Thursday, February 23, 2006

Teaching kids to eat

Alice Waters writes:
Schools should not just serve food; they should teach it in an interactive, hands-on way, as an academic subject. Children's eating habits stay with them for the rest of their lives. ...

We can try to improve diets all we want by making school lunches more nutritious and by getting vending machines out of the hallways, but that gets us only partway there. For example, New York City has just banned whole milk in its public schools. It's a courageous first step, but how can we be sure students will drink healthier milk just because it's offered to them, let alone understand what lifelong nourishment is all about?
Teaching nothing would be better than teaching nonsense. It is ridiculous to teach that school lunches become more nutritious by banning whole milk.

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