Extremely disappointed.
My child's preschool used to have a wonderful kitchen but they can't keep it anymore and moved to choice lunch. They advertise being "healthy" but really not.
My son is year olds. For that age group, the daily sodium recommendation is less than 1,500 milligrams. Most of their menus hover around 900-1100 milligrams. What can I do at home to keep in that limit?
Their meal plan contains mandatory drink. My school serves water and 2% milk on site. The choices are mostly sugary drinks, small container of 1% milk, and bottled water. I've been teaching my child about being mindful of waste. So I need to let the money wasted or generate unnecessary trash, or give sugary drinks every day. For that age group, sugary drinks are better to stay for special occasional.
Vegetables - most entrees don't have much veggies. They do offer sides, but majority of items are junk food. They do offer broccoli, but it's raw. My child likes veggies but I haven't seen 2-3 year old kid who likes raw broccoli - even my elementary school child strongly prefers steamed and I think that is very much expected for kids. So, my veggie options are pretty much limited to baby carrots and cherry tomatoes only.
I am not sure if I should keep doing this or send home food. I'm contemplating the idea of finding a different preschool, despite mostly loving the school.
EDIT]
I am well aware of non-meal plan option. The problem 1: most menus, especially those under 1000ml sodium, does not have any veggies. So it's a must to add a couple sides if you want any veggies included. Then it becomes more expensive than non-meal plan, so I'm sucking that up and this is lesser of a problem. The problem 2: if you're going to serve preschool, they SHOULD NOT have sugary drinks option to begin with. Kids who won't usually want sugary drinks will want to drink sugary drinks if they see their peers getting sugary drinks. Preschool is a critical time to build healthy eating habits and it starts with making healthy options available and non-healthy options special occasion only. They should not be challenged with their will powers to make healthy choices.
Okay, the menus are targeted for wider age range, but veggie egg fried rice (378 kcal) having 1661mg of soduim is NOT HEALTHY for ANY age group. I also still believe broccoli should be served COOKED, especially given that this is for kids and just how few veggie options are offered. read more