Education Law

Swimming, archery, and cheese fries

When the school year ends, summer camp season begins. As students head into a summer of fun and games, parents have other thoughts on their minds. Can camps be trusted to provide a nutritious meal? Will students staying at home eat healthy? BoardBuzz is also curious.

It looks like The New York Times was thinking about it too. As the Times reported, summertime nutrition has become a big challenge for parents, who rely on the structured school days' eating and exercise schedules to keep kids healthy.

With schools usually limiting eating to lunchtime and snack time, children at home have more access to food and no organized physical activity. Children at camps have the benefit of exercise, but camp food isn't what many parents hope for:

?Camp food is terrible,? said Susan B. Roberts, director of the energy metabolism laboratory at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. ?The problem is that they are doing what is easiest ? the lowest common denominator for what kids like, and on top of that usually it has to be not something that goes bad and is no work to prepare.?

Even out of the classroom, children's health and wellness is important to BoardBuzz. Some of these camp favorites, like cheese fries, can pack more than 800 calories in just one serving! As summer starts up, BoardBuzz is reminding parents and families to encourage physcial activity and help kids make healthy choices when snacking. For more information about keeping students healthy, check out NSBA's School Health Web site.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on June 27, 2008 (boomark / email).