What are your Kids Really Eating for Lunch?

By Kelly Turner on August 13th, 2009

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I would like to share a little bit of my past with you, in hopes of warning all you parents out there with high school aged kids of the dangers of high school eating habits.

In short, your kids are eating like crap when you aren’t around. Even I, who was considered to be fairly healthy at the time- of a healthy weight, some would say thin, a varsity gymnastics captain, volleyball player- cringe when I think of my high school eating habits.

The rules are different everywhere, but when I was in high school (not very long ago) kids were permitted off campus for lunch their sophomore year. The only dining establishments in a 3 block radius were fast food. Wendy’s and McDonald’s were our usual haunts.  You could see the fear in the employees eyes when the clock ticked 10:35 am and we all stampede the door.

There was a Subway, and some grocery stores, but they were too rich for our blood.  High school kids are notoriously broke (but magically come up with money for weed and to bribe their older siblings to buy them alcohol) so Dollar Menus were our saving grace. Burger, fries, Frosty- all for under 4 bucks.  Every day. We would sometimes hit up the teriyaki joint around the corner and buy a Styrofoam container of white rice for $0.99 and then drench it in sugary hoisin sauce because that was all we could afford.  They hated us there.

The next period was nap time because we had rocks sitting in our stomachs. 

Since lunch was at 10:30 am, everyone was starving by 1:00 pm which meant a trip to the vending machine for some Sour Patch Kids and a can of soda.

After school, I always had gymnastics practice, which left a weird gap of about an hour in between.  Not enough time to run home, but too long to wait. So we went to Taco Bell.  Somehow we never got sick flipping around with Grilled Stuft Burritos in our stomachs, but now I wonder how much better we would have been without a cinder block weighing us down.

My senior year I took AP History first period.  I hit Starbuck’s every morning for my venti vanilla latte.  I didn’t know you could order it with fat free milk, or sugar free syrup- I just thought it was coffee with a little milk and syrup, and kept me awake through lectures. 

That same year, my friends and I decided to lose weight eat healthier, and so we started hitting up Trader Joe’s to avoid fast food.  We ended up buying tortilla chips and a giant 7 layer dip, bananas and Clif bars to share between the three of us.

I gained more weight that year than any other.

Quick Tally:over 2,500 calories. Not including breakfast or dinner. I don’t even want to think of the grams of fat.

As I said, I was of a healthy weight/thin for my height. I gained weight but was never anything noticeable to anyone else. Ah, to have that metabolism again. Its as if my body heard my graduation speech and shut itself off.

After I quit sports, I started to gain weight, and knew I had to do something about it.  I started to work out and eat healthy, which eventually led me to becoming a personal trainer.  I didn’t realize the reason I felt sick and tired all the time was because of the kind of foods I was putting into my body, but once I made the switch I felt so much better.  I’m lucky I made the switch early on, or I could very easily be a few hundred more pounds with Type II Diabetes.

What can you, as a parent, do about it? Pretty much nothing. My only excuse for my eating was I just didn’t know what I was doing to myself.  I didn’t know anything about nutrition and just ate what tasted good.  Talk to your kids about what they are eating how it can impact their habits for the rest of their lives. 

If nothing else make healthy breakfasts and dinners to ensure they are getting some nutrition somewhere, and be sure they get plenty of exercise.  Kids are very resilient and their weight is going to fluctuate-so don’t focus on that, but those bad habits are what is hard to change, especially as they get older.