Kids need healthy school meals to succeed

“You are what you eat,” a cliche phrase commonly attributed to “your mother,” lives on generation after generation because it remains irrefutable.

Research published earlier this year highlighted something your mother would tell you is obvious — the more a food is processed, the less healthy it becomes.

Highly processed foods — packaged chips, cookies, beverages, frozen meals, canned meals such as beef ravioli —are made with industrial ingredients. They tend to last longer, cost less and contain high amounts of calories, sugar, fats, salt and many ingredients you cannot find in a household kitchen (think carrageenan).

Nearly 70% of what American children eat is highly processed, which, according to NPR reporting on the research, “has been linked to health concerns ranging from increased risk of obesity, hypertension, breast and colorectal cancer to dying prematurely from all causes.”

Akron Public Schools serves free breakfast and lunch to all of its students. Last year when I tutored at an APS elementary building, I arrived each day after the children had eaten breakfast.

But this summer when I taught APS’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy, my students ate their free breakfast in our classroom. I saw that the food Akron schools serves its students is entirely processed, most of it highly so.

The main breakfast item is always a pastry (donuts, apple fritters, waffles, banana bread). The rest of the meal includes some form of packaged fruit and a half cup of a 100% juice.

In other words, complex sugar served with a side of sugary fiber washed down with four ounces of simple sugar.

Unless a student chooses milk instead of juice (none of mine ever did), there is no protein to the first meal of the day, which your mother has likely told you is the most important one.

Of my eight students, two were boys. One, whom I’ll call Josiah, is tall and athletic. Quick to smile, he’d answered me with, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and is equally comfortable talking with adults and other children.

The other boy, whom I’ll call Tyronne, is small and has strabismus, or eyes that do not track in unison. Not surprisingly, students with uncorrected strabismus have a higher rate of learning disabilities as it is harder to process visual information without binocular vision.

Tyronne, it is fair to say, worships Josiah while Josiah is a good friend to, and even protective of, Tyronne. I pointed out to Josiah that he is a powerful role model for Tyronne, who sometimes needed to regroup after working hard on the morning phonics lesson.

But mentors can lead proteges in multiple directions.

On our third morning together, Josiah came to school in a foul mood. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t pull him out of his funk. He’d look at me with his forehead bent toward the ground and his brow furrowed. Tyronne followed right along.

After multiple disruptions, I moved the boys, who sat next to each other, to opposite sides of the room. When they got up to dance around a few minutes later, I had the building’s behavior officer remove them from the class.

After lunch, Josiah and Tyronne returned to class with the other students. It took only a couple of minutes to see that Josiah was back to his usual, amiable self.

When the students worked independently that afternoon, I pulled Josiah aside and asked him what had been going on with him that morning.

“I was hungry,” he told me.

“But you had breakfast,” I said.

“I know, but I was still hungry.”

Sugar feeds neither the body nor the brain. Akron schools pump students with empty calories that give them a rush of energy, followed by a crash, leaving their bodies hungry for nutrition.

And then we blame them when they can’t sit still and learn.

The next day I brought in two large bowls. I filled one with apples and the other with clementines. I also brought in a bulk package of mozzarella cheese sticks. I told the students they were free to get up anytime and help themselves to the food.

Two staff members told me the kids wouldn’t eat fresh fruit, it’s not what they want. The opposite was true. Few were the days when all eight of my students were in attendance. Yet frequent were the days that ended with empty fruit bowls.

As for the cheese sticks, the only protein available before lunch, each day they were gone long before dismissal. And, yes, behavior and engagement improved.

Last December, the National Institutes of Health published an article titled, “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” It’s a question every school district should be asking.

The federal funds provided to feed Akron’s students should not be spent on highly processed foods that fuel neither bodies nor brains while at the same time encourage dietary habits known to cause myriad long-term health problems and early death.

Feeding students healthy meals won’t solve all the problems facing a large urban district with high rates of poverty like Akron’s. But it would help. Doing so does not require an entirely new program, just a reworking of the current one.