Healthy Eating

Getting kids to eat food that’s good for them can be a struggle. The first step is making healthier food available to them.

You can do your part by demanding that your school district provide more nutritious school lunches and offer healthy snacks in vending machines and other locations.

But healthy eating doesn’t stop at school. It’s important to develop better eating habits at home as well, such as:

Providing fruits and vegetables
Offering low-fat (1%) or non-fat milk
Serving more fish, poultry and lean cuts of meats
Serving smaller portions
Drinking plenty of water
Limiting soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages
(Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Just the Facts

12 – number of food TV ads seen by children ages 2 to 7 per day, with most for soft drinks, sugary cereals, candy, snacks and fast food (Kaiser Family Foundation)
32 pounds – the amount of sugar consumed from soda annually by the average American youth (based on an average of 1.6 cans of soda every day)
2% - percentage of school-age children who consume the recommended daily number of servings from all five major food groups (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
15% - percentage of daily calories consumed from sugary drinks by young people ages 2 to 19 (Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health study, reported in HealthDay News, June 2008)
500% - increase of sugared beverage consumption over the past five decades (The Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley, reported in San Mateo Times, June 6, 2008)