Nutritional Facts
(an excerpt from the Healthy School Lunch Action Guide)
The foods you eat can affect your energy,
your concentration and your athletic performanceLearn how eating excessive amounts of food that
comes from animals can be harmful to your health.Cholesterol
Saturated FatSaturated Fat
What About Protein?
What About Protein?
Milk
Are You Worried About Iron?
Calcium Content of Foods
References
What Can You Eat?
Rather than a major overhaul of your entire diet, realize that you are probably already eating most of the right foods in your present diet. You get more than adequate protein, energy, vitamins and minerals from whole grains, breads, potatoes, pastas, legumes (beans and lentils), and fresh fruits and vegetables. These foods can be enjoyed in soups, stews, salads and sandwiches and tasty ethnic dishes like spaghetti, veggie pizza, curried veggies, and Asian foods (hold the egg, chicken and pork!).
To Concerned Parents
In 1988, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that 68% of all deaths in this country resulted from diet-related diseases.10 Many of these diseases have their origin in childhood.11 Diets high in saturated fat, protein and cholesterol—substances found primarily in meat, poultry and dairy products—play a major causative role in diseases like heart attack, stroke, other cardiovascular diseases, adult-onset diabetes, osteoporosis, kidney disease and cancers of the breast, prostate and colon.12
Less life-threatening disorders like food allergies13, psoriasis,14 rheumatoid arthritis,15 obesity,16 constipation,17 kidney stones,18 hemorrhoids,19 hiatus hernia,20 diverticulosis21 and irritable bowel syndrome22 are also linked to a high-fat, low-fiber diet based on meat, poultry and dairy products. These diseases create needless widespread suffering and drive up national health care expenditures.
The good news is more physicians and nutritionists23 are beginning to understand that high-fat meat, poultry and dairy products are main culprits in these diseases, and fortunately not essential for healthy human nutrition. They are also discovering that there are great benefits to a diet rich in plant foods.
Consider for a moment that three-fourths of the world eat a predominately plant-based diet, and medical studies show that people who consume such a diet have lower cholesterol,24 lower blood pressure,25 and lower rates of osteoporosis26 and many cancers.27 In countries like China where rice and vegetables is the norm, far fewer heart attacks occur and their children live a healthy lifestyle free of many of the diseases American children suffer. So when your children say they’d rather have pasta or rice and vegetables instead of a greasy cheeseburger or fatty milk shake and fries, don’t be alarmed, but rather commend them and acknowledge their wisdom in wanting to have clean arteries, low blood pressure and healthy adult lives.
[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Cholesterol ] [ Saturated Fat ] [ What About Protein ] [ Milk ] [ Calcium Content ] [ Worried About Iron ] [ References ]
[ Healing America's Youth ]
Spirit
In Action
2525-E4
Arapahoe Ave. Suite 322
Boulder, CO 80303
(720) 839-8700
hchp@spiritinaction.org
Action Guide copy write @1994 Earthsave Foundation