Sunday's Plate

Recently, I was asked to go to one of the largest day care facilities in Evansville to talk to their cook about healthier eating. Most facilities use boxes, bags, cartons and cans to feed children, so you know that those foods are HEAVILY processed. Why was I asked to go to this facility? Because the Garden School cooks have worked hard for years to establish ourselves as the "wellness" place for exercise, education, activities and more than anything else, food.

And it's a curious thing...the more you do, the more you want to do and the more we are challenged to make every investment in a child's diet a promise to every child. Health comes from a life time of good food, plenty of sleep, cleanliness, and lots of water.

It's been a real up hill trek with processed food in early childhood facilities buying substandard frozen, canned and processed junk-food. Chicken nuggets, prepared patties, ground meat, canned fruit and vegetables, frozen potatoes and veggies, white bread, canned biscuits etc. are high salt, high fat, glutenous, watery, nutritionless muck.

For years we have tried to achieve a standard of wholesomeness that we can truly be proud of. With every effort to make whole foods for kids, fresh fruit and veggies, the best possible lean meat, high quality cheese, farm eggs, and best of all homemade - makes what we serve top quality.

What our goals are is to make every mouthful count toward brain development, body health, skin and hair health, hydration, strength, energy and vitality. It takes a lot of work, but the investment in little bodies is very important even though we stand alone.

Our biggest hurdles are parents who refuse to get in the game and cook at least a little. We hear from children who eat junk cereal for dinner, or miss a meal every day at home. We hear about families who serve nutritionless meals in front in TV. There is nothing we can do...or is there?

We hope that children will like the meals at school enough to ask their parents to make their favorite school recipe at home. We are eager and happy to pass our favorites along to parents. Nothing that we do at school is hard, elaborate, or time consuming.

We try to make our treats, snacks and sweets the healthiest thing they eat all day long. Whole wheat flour, reduced sugar, eggs, butter, and whole fruits, nuts and nut butter, whole oats, coconut, dark chocolate, and whole corn. It couldn't be better for a child.

We work every day to find new and interesting things to eat that we think the children will love. It's a way of life...for the sake of the children. We want to encourage day cares city wide to stop and look and think about what they are serving children. It doesn't take that much effort to make small changes...one step at a time...one food at a time...one meal at a time so that within a year's time, the processed food disappears and nutrition and health take over.

It's a matter of thinking it through. It's a matter of a little extra effort every day.