Serve healthy school lunches but be flexible: #tellusatoday

Letter to the editor:

If schools are allowed to count pizza as a vegetable, then they may as well be allowed to count cherry Coke as a fruit (“Healthy school lunches under attack: Our view”).

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Schools have a responsibility to help keep our kids lean and healthy and teach them smart eating habits. They can best do this by serving nutritious — and tasty — vegan meals, such as veggie burgers, black bean and corn chili, hummus and veggie wraps, and vegetable soup.

Just because kids like gummy boogers and candy bugs doesn’t mean that we should feed them gross, unhealthy foods such as mystery meat and greasy chicken nuggets.

Heather Moore; Sarasota, Fla.

Healthy school lunches under attack: Our view

Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

I have two teenage boys who are growing like weeds. They participate in sports and are starving every day because they are limited in the amount of calories they can have at lunch. I don’t even have the ability to tell the administration that it’s OK to feed my children more.

A better idea is to tell the overweight kids and their parents to get off the couch and move, instead of restricting what my kids can eat.

— Robert Gautraud

Doctors agree that exercise alone has only a minor impact on weight loss, and calorie restriction is much more effective. Teaching kids to eat balanced, reasonably sized, healthy meals is the best route to lifelong weight control.

— Steve Hall

Of course, everyone wants nutritious food. But there has to be a balance, that allows kids an opportunity to eat food that they might enjoy and meet the dietary needs of each individual child. Not every child is the same, yet the school system treats them as such.

— Dagerow Nu

Provide flexibility in the lunchroom: Opposing view

We asked our followers on Twitter for thoughts on how to improve school lunches. Comments are edited for clarity and grammar:

Give the kids more meat (kids love meat) and real milk instead of the skim stuff they hate and pour out.

— @MeanCharlotte

French fries and pizza are vegetables?! Who knew? #fedup #obesity

— @GoodMediScene

For more discussions, follow @USATOpinion or #tellusatoday.