Coordinating and celebrating student nutrition

On Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, I attended an all-day conference at FoodShare Toronto.

A recent post at the FoodShare FB Page noted:

“Welcoming 100+ participants today to TPSN Conference: ‘Coordinating, Supporting and Celebrating Student Nutrition.’ Workshops focusing on menu planning, student engagement, fundraising, volunteerism and more!”

I’m involved with FoodShare because John English Junior Middle School  has a well-organized Healthy Bites lunch-time program for students. Once or twice a month, I help out as a volunteer at Healthy Bites.

The workshops I attended included ones on fundraising and student engagement.

Both events prompted me to think of the great work that Karen Hollett  and Jeff Hollett  of Yellowknife are doing with regard to publishing, grants, foundations, and getting people to offer tangible support for projects serving the community. They are well organized and give plenty of thought to initial planning and then to following through systematically on each of their projects.

As well, the workshop on student engagement underlined the fact that success in engaging people begins with enthusiasm — and an awareness of what is possible.

In this case we’re dealing, among other things, with nutritious — and socially engaging — school-based breakfast programs that serve both the kids who always have enough to eat — and the kids who would otherwise often go without a meal.

What stayed in mind from the conference was the concept that fundraising and engagement with target audiences does not occur by chance.

The closing speaker was in previous years the head of Volunteer Canada. She spoke with enthusiasm, from the heart, and delivered great content.

Updates

An April 25, 2017 Science Daily article is entitled: “Parents’ use of emotional feeding increases emotional eating in school-age children.”

A summary of the research report from the Society for Research in Child Development, on which the article is based, reads:

“Emotional eating is not uncommon in children and adolescents, but why youth eat emotionally has been unclear. Now a new longitudinal study from Norway has found that school-age children whose parents fed them more to soothe their negative feelings were more likely to eat emotionally later on. The reverse was also found to be the case, with parents of children who were more easily soothed by food being more likely to feed them for emotional reasons.”

An April 25, 2017 Guardian article is entitled: “Backlash after report claims saturated fats do not increase heart risk: Relying on low fat foods to avoid heart disease is misguided, say cardiologists, but critics say comments ignore evidence.”

An April 26, 2017 CBC article is entitled: “Pass the butter: Cutting saturated fat does not reduce heart disease risk, cardiologists say: Focus should instead be on eating ‘real food,’ walking and reducing stress.”