From Your Health Journal…..”Earlier this week, we wrote about how obesity is much lower in Japan than the United States. Today’s review is from the Washington Post in an article called On Japan’s school lunch menu: A healthy meal, made from scratch by Chico Harlan. In Japan’s schools, the children get a homemade meal for lunch just as their Mom or Dad would make. Schools in Japan give their students the sort of food they’d get at home — not at a ballgame, as in the United States. The meals are often made from scratch. They’re balanced but hearty, heavy on rice and vegetables, fish and soups, and they haven’t changed much in four decades. Is there a lesson here? How do they make this happen, and is it more costly? Is it something than can be copied into American schools? When it comes to food, Japan has some deeply ingrained advantages. Children are taught to eat what they are served, meaning they are prone to accept, rather than revolt against, the food on their plates. With childhood obesity rising in many parts of the United States, there may be something here to emulate, to possibly help overweight American children. Please visit the Washington Post web site (link provided below) to read the complete article.”

From the article…..

In Japan,school lunch means a regular meal, not one that harms your health. The food is grown locally and almost never frozen. There’s no mystery in front of the meat. From time to time, parents even call up with an unusual question: Can they get the recipes?

“Parents hear their kids talking about what they had for lunch,” said Tatsuji Shino, the principal at Umejima Elementary School in Tokyo, “and kids ask them to re-create the meals at home.”

Japan takes seriously both its food and its health and, as a result, its school lunches are a point of national pride — not a source of dismay. As other countries, including the United States, struggle to design school meals that are healthy, tasty and affordable, Japan has all but solved the puzzle, using a system that officials here describe as utterly common sense.

In the United States, where obesity rates have tripled over the past three decades, new legislation championed by Michelle Obama has pushed schools to debut menus with controversial calorie restrictions. But even the healthiest choices are generally provided by large agri-food companies, cooked off site, frozen and then reheated, and forced to compete in cafeterias with all things fried, salty and sweet.

Schools in Japan, by contrast, give children the sort of food they’d get at home, not at a stadium. The meals are often made from scratch. They’re balanced but hearty, heavy on rice and vegetables, fish and soups. The meals haven’t changed much in four decades.

Mealtime is a scene of communal duty: In both elementary and middle schools, students don white coats and caps and serve their classmates. Children eat in their classrooms. They get identical meals, and if they leave food untouched, they are out of luck: Their schools have no vending machines. Barring dietary restrictions, children in most districts can’t bring food to school, either, until they reach high school.

To read the full article…..Click here