How To Bring a Healthy Spirit to Your Holidays - Connecting Kids to Global Holiday Traditions11/20/2024
Here’s a thoughtful way to bring a healthy spirit to the holiday season: Invite kids to discover holiday food traditions from around the world.
Trying festive foods from other cultures that feel similar to familiar favorites can make the season even more joyful as they experience shared traditions across the globe. For example, in Germany, Lebkuchen, a soft, spiced gingerbread made with honey, nuts, and warm spices, offers familiar flavors with a unique twist. Filipino Bibingka is like a fluffy pancake, made with rice flour and coconut milk, perfect for a holiday treat. And in Britain, Yorkshire Puddings, simple to make and similar to popovers, are light, fluffy breads perfect for soaking up gravy or filling with holiday flavors. Helping kids explore new flavors and connect to different cultures shows them that “different” can be delicious! At Kiddos we’re passionate about introducing kids to the places around the world where different foods come from! That’s why we’ve created our Passport to the World companion program, which we recently launched at the schools we serve. Exposing kids to different countries and their food traditions can ignite a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world beyond their plate, and maybe even inspire them to try a new dish or dream of visiting a new place one day. By: Michelle Moses Teachers recognize the challenge of keeping students energized and focused throughout the day. They work tirelessly to create engaging lessons and make classrooms vibrant places to learn. Imagine if they could simply snap their fingers to keep students focused all day—it would be a game-changer! While there’s no magic wand, there is an effortless way to boost focus and energy—and it might surprise you.
Eating Lunch to Power Focus Kids are full of energy, but that energy needs fuel—especially for learning in the afternoon. One of the best ways to help them stay focused? Making sure students actually eat their school lunch. Providing healthy and nutritious lunches we wish our kids would eat is great, but lunch at school is often the one meal where close adult supervision is missing. To ensure kids eat at school, wouldn’t it be ideal to have plenty of options, including healthy and nutritious ones, they look forward to eating? When lunch is something students are excited about, they’re more likely to eat, which is crucial to keep their energy and focus strong all afternoon. What’s on the Menu Matters What we hope will happen and what really happens in the lunchroom can be two different things. Students tend to shy away from traditional school lunches, which often come with only one or two options, prepared in advance, frozen, and reheated. With limited choices, students may even grow tired of packed lunches from home, leading to uneaten food. While schools and parents may be offering healthy or nutritious options, how nutritious is a lunch if it’s not eaten? At Kiddos, we’ve reimagined school lunch service by offering something for every taste and preference, every day, with access to fresh, wholesome options. Our lunches are freshly prepared each morning using high-quality ingredients, giving kids a huge daily menu of choices they love and parents trust—even when they’re not there to supervise. With Kiddos, you can be confident that lunch is something kids look forward to and that fuels them for the rest of their day. When more kids enjoy their lunch at school, the positive effects are clear. That energy from a satisfying, delicious lunch makes a real difference, transforming the afternoon in classrooms for students and teachers alike. By: Michael Baruch From the inception of Kiddos, we've championed a term close to our heart: 'Local and Sustainable'. While the world typically associates this phrase with farm-to-table produce, we saw it differently. To us, it was about embracing the heart of our communities - the local restaurants we partner with for our school lunch delivery service.
Then came the pandemic, a tumultuous period that tested our beliefs, values, and adaptability. As we saw our cherished community restaurants bearing the brunt of the crisis, our conviction in the concept of 'Local and Sustainable' grew even stronger. It was no longer just a tagline but a mission, a calling, and an undeniable truth. Through our partnerships, we aimed to weave a safety net for these restaurants, offering them a consistent avenue to reach communities. The result? Schools enjoyed high-quality school meal delivery, tons of daily choices, delicious meals, and restaurants found hope, resilience, and a path to recovery. We believe restaurant food is wholesome food for schools and both delicious and nutritious, dispelling the common myth that it's unsuitable for hot lunch service for schools. And in our journey, we've witnessed the immense talent, dedication, and commitment of local chefs, line cooks and restaurateurs who, despite the challenges, continued to whip up dishes that were wholesome, flavorful, and filled with love. Seeing the term 'Local and Sustainable' echoed elsewhere in the restaurant-based lunch service arena, it made us smile. It was not only heartwarming and flattering that others picked up on the term we adapted to our industry, but a testament to the importance and relevance of community-based sustainability. Today, with every Kiddos meal served, we reaffirm our commitment to this vision. 'Local and Sustainable' isn't just about where the food comes from but who prepares it, serving as a beacon of resilience, collaboration, and community spirit. Thank you for standing with us in this belief and for redefining 'Local and Sustainable'. Together, we are crafting a future that's delicious, nutritious, and community-driven.  The lunchroom can be a place of social anxiety for many students. Not having someone to eat lunch with or being bullied in the lunchroom unfortunately still happens. Many schools have developed bullying programs, but other solutions which ensure kids aren't eating alone, are coming from students themselves.
One example comes from Sherman Oaks, California. A student created an app so bullied kids never have to eat alone. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/15/494074992/teen-creates-app-so-bullied-kids-never-have-to-eat-alone Another example is from a high school in Florida, where students there started a club called We Dine Together to ensure their fellow classmates have some company at lunch time. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/high-school-students-start-club-to-make-sure-no-one-sits-alone-at-lunch_us_58c6cdb6e4b0ed71826e51b8 Junk food or not junk food, healthy or not healthy, those are the questions. What is the true definition of "Junk Food" or "Healthy Food?" Everyone has their own definition of what they think is healthy. For some that may be low carb, for others, perhaps paleo or vegetarian. Each family has their own unique tastes and preferences and respecting that by offering dozens of options that satisfy each child's changing tastes and each parents unique preference, with access to healthy lunches every day, is important to us.
Would you consider a pizza, with house made dough, sauce from crushed tomatoes, basil, salt, pepper, oregano, and low fat skim mozzarella cheese "Junk Food?" How about freshly made sandwiches, salads, pasta sauce, yogurt parfaits, and more for a school lunch? As the owner of a restaurant based school lunch company, from time to time I hear a parent refer to the food on our menu as "junk food" because it comes from a restaurant. We partner with restaurants that use fresh and wholesome ingredients, cooked to order. Catered lunch companies continue to rely on frozen and canned ingredients made days in advance, because unlike restaurants who have retail business in the door all day and night, caterers aren't able to go through the food quickly enough. In addition, caterers are not generally in and around the area of your school, so the food needs to be cooked days in advance, frozen and reheated. I have previously written about making sure our kids eat a balanced diet containing lean protein, fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Ideally, that is the goal, but here's the wrinkle, it doesn't matter what we pack or order our kids for lunch, they will only eat what they like, what they are used to eating and what tastes good to them. I often hear parents say, well at least if there were broccoli or fresh fruit in front of them, they are more likely to eat it then if it wasn't there. My question is... Is that the risk you want to take? Making sure our kids eat their lunch,so they're able to focus and concentrate for the balance of the school day is key. Food for thought. |
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