Eat your veggies

Add comment November 19th, 2008

If any of you think our daily editorials are too much like, “eat your spinach,” we take that as a compliment.

Take, for example, tomorrow’s editorial . We commend Loves Park Elementary for joining a state program to encourage  more students to eat their fruits and vegetables.  Doesn’t sound novel or anything, but it is. Too few school districts are doing innovative things to break kids out of their junk food rut. A third of kids are overweight and the majority of them don’t get the recommended number of fruits and vegetables — or any, for that matter.

Why? In many cases, it’s because they just don’t taste good. The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported last spring on a survey of 1,500 teenagers as to why they don’t eat fruits and vegetables. The survey was done while the kids were in high school and then four years later. Their answers, before and after, were that the fruits and veggies just didn’t taste good.

So, there’s nothing wrong with serving carrots with a little ranch dressing or adding a little extra salt to peas. In the long run, the kids will get more benefit from eating the veggies than they would be harmed by the extra fat or salt.

Go eat your spinach. How’s that for an editorial crusade?