Healthy Eating is a Community Effort

My daughter loves YoGos. She discovered them at a friends house and has begged for them ever since. If you aren’t familiar with this popular kid snack, it’s basically sugar, disguised as yogurt. It’s a convincing disguise and these treats have popped up in the cupboards of people who I generally think of as nutrition and health-conscious. Today I also discovered that my son has been getting juice at daycare. It’s not a big deal. He doesn’t get it at home yet, and he hasn’t seemed to mind, so I don’t think he’s “hooked”. I know that many kids have far worse diets and demand much higher doses of sugary snacks on a regular basis than these two kids of mine. It’s just made me more aware of what a huge influence a child’s community has on his or her diet, even at the tender ages of 1 and 4.

I came across this checklist for child care programs on the Child Care Information Exchange Magazine website. It is a self-assessment for programs to see how you are doing as far as supporting and promoting healthy eating habits. Some of the key ideas in this checklist include:

• making sure parents and staff are involved in the development of a nutrition policy (actually, there are a lot of good ideas for involving and educating parents)
• making sure culturally appropriate and family-valued foods are available (so important when you serve a diverse group of families)
• making efforts to connect children to the foods they eat in a holistic way (growing foods, helping to prepare foods, etc)

If you are a teacher or director concerned about the nutrition of the children in your program, or if you are a parent who wants to make sure your child’s program is thinking seriously about the dietary habits they are reinforcing with your children, print a copy of this checklist.