School Lunch Options

Yesterday I looked at how much it costs me to make lunches for Comfort and Joy to take to school each day. I spend $2.53 for two lunches each day which is significantly less than the $3.43 which is the national average that parents spend on the lunches with which they send their kids to school.

Would it sometimes be easier to send $2 to school and let them eat with their class? Sure. And sometimes they do. Joy eats with her class once a week as part of her development plan. Comfort probably buys lunch once a month just for fun.

One of the reasons I make their lunches is that I can control what they are going to eat and make sure that it has some nutritional value. I can say that our school does a good job of making nice food for the kids and it starts out as real ingredients and not as food in frozen compartments but it's still institutional food. Also, we try to drink organic milk and juice when possible and that's not an option at school.

It's important to pay attention to the food our children eat at school. Slow Foods USA has information about school food nutrition and a way to write to your elected officials if you're interested in making your voice heard. If you're looking for menus and recipes to help build your kids lunch hop on over to The Lunch Box. And if you want a very illuminating view of school lunch from the inside out hop on over to Fed Up with School Lunch which is a blog being done by a school teacher who is eating what her high school kids eat every day and writing about it.

We've all heard that making sure that tummies are full is the first step to being able to fill up brains but I don't think we want to fill their tummies with just anything. Let's make sure that we're giving them a good start and helping them to build good habits. Personally, I think that's a really Cool Idea!