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Show Mother Should Check Menus As Offered by Local School Some Must Be Supplemented from Home to Make Sure Youngster Gets Properly Balanced Diet By BLANCHE M. STOVER Family Food Editor, Parents' Magazine matter how you look at it, the school lunch plays a most Important A part In your youngster's dally life. For, beside the fact that it provides one-third of your child's daily food requirements, it has much to do with whether children develop proper food habits by learning to eat the variety they need. Your school may have a lunch program of its own, but more likely it Is operated under the National School Lunch program, which last year paid In part for lunches of one-third of the nation's school children, i Mother's concern then has to do with the kind of lunch that is served t school. The school lunch program provides three types of lunches. Type A, is complete with menus made up from essentials including servings of proteins, fruit or vegetables, bread or muffins, butter or fortified forti-fied margarine and milk. Type B provides about two-thirds as much food as Type A, and Type O provides milk only. Where Type B lunches are served children must bring food from home to supplement their meal. Type B lunch contains a soup, a stew or salad, bread and butter or margarine. Or it may be a sand-which sand-which containing at least one ounce of meat, poultry, fish, Cheese, egg or peanut butter with one teaspoon of butter or margarine, marga-rine, or it may be one-half cup of vegetables or fruit or a mixture of both. Regardless of which of these part-lunches is served, it is accompanied accom-panied by one-half pint of whole milk. Supplementary Food Mother should become thoroughly thor-oughly acquainted with the Type B menu if it is served at the school attended by her child, so that she may put into the child's lunchbox whatever supplementary food is necessary to make it a balanced meal. The Type O lunch which consists only of a half pint of milk definitely requires that the child bring his lunch from home. And it is mother's job to see to it that the meal is wisely balanced and nicely packed. The National School Program is doing its job in seeking to improve dietary and nutritional standards Of school children. Nevertheless, how much of a well balanced meal does the child actually eat? One parent surveyed the situation situa-tion and came up with these observations: ob-servations: Some Ate Everything Some children ate everything with enjoyment and left smiling and satisfied. Others scraped their plates clean and returned for more bread, the only item offered as an extra helping. Still others looked at their luncheons lunch-eons with distates. When urged to eat they picked at a few mouthfuls unhappily. Certain children would eat only one item. Some children who brought wrapped wrap-ped lunches from home had food In extremes of quality and quantity. quan-tity. One slender little girl had only a lettuce sandwich and an orange. A boy had five thick meat loaf sandwiches, cake and coffee. There was little relationship between be-tween what was brought from home and what was eaten. There was a good bit of trading going on so that often a child whose lunch was planned to avoid sugar received an illegal share. Some thoughtfully packed lunch-boxes lunch-boxes were sold to opportunists and ' the proceeds spent for candy. Teachers on Alert Of course teachers try to correct this, but it is not always possible in an overcrowded lunchroom. Mothers will do well to become thoroughly acquainted with the lunch pattern at school and to set a good example at home by serving proper meals. Mothers can do much to make certain their youngsters young-sters have a good noon meal. |