Lip Service

Rarely does anyone say that they don’t want their kids to eat healthier. But saying healthy food is a good idea and serving it to their family are two completely different things. Lip service is easy and healthy food is hard. The ease and prevalence that processed, frozen and fast foods offer definitely provide the convenience that a healthy meal appears to lack for a busy family. Teaching children to eat nutritious food requires education, enthusiasm, and a willingness on the part of a parent to persist even when their effort to serve beet salad bombs.

But providing a healthy diet is one of the most important things a parent can do to ensure that their child lives a healthy lifestyle. A parent who doesn’t take action to help their obese child with their health is just as negligent as the parent of a child who is underweight and starving. Being obese puts a strain on young bodies which they were not made to handle, which puts them at risk for diabetes, low self-esteem, and a lower quality of life.

Although my work to promote healthy eating starts in the school, ultimately parents need to make a commitment to shop, cook and eat quality food. Unless their child regularly does the grocery shopping and has extra money to spend, choices about food comes from adults. Unfortunately, I am learning that it is much harder to provide adults with the education they need to teach their children about food because they already have so many firmly-set ideas about eating. Much of the American population has misconceptions about health and weight management which include crash diet plans, magic weight loss supplements and media worship of appallingly skinny celebrities.

Eastern Montana isn’t likely to be easily convinced by a blonde, out-of-state agent of the federal government. The lip service that I’ve encountered in this community is more frustrating than outright rejection of the ideas I am proposing. It leaves me unsure of how to deal with people because I can’t tell who is genuinely interested and who is waiting for me to leave so they can pull their bag of potato chips out from under the table. During my time here, I’ve done my best to be as nonjudgmental as possible when it comes to food, in the hopes that they are comfortable being honest with me about their ideas on food and health. Despite my best efforts, I’ve run into a great deal of lip service. Loudly proclaiming the benefits of healthy food is so much easier than actually designing a meal that children will eat which includes lima beans.

My hope is that my students will take the ideas we discuss about healthy food home to share with their families. The enthusiasm I’ve encountered from the classes I’m working with shows me they’re valuable allies on this mission. I challenged my fifth graders to eat a meal that includes five different colors, and one student said he’d help his mom cook dinner that night and pick out the colors. A kindergartener who had never eaten a radish before said he would ask for them at home. I can only hope that the surprise this may evoke from their families will lead to deeper consideration about the benefits serving healthy food can have.