Nutrition Education

As childhood obesity becomes increasingly prevalent among students in the United States, the lack of effective nutrition education in schools remains a huge problem. Although some view nutrition education as something to be taught in the home, many children do not receive this knowledge from their parents, resulting in a multitude of negative effects, such as suffering in school, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease. Many have sought to discover what, when, and how the most effective nutrition education is for children. When children do receive education about wellness and nutrition, it is often limited, taught outside the normal classroom routine as a special program outside of normal classroom routine. Schools do not always have the time and resources to devote to nutrition education programs, as it is not seen as something that should inherently be taught in schools. Schools today are under pressure to meet high stakes standards, which make every moment in the classroom valuable. For those students who fail state testing, health-based education is not viewed as a means to help him advance in school and is seen as less important.

Health advocates and nutrition researchers point out that healthy practices and messages should be given at a young age. Nutrition programs and education can be maximized and are most effective when introduced at a young age. Without an integrating nutrition education into the daily curriculum, nutrition education does not seem as important, putting health as a second-rate concern for children in the United States. Schools have the unique opportunity to influence children as they interact and influence students for the first two decades of their life. Because schools do not always have the means or time to devote to nutrition education, I became increasingly interested in a book that I read called French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billion. This book discusses how nutrition education is incorporated into elementary education through their cantina, which is a cafeteria in the United States. By exposing children to healthy foods and making this food the only option, kids eat everything. Who ever thought that an elementary school student would eat a beet salad for lunch? The United States should look to the system of nutrition education in France as a model for how to reduce the high and increasing rates of childhood obesity in this country.