Tag Archives: healthy kid’s food

What French Kids are eating for School Lunch…this week in Lourdes!

Posted in French Kids School Lunch Project, kid's food by

Lourdes is the largest Catholic pilgrimage site in France (an increasingly multifaith country, with followers of Islam and Buddhism now making up nearly 10% of the population). It’s a surprisingly small town tucked into the hilly country just north of the Pyrenees (the mountains separating France and Spain). The pilgrims converge from all over the world — many arriving on foot along the many pathways through the surrounding mountains and countryside.

After the festive Christmas season, it’s perhaps normal to settle back into a ‘lighter’, healthier eating pattern for a while. Maybe that’s why this menu is so, well, healthy! With the exception of that yummy ‘Galette des Rois’ (the traditional frangipane and puff pastry cake served at Epiphany) on January 6th. Yum yum.

Tuesday, January 3rd
Corn salad
Roasted pork
Sauteed vegetables
Vanilla yogurt

Wednesday January 4th&
no school

Thursday, January 5th
Beet salad (a classic for French kids)
Garnished couscous
Galette des Rois (literally: ‘King Cake’)

Friday, January 6th
Rice salad
Breaded fish with lemon
Green beans
Yogurt with fruit

I don’t know what your kids are eating for school lunch this week, but mine definitely aren’t being served beet salad (which, by the way, they love) and green beans. However, when they were in school in France they quickly learned to eat just like those little French kids (it was amazing how quickly they adapted).

I’d love your thoughts. Would you serve these menus to your kids? And would they eat them?

This blog post is part of my French Kids School Lunch Project. Every week, I post the school lunch menus from a different village or town in France, where three-course, freshly-prepared hot lunches are provided to over 6 million children in the public school system every day. These meals cost, on average, $3 per child per day (and prices for low-income families are subsidised). My hope is that these menus (together with my other blog posts about the French approach to kid’s food) will spark a conversation about what children CAN eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat well.

Best Kids Food Books…Great Holiday Gifts!

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For those of you who love healthy eating, and love to share this with children and the families around you, here are some of my favorite books for kids.

I’m planning to give all of these books as gifts this holiday season (no, I don’t get any endorsements-I’m just a book lover at heart)…and I know I’m looking forward to reading them as much as I hope my kids are!

Eating the Alphabet (Lois Ehrlert, Harcourt Brace, 1996) (preschoolers)

I Can Eat a Rainbow: A Fun Look at Healthy Foods and Vegetables (Annabel Karmel, Dorling Kindersley, 2009) (preschoolers)

Alexander and the Great Food Fight (Linda Hawkins, Heart to Heart, 2004) (5 to 8 years)

Did You Eat Your Vitamins Today? (Ena Sabih, Heart to Heart, 2011) (5 to 8 years)

The Vegetables We Eat (Gail Gibbons, Holiday House, 2007) (8 to 12)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat. Young Reader’s Edition (Michael Pollan, Dial, 2009) (teens)

Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food (Eric Schlosser, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) (teens)

Happy reading!

Making Great Kids School Lunches: An elementary school in Toronto steps up to the plate

Posted in French Kids School Lunch Project by

Most of my posts on school lunches are from France, as part of my ongoing French Kids School Lunch Project. But every once in a while I come across a great school menu in North America…and I always love sharing these. It’s so inspiring to read about families and communities that have come together to create great meals for their kids.

A friend in Toronto recently told me about a great lunch program being run at Fern Avenue Elementary, in the Parkdale/Roncesvalles neighborhood.

The school-wide lunch program is a not-for-profit collaborative effort between the school and the on-site daycare, supported by parent volunteers. Meals are prepared by Chef Maggie in an on-site kitchen, and provided to both students at the school and daycare. Children must purchase a minimum of one month of lunches, which cost $90 (or $80 for those purchasing 3 months or more), which works out to about $4.25 per meal. Produce is bought locally wherever possible, and you’ll see from January’s lunch menu that the meals sound super-tasty and healthy. Fresh fruit, salad (or other vegetables), bread (or a starch), and milk are served at every meal, in addition to the main course. Subsidies are available for low-income families (important in this traditionally working class but now gentrifying neighborhood).

My favorite lunch menu of the month:

Chickpea and pasta soup
Cream cheese on a bagel
Cucumber
Banana

All of the menus sound good; balanced, tasty, with a little bit of kid appeal. And I love their motto: Healthy Food, Healthy School, Healthy Community! If only we had something like that at my daughter’s school in Vancouver…but that’s another story.

Best Kids’ Food Books…Great holiday #gifts for preschoolers to teens

Posted in Books, kid's food by

For those of you who love healthy eating, and love to share this with children and the families around you, here are some of my favorite books for kids.

You might be surprised to learn that reading books about vegetables has an effect on children, but studies have shown that even three exposures to a storybook with a positive message about a vegetable can positively affect children’s preferences.

I’m planning to give all of these books as gifts this holiday season (no, I don’t get any endorsements-I’m just a book lover at heart)…and I know I’m looking forward to reading some of them as much as I hope my kids are!

(ps Send me your favorites, and I’ll add them to the list!)

Eating the Alphabet (Lois Ehrlert, Harcourt Brace, 1996) (preschoolers)

I Can Eat a Rainbow: A Fun Look at Healthy Foods and Vegetables (Annabel Karmel, Dorling Kindersley, 2009) (preschoolers)

Alexander and the Great Food Fight (Linda Hawkins, Heart to Heart, 2004) (5 to 8 years)

Did You Eat Your Vitamins Today? (Ena Sabih, Heart to Heart, 2011) (5 to 8 years)

The Vegetables We Eat (Gail Gibbons, Holiday House, 2007) (8 to 12)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat. Young Reader’s Edition (Michael Pollan, Dial, 2009) (teens)

Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food (Eric Schlosser, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) (teens)

Happy Reading!

ps In case you’re interested in the scientific studies I referred to above, here is a reference: E. Byrne and S. Nitzke, “Preschool Children’s Acceptance of a Novel Vegetable Following Exposure to Messages in a Storybook,” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 34 (2002): 211-214.

Best Kids' Food Books…Great holiday #gifts for preschoolers to teens

Posted in Books, kid's food by

For those of you who love healthy eating, and love to share this with children and the families around you, here are some of my favorite books for kids.

You might be surprised to learn that reading books about vegetables has an effect on children, but studies have shown that even three exposures to a storybook with a positive message about a vegetable can positively affect children’s preferences.

I’m planning to give all of these books as gifts this holiday season (no, I don’t get any endorsements-I’m just a book lover at heart)…and I know I’m looking forward to reading some of them as much as I hope my kids are!

(ps Send me your favorites, and I’ll add them to the list!)

Eating the Alphabet (Lois Ehrlert, Harcourt Brace, 1996) (preschoolers)

I Can Eat a Rainbow: A Fun Look at Healthy Foods and Vegetables (Annabel Karmel, Dorling Kindersley, 2009) (preschoolers)

Alexander and the Great Food Fight (Linda Hawkins, Heart to Heart, 2004) (5 to 8 years)

Did You Eat Your Vitamins Today? (Ena Sabih, Heart to Heart, 2011) (5 to 8 years)

The Vegetables We Eat (Gail Gibbons, Holiday House, 2007) (8 to 12)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets behind What You Eat. Young Reader’s Edition (Michael Pollan, Dial, 2009) (teens)

Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food (Eric Schlosser, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) (teens)

Happy Reading!

ps In case you’re interested in the scientific studies I referred to above, here is a reference: E. Byrne and S. Nitzke, “Preschool Children’s Acceptance of a Novel Vegetable Following Exposure to Messages in a Storybook,” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 34 (2002): 211-214.