Day. I pick organic strawberries, but I figure for a dollar less per pound, I can wash regular apples and pears. I mostly avoid chips and fries, but I am sometimes willing to spring for the sweet potato fries.

That said, this is a post for parents. I am going to suggest leaving the Fuego Takis and Dinamita Doritos on the grocery store shelf, especially if the kids beat you home from work on a regular basis. School lunches sometimes seem to feed more garbage cans than students. (What was that soupy, red bean stuff that was supposed to go on the whole wheat pita? The kids could not tell me. They also did not even bother to take the cellophane off the red bean box. Some of the hungry ones ate the pita plain.) I know students are sometimes starved when they go home. They tell me this. I know that some of them go home and fill up on Takis or Doritos. That’s what they say, anyway.

Those hyper-red Takis look toxic to me, but maybe the powder that kills tastebuds also kills germs. I don’t know. I do know that a snack of Takis may be fine, but a late lunch of a whole bunch of Takis can’t be good for a growing kid.

To my parent-readers: You may be assuming your child eats lunch at school. You may have paid for those lunches. But most kids don’t eat the whole lunch, only the parts they like. Sometimes kids eat fewer than 100 calories off that lunch plate.

You might be better off packing a lunch. Then you can be sure the food will appeal to your child because the two of you can select that school lunch together. You also might want to fill the house with apples, even if you have to buy boxes of caramel sauce to ensure the apples are eaten. Portioning out dinner leftovers in microwavable snack boxes might be another strategy. But I want to caution parents about purchasing afterschool snacks that lack nutritive value. Those snacks may become a kid’s late lunch as well as the day’s snack.

I know how hard it is to get kids to eat right and I don’t want to lecture. I just want to emphasize that the school lunch often ends up in the trash — moreso today than in the past, since we are forcing “healthier” options at kids. Those kids who used to eat the burger and fries are often tossing the red bean paste and whole wheat pita in the trash. The new healthier school lunch may have resulted in a much greater Taki and Dorito consumption rate, while increasing lunch wastage dramatically.

This post is for parents who remember eating most or all of their school lunch and assume their children are doing the same. They shifted the lunch landscape on us a few years ago and the lunch our children are receiving is nowhere near as appealing as the lunch we received, for the most part. Wealthier districts are still serving appetizing plates, but districts that must economize are another story.

You might try packing a lunch instead for a week and see what your child says about those new, homemade lunches. I have begun to believe in opting out of state standardized tests. I also think it may be time to opt out of school lunches when finances permit. The quality of lunches depends on districts and the tolerance for those lunches varies from child to child. But I would be having conversations with my children if they went to today’s schools, making sure that lunch was not a food-light, social opportunity that ended with overflowing garbage cans.