Healthy Lunch

By Crissy Lewis

There are many different options to eat at lunch. There are healthy choices but there are also some bad choices of eating there. Eating healthy can make you feel better and get you ready for your day ahead. It can be very hard sometimes to get students to eat healthier at school. But you know schools are trying to improve what they are making and selling for students to have for lunch.

Ken Morse, the main representative for Healthy Oxford Hills, works with schools to eat fresh healthy foods. His job is to help schools eat better and to be more farm to school. He is part of the National Farm to School Network. Their job is to make a better relationship between school and farms, support community-based systems, and to help children be healthy and to prevent childhood obesity. The website of the Farm to School says it’s a program that connects schools and their local farms “with the objective of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving nutrition, providing agriculture, health and nutrition education opportunities, and supporting local and regional farmers”. They go beyond than the farm fresh salad bars and local foods in the cafeteria. They “include waste management programs like composting, and experiential education opportunities such as planting school gardens, cooking demonstrations and farm tours.” It would be nice to have a strong connection to local schools with farms and have the students eat more local. Having a school garden where they can grow their own things can make it more special too. It’s a benefit you get with Farm to School and Ken Morse says, “If you grow it yourself, you'll eat it”. Children and the community will learn more agriculture and nutrition and the environment. Food security will be better too since food travels a lot, making it not fresh. Buying local food will mean local taxes, which helps the school. A salad bar is offered in the cafeteria that's has fresh vegetables in it. By doing all this you're just, “changing the whole culture on how to eat” says Morse.

You can always get more information about Healthy Oxford Hills because it's not too far from OHCHS. You can also go on Farmtoschool.org to find out more information about what it’s all about. If you eat a lunch that is healthy and local your day will be better and you will feel better about yourself and what you're eating