My Food My Way: Getting students to think healthy

A new campaign from TDSB and CUPE local 4400 strives to change the culture of food in schools, homes and communities.  This initiative of Healthy Living Healthy Learning approach doesn't tell young people what to eat; instead it educates then and allows them to make their own choices.  

The campaign aims to shed light on factors such as atmosphere, peer pressure, cost, taste and nutrition.  Sometimes it is hard for people to make good choices in selecting healthy food when their experiences are limited; so these types of campaigns promote a love for food, which is the best way to teach our future generations.  

Many schools have already started after school programs and clubs that initiate healthy eating by showing children how to make simple, tasty healthy meals by themselves with little help from parents or adults.  Susur Lee, a chef and restaurateur will be leading teaching kitchens in Toronto schools and will have cooking competitions.  The winning dishes from the competitions will become part of the school cafeteria menus.  This is a good idea because even with a diverse food culture in Canada, there are still unhealthy sugar filled oily food a big part of the cafeteria program at schools.  If there are vegetarian based food available in TDSB cafeterias that are tasty and healthy it would benefit people from all types of diverse backgrounds. 

I would prefer if all TDSB schools would remove the unhealthy pizza program (that offers mostly pepperoni or cheese pizza) that many schools are part of.  I don't allow my children to be part of this pizza program.  This pizza day program is costly for the parent, depreciates the value we put on healthy eating, pulls children into peer pressure and is most of all unhealthy.

So as parents, I think we can encourage our children to eat healthy and live healthy by supporting teaching programs about food in our home, schools and communities. 

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