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In this special episode, Corinna Bellizzi shares the insights from her first class project in the PhD program at Prescott College, which focuses on sustainability and the true cost of food. This episode seeks to empower caretakers and parents to pack healthier, eco-friendly school lunches for their children. Through survey data and expert guidance, we explore practical ways to reduce food waste and improve the nutritional quality of school lunches.

Episode Highlights:

Introduction to the Earth First Health First School Lunch Guide

  • The project aims to help parents pack eco-friendly and healthy lunches for their kids.
Findings from a Parent Survey
  • Survey included 25 parents and focused on current lunch packing habits, including food types, packaging, and participation in school lunch programs.
  • 56% of parents do not participate in school-provided lunch programs, and 60% are packing lunch for two or more children.
  • 72% of parents pack at least one fruit or vegetable daily, with leftovers packed at least once a week by 40% of respondents.
Challenges Identified
  • High use of pre-packaged and processed foods, which increases waste and costs more per serving.
  • Concerns about packaging waste—28% of parents use pre-packaged snacks, and many still use single-use plastics.
Environmental Impact of Food Packaging
  • Discussion on how long common food packaging takes to decompose (e.g., plastic bags, chip bags).
  • Importance of reducing the reliance on single-use plastics, both for health and environmental reasons.
Health Effects of Processed Foods
  • The connection between processed foods and health issues, including obesity, hyperactivity, and early onset of puberty.
  • The WHO classification of processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen linked to cancer risks.
Practical Solutions for Eco-Friendly and Nutritious School Lunches
  • Tips to involve children in meal planning and preparation to increase the likelihood they’ll eat healthier meals.
  • The importance of reducing processed meats and focusing on whole, plant-based foods.
  • Recommendations to buy local, in-season produce, reduce packaging waste, and compost food scraps.
Three Steps to Building a Healthier, Eco-Friendly Lunch:
    1. Start with fresh fruits and vegetables: Aim for three servings in each lunch.
    2. Reduce or eliminate highly processed foods: Focus on whole, unprocessed options.
    3. Use reusable containers: Cut down on pre-packaged snacks and single-use plastics.

    Resources Mentioned:

    Key Takeaways:

    • Simple shifts, like reducing processed meat and using reusable containers, can make a big difference for both the health of your child and the environment.
    • Involving your kids in food preparation can increase their acceptance of healthier, plant-based options.

    Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and reach out with questions or comments.

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    TRANSCRIPT

    Hello and welcome to another episode of Care More Be Better. Today I'm thrilled to share with you the culmination of my first class in my PhD program at Prescott College in Sustainability Education. I decided to undertake a project that would ultimately lead to the development of an Earth First Health First school lunch packing guide for school aged children.

    [00:00:51] This is a caretaker resource. to help the parents or caretakers build a lunch that is both more eco friendly and that supports the long term health of their child. So first, I'm going to share with you the findings of a quick NINES question survey, and then that dives into some of the reasons behind the need for these shifts and how it will make a difference.

    [00:01:13] So let's dive right in.

    [00:01:16] First, we needed to define the problem as we seek to find a better solution. The reality in my area especially is that every day, most parents in our school district send their kids to school with lunches and snacks that are prepared at home. While in our district, a hot lunch program is available as a resource, few participate in this program for a variety of reasons.

    [00:01:44] The school no longer has a school cafeteria, which means that the hot lunch program is comprised of foods that transport well, and this limits their variety as well as their availability. The potential healtfulness, because there just aren't as many fresh foods really located in these food packages well, resources and norms will vary from my district to yours.

    [00:02:05] Parents communicate continually that they are concerned about their children getting enough. Healthy food in their diets every day, whether or not they actually provide them in lunch. Sometimes some of the healthiest foods come home uneaten. They also express concern consistently about waste. Most parents also struggle to package their kids foods in a way where even the reusable containers will come home to them so that they can be reused.

    [00:02:36] As a mom of boys that are age six and nine myself, I can certainly relate. The struggle is indeed real. So first I started by collecting survey responses, interest of really establishing a baseline beyond my observations. I have seen students come with their home packed lunches and watch them enjoy it.

    [00:02:57] Most of them seem to have reusable containers in them, but I also wanted to erase my bias. I did also see consistently that processed snack foods were included and I'm also guilty of doing the same. So this isn't about being perfect. This is about where are you today and where can we collectively make improvements?

    [00:03:18] The survey being only nine questions and being pretty basic meant that it only took about three minutes to complete. So the response rate was high. I collected 25 parent surveys over the course of three days. I first started by asking how many kids they were packing lunch for. Most people were packing for two children or more, and that comprised about 60 percent of the population.

    [00:03:43] 40 percent were packing for just one kid. I asked the question next about how many days per week the child participates in a school provided lunch program. At our school, they call that the hot lunch program. And 56 percent said they did not participate. 16 percent said they did one or one day a week, 12 percent two or three days a week, and only 4 percent or one respondent participated all days a week.

    [00:04:12] And I think the reasons for this are, all over the map, because in some cases, if your child even shows up to school, and they forgot their lunch. They will get a hot lunch provided that day. And in some other cases, you have parents that have split households. So one parent has a child part time, the other parent, the other time.

    [00:04:30] And for a variety of reasons, they may need to have a lunch at the school for them. And these are school provided, and they're available to all children who attend. In my son's kindergarten class, he actually had a little paw that had his name on it, and he would put it on one side of a chart if he wanted a lunch that day, on the other side if he didn't.

    [00:04:51] This was one of the ways that they engaged kids to, to tell them if they needed additional resources. It's really quite sweet. Does your child attend an after school care program? And the reason this question is important is because if they do, parents often have to pack additional foods for their child that day.

    [00:05:12] This will mean they have to do a little bit more work, do a little more shopping. Their child has to carry more with them. And often what happens in these cases is that parents will end up relying more on pre packaged snacks that transport well. What we've found is that 32 percent attend an after school program.

    [00:05:29] Just like my kids. Respondents were then asked what they packed in their lunches and there was one parent that really stood out. They made an additional comment saying that they put cut up mango and a dry snack. They also handmade some banana muffins at home that included extra protein mix in it because their kid just wasn't fond of protein foods and they're struggling to get enough protein in their child's diet.

    [00:06:01] This has to do with sometimes we have picky eaters. It's hard to get them to eat the things we want them to. But most responses were more like this. I pack a PB& J and some apples, chips or pirate's booty, a cookie, a yogurt pouch, and a Z bar. Or this, a sandwich, cucumbers and carrots, fruit and veggies.

    [00:06:21] A granola bar, pretzels, popcorn, and a fruit snack. Most parents pack a fruit snack. Of the items you pack, how many of these items are fresh fruits or vegetables? Most people are packing at least one. Actually, 72 percent in total are pecking one or two and then the rest are smattering below that bell curve, three 16 percent peck three, 8 percent peck four, and one respondent peck five or more.

    [00:06:49] I suspect that they were in an after school program. How many days per week does your child's lunch include homemade leftovers? Now this I found surprising. I expected to see that most would say three days a week, but what we found instead is that 40 percent pack leftovers one day per week, 28 percent packed leftovers two days a week, 16 percent packed three days and then continuing the bell curve for per week was 12 percent and one respondent packed only one day, only, I'm sorry, one respondent packed five days a week.

    [00:07:25] And this is important because using leftovers actually reduces our food waste. It's one of the ways in which we can ensure that food doesn't end up in la poubelle or the garbage. And, doesn't necessarily need to be composted. It can be consumed. It can do good today as opposed to augmenting soil later.

    [00:07:44] I think this is another area for improvement. What protein sources do you provide in your school's lunch and your child's lunch? And this was pretty much all over the map. But the thing I want to point out here first is that most actually do pack a dairy. In fact, what we saw here was that roughly 68 percent pack a dairy snack.

    [00:08:05] And then on the other side of that, meats were right around the 60 percent mark. Processed lunch meats. We're at 56 percent and we'll get into more of why that's important later. A minority pack fish about middle of the road at around 32 percent was vegan proteins. Eggs came in at about 36%, but really what this should show you is that people are packing a variety of foods and they're not leaning quite so much on vegan sources or fish.

    [00:08:40] How do you package food and snacks that you provide in your child's lunch? We expected to see this most use reusable containers, at least in part. And that's what I found here. 100 percent of respondents said that they use recite reusable containers, but they're also reporting that some use plastic bags, 20 percent compostable bags, about 8 percent paper bag, 4 percent single serving products.

    [00:09:07] That was in around 28%. And then the other category ended up being things like Z bar string cheese, et cetera. Those are in fact, single serving packaged goods. So we can combine that number with, I buy the single serving, and that would be coming in at 28 percent plus the 12 percent for others. So that ends up at being about 40%, 40 percent of people are.

    [00:09:29] bringing in single serving products for these. You're paying more on a per serving basis and you're creating more waste. Now, for some of these things, it's unavoidable. If your kid loves string cheese, how else are you going to pack it? It already comes that way. That said, in many cases, we could be Doing some considerable savings here by either buying a much larger bag and then repackaging in a reusable container or omitting some of those pre packaged foods.

    [00:10:00] And then I asked a big question. If you were provided with a resource that details how you can pack lunches that are more eco friendly and that support your child's long term health, how likely would you be to implement the recommended changes, assuming it doesn't cost more? 52 percent said very likely.

    [00:10:19] 20 percent said likely somewhat likely was 12%, but then there are those that were more unlikely, which came in at somewhat unlikely 4 percent and other 12%. But what's really interesting is because I didn't ask people to select more than one, they could only select one thing. This 12 percent was all positive and could be combined with a very likely, it ends up being about 60 64 percent in that case, 52 percent plus 12%.

    [00:10:51] So the summary of survey takeaways, really this is our starting point. All participants are already using some reusable packaging, but 28 percent use prepackaged snacks and 20 percent use plastic bags. That's almost 50%. Everyone packs at least one fruit or vegetable per day. This is a great start.

    [00:11:11] Everyone packs leftovers at least one day per week. Also a great start. Participants mentioned packing a thermos or using silicone reusable bags. This means that they are really thinking about the eco friendliness of their choices. Some parents note that they do have picky eaters though, and they resist eating more complicated foods and just getting the nutrition in them is what's important to them.

    [00:11:35] So overall, generally speaking, we are doing our best, but we think we can do a little bit better. That's the message I'm getting from people. Generally speaking, the foods that are mentioned do cover all of the primary nutrition needs of the kids are covering their protein. They're covering their carbohydrates and the fat needs sure across the board, but they may not be getting enough fiber.

    [00:11:55] And they may also not be getting enough of the core micronutrients that support their health and development for the long term. So we'll get into that in this next stage as we talk about challenges. The first major challenge we have to discuss is packaging waste. Pre packaged snack foods, sure they're convenient, but they're also super wasteful.

    [00:12:17] We pay more per serving and our environment pays too. The more prepackaged and processed foods we include in our lunches, the higher the environmental cost from a water use perspective, from transportation perspective, and from an energy perspective. But how bad is that chip bag that you're packing?

    [00:12:38] Let's get into it. First of all, non compostable options They take a long time to degrade. This resource is from foodprint. org. I encourage everyone to take a look at this page because they have so many resources here, which can help you figure out exactly the steps you can take to reduce your food print, which is essentially the footprint of your eating choices.

    [00:13:06] Now you'll see that a banana or a It takes about two and a half weeks to decompose in a biodegradable arena. A carton of milk, the container takes about three months. A single use plastic bag, that takes 50 years. A can, 80 to 100 years. And here's the thing that people don't necessarily understand.

    [00:13:26] That soda water can that you buy, it is lined with plastic. So there is plastic to it too. And then something as simple as a plastic water bottle. That's 450 years. A chip bag is also in that arena, as much as 500 years to decompose. You now see chip bags floating in our oceans, in our waterways, drifting down the side of the street.

    [00:13:49] They are everywhere. They are ubiquitous. As we think about this, we need to understand a few things. First, plastic contains chemicals that can leach into our foods, posing health risks. They contain endocrine disruptors, which means they can throw your hormones out of balance. This is one of the things that scientists believe may be connected to early onset of puberty.

    [00:14:12] Girls are going through puberty earlier and earlier. Girls are starting their periods now often in the fourth grade. So at eight or nine years old, sometimes ten. And when I was growing up, granted, that was, about 40 years ago. We were starting our periods, generally speaking, around the age of 12, 12, 13.

    [00:14:31] So some of these changes are affecting our bodies, they're affecting how we react to our environment. And it's important that we address them. We also know That food cans are often lined with plastic coatings that contain BPAs or other bisphenols, which are forever chemicals that are really challenging in our environment as well.

    [00:14:52] They seem to stick around. It's not like they can easily be removed. And with the question of recyclability, this one all often comes up Oh, well, I do my best to recycle. Our municipality is better than most at recycling, but only 5 percent of plastics from the United States Are recycled at best in the past when we were shipping most of our plastics to China.

    [00:15:17] We had recycle rates of about 10%. So this is an obvious problem that we need to fix. So here's that final note. Many chip bags contain different plastic materials. Some of them are even aluminum materials. What this signifies is that the chips in the bags the chip bags themselves would take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

    [00:15:44] So here is a local resource for Santa Cruz County. I've linked it below, but even if you were to just Google Santa Cruz County recycling or garbage, you'd get directed to this particular file, which goes over what you put in the garbage, what you put in recycling and what you can compost. Now, I want to talk about what we can recycle first, because there's some misunderstandings here.

    [00:16:08] A lot of people have converted from milk dairy to using a nut milk dairy and most nut milk dairies are packaged in these tetra pack style containers. Sadly, they are not in our recycling list. Even though you can recycle what over here on the right, right? Like the Tropicana style milk carton style containers that are in the refrigerator.

    [00:16:33] That kind of waxed carton that you see for milk and the juices that you see there that are more carton oriented, those are recyclable, but these tetra packs are not. So you do need to put your tetra packs in the garbage. And even though plastic films are recyclable. Most of the bags that you receive your foods in are not those chasing arrow symbols can be deceptive.

    [00:16:57] So it's important to check what material is made of a lot of times will actually have the chasing areas arrow symbol now crossed out saying that this is not recyclable. So pay attention, be aware of what you can recycle in your arena and don't forget that you can compost our green waste bins in Santa Cruz County.

    [00:17:17] You can literally just. Put all of your food scraps in the green waste bin along with your yard trimmings and they will be composted so you can put all, place all of these in there. Now, if you prefer to keep your food scraps separate, you can require or request a food bin from the municipality and they will send it out for you with your next garbage pickup.

    [00:17:43] So now let's get to this second big question. This is the food print challenge. How do we. Minimize our food print. When we talk about a food print, we're looking at a variety of things, and I know that this slide is super science y, so I'm just going to talk over it very simply. First, we have greenhouse gases and greenhouse gas emissions.

    [00:18:07] This combines things like methane and also, of course, your CO2, but other chemicals like refrigerants that also end up in our atmosphere. Some of those are harder to draw down, so something like methane, That's 16 times worse than CO2 emitted by your tailpipe. It's a lot harder to get down from the atmosphere.

    [00:18:28] It takes longer. And so therefore it has a greater impact. The reason that cows in particular are really tough in this arena is because they basically belch up methane while they're chewing their cud. And so that methane ends up going out into the atmosphere. It's much beyond their. They're poop. Okay.

    [00:18:50] Moving on from greenhouse gas emissions, we should talk about acidification. Acidification refers to the reduction in pH of our oceans over time. This is caused because we have a plethora of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the even motion of the waves in our oceans essentially absorbs what is in the air into the atmosphere.

    [00:19:11] The ocean, because we have more CO2 in the atmosphere, the ocean starts absorbing more CO2. Roughly half of the CO2 that is kept on earth as opposed to up in the atmosphere is handled by trees and things like our algae strains and seaweeds. The other half is really absorbed into the ocean. And with that absorption, we see it's rising acidification.

    [00:19:36] This is because the ocean absorbs the CO2 and it reduces the pH of the ocean. So this is one part of the problem that ocean acidification creates an environment that is not as friendly for a lot of sea species, including the larval stage of mollusks. It's impacting the extinction of a variety of sea creatures, many of which we can't see.

    [00:20:01] And ultimately, if the ocean becomes too acidic, then it will stop supporting life. So this is something that we really care about. It's affected also by eutrophication, which is the third item on this list. Eutrophication is an excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water. This comes from runoff from agriculture.

    [00:20:22] So when you grow all sorts of foods, you put surplus fertilizers on that ground as well as pesticides and other things that end up in our water. They run off into the oceans and this can do things like create algae blooms because you have this nutrient denseness in the water very suddenly.

    [00:20:41] So you have an immense bloom of algae. The algae then starts to kind of die off. And in that die off phase, it takes a lot of the oxygen from the water with it, which causes mass death of fish because they don't have any oxygen in the water to breathe. They basically suffocate in the water, right? So you'll see things like a bunch of small fish washing up onto shores of Florida or Italy or wherever these are happening.

    [00:21:08] And it's a problem around the world that we need to be aware of. So reducing this kind of eutrophication, this effluence from farming into our waterways is really important. And then the last of which is land use on this chart. We have a limited amount of land. This is the reason that we have so much clear cutting happening.

    [00:21:29] When you go down to South America and you're looking at the rainforest and the Amazon, all that the clear cutting is happening to make more grazing land because we have limited arable land. Arable land is a space where you can have grazers on it, you can grow things, you have access to fresh water so you can water and things along those lines.

    [00:21:48] Really arable land is potential farmland and potential farmland is now coming from a lot of deforestation too. So we have, this is a limited finite resource and guess what takes up a lot of it. You got it. The cow. So this is the reason many people say, reducing our consumption of these sorts of land animals in particular can help to move the needle in favor of reducing global warming in favor of the planet's health, ultimately.

    [00:22:20] The freshwater needed to grow food is also of prime importance, and it can be extreme based on different sorts of food. For every pound of beef that you're looking to create, it takes 1, 800 gallons per pound of water. For every pound of pork, you're looking at 717 gallons, chicken 518 gallons.

    [00:22:43] You move on to the vegetarian sources and even the ones that require quite a bit of water like asparagus, asparagus is at 201 gallons. Okay. May not be your best protein source, but all vegetables have some protein in them. So it's, it makes sense to be consuming a wider variety of foods and relying less on these particular animal sources.

    [00:23:05] Wheat, 169 gallons per pound of wheat, carrots, 14 gallons per pound. Some of the nuts are quite expensive with regard to water. We don't list almonds on this particular list, but 47. It's the number of gallons of water you need to grow a pound of walnuts. And I've heard that in the case of almonds, a single almond takes one gallon of water to grow.

    [00:23:32] Now this is partially the methods that we're using to farm things like nut trees and fruit trees. We can definitely make some improvements here. Some some growers are now sending their watering apparatuses underground and so that they can water at a much reduced rate instead of just relying on channels of irrigation, which can be quite wasteful since surface water tends to evaporate.

    [00:23:57] The mean greenhouse gas equivalents per 2000 calorie diet is broken down in this next slide where we're looking at specifically how much greenhouse gases are created if you consume a diet that's high in meat, per se, if you consume quite a bit of meat, which is defined as being three and a half ounces a day.

    [00:24:19] Which is what? About the size of a deck of cards. If you eat one serving of meat every single day, then you're looking at an equivalency of your greenhouse gases being around 15. 9. However, if you eat less than that, it comes down significantly. With vegans, Being, of course, the least impactful insofar as the greenhouse gases converted from their diet.

    [00:24:45] They come in around 6. 4 versus the high end meat diet being at 15. 9. So, you really can make a difference with every meal of the day. I personally like to advocate for this concept of no meat before dinner or no animal products before dinner. So that we can make better choices a couple times a day. Now that may be impractical in your household, trying to get the right nutrition into your child, given your family's dietary needs, but we can move in this positive direction bit by bit, day by day with awareness.

    [00:25:22] So if you look at a serving of beef versus a serving of chicken, this is actually in a YouTube video that I link at the end of this presentation by Vox and in collaboration with University of California. At any rate, 330 grams of CO2 equivalent from a serving of beef versus 52 for chicken. So we really can reduce our carbon imprint just by shifting what type of animal products that we're consuming.

    [00:25:51] Comparing that to fish, 330 for the beef versus 40 grams for the asserting of salmon, and if we were to compare it to lentils, this is off the charts. You go 330 for beef to only two grams. when you're looking at lentils. So this highlights for us the simple shifts we can make to have a lower carbon imprint on our environment.

    [00:26:16] But it's not just the environment that counts. The fact is that health challenges exist from eating highly processed foods. And these packaged foods that we consume, guess what, they tend to be very much negative for our health. Here are some of the health effects of eating highly processed foods. This has to do with how our cells process the nutrients that we bring into our body, our endocrine system, our neuronal pathways, our immune system.

    [00:26:53] And the reality is that when we consume a diet that is high in processed foods and especially highly processed foods, there are many health concerns that erupt from them. In other walks of life, you may have heard people refer to the standard American diet. It's more than that. It's a diet that's high in processed foods and that's high in meats.

    [00:27:15] Okay, so when you consume a diet that has a considerable amount of sugar, additives, salt, and fat, you increase your gut permeability, you disrupt your intestinal barrier, you decrease your microbial diversity, you change your microbiota, And this ultimately leads to gut inflammation, that gut inflammation impacts every aspect of your health because it impacts how you absorb the nutrition that you bring into your body.

    [00:27:50] And this is affecting kids earlier and earlier too. What we already see now is that some children have hardening of the arteries by the age of six. This is astounding and also something that is irrefutable in the science. We know now that eating a diet that is high and highly processed foods is directly linked to hyperactivity disorders, to depression, to anxiety, locomotor issues, just not being as physically capable, cognitive function concerns, addiction, and of course, those inflammatory disorders I mentioned before.

    [00:28:28] We have that increase in gut permeability and a decrease in the microbiota, so I have linked to this study here. I'm going to provide this with the resources section as well. So you can read the research yourself if you are so interested. But 1 of the biggest ways that we can make a difference in our diets today is by.

    [00:28:49] Eliminating all processed meats from our diets. Processed meats are classified as Group 1 carcinogens by the World Health Organization. This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. It means they're cancer causing. In other words, there is enough evidence that these cause, are directly related to cancer.

    [00:29:16] In the case of processed meats, the classification is based on evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer and is also possibly linked to stomach cancer. Defining what processed meat is, I went ahead and put a list here together. These may be some of your kids favorite foods.

    [00:29:35] I know that my younger son loves hot dogs, right? It just means that I'm not giving him to them that often, that I'm looking for alternatives. I did try the vegan hot dog on him. He would not eat it. So I understand too, this struggle can be real here. But hot dogs, bologna, bologna is the same meat that is in hot dogs.

    [00:29:56] Sausages, including things like bratwurst pepperoni, salami, bacon, jerky. I know bacon, I said bacon, one of America's favorite foods. But bacon is a processed food. Jerky, ham, bacon. And sadly, most pre sliced lunch meats, like those that by Hillshore Farms that were pictured in the very first photo I showed you in this presentation consuming these foods will increase your risk of developing cancer.

    [00:30:20] So we need to reduce them. You'll also see on this chart here, which I've linked the resource for that group 2A is probable causes of cancer. And guess what's linked there? Red meats. Also pork and things like mutton. So that's not just the cow. It's like mutton and pork, right? Fish is not included in the class 2A, nor is chicken.

    [00:30:43] So those two are not listed as potential carcinogens. So, what does it take, given all this knowledge, to pack a lunch that both supports the health of our kids and is better for the planet? Before we answer this question, we should take a peek at some common sense recommendations from the USDA and from medical experts.

    [00:31:04] The USDA put out this simple chart which shows you how to alleviate food loss and waste concerns. The first is to plan ahead, build meal plans. Make your shopping list and try to stick to it. Make smart servings. Ensure that you're actually giving your child the appropriate amount of food. Love your leftovers.

    [00:31:26] I have said this before and I'll say it again. You might as well serve it again or freeze it for later. If you're not able to eat it right away. And compost don't trash. So use that compost bin. I love that USDA offers this resource in multiple languages. I've highlighted this one here in both English and Spanish, but they had many, many more languages available.

    [00:31:46] You could click on that link and go ahead and download the one that's appropriate for you. So as we talk about servings, what is a serving? How much do your kids need? So this is actually from a children's health resource specifically for the serving size per age. I often wondered what is a serving?

    [00:32:06] The peaches that I get even at the farmer's market are easily two servings. So to think about it like that, to perhaps cut up the fruits or veggies to increase the chance that your child will actually eat it is I think a good way to go. So here for kids age one to three, you're looking at a quarter cup to a half cup dependent on the actual food for four to five year olds.

    [00:32:27] It's a third of a cup to three quarters cup for a serving size dependent on the food. And you see that in the chart here. And then six years or older is a half a cup to one cup dependent again on the food. So I will note here that nuts, of course, because they're much more energy dense, have a lower serving size, which is more like an eighth of a cup or a couple tablespoons of peanut butter or something to that effect since they are more, much more energy dense.

    [00:32:57] And this is where my tips come in before I tell you what I think you need to do to minimize your eco footprint with the lunches, as well as to fully support your child's health. This is just methods to involve your kid, because I have seen this personally in my life. When I involve them in the choices that I make for their lunches, they eat them even when it is healthier, right?

    [00:33:21] So I really work to now choose new recipes to work with them periodically so that they're involved in the kitchen and the cooking. I'll bring them with me shopping. I don't do that on every shopping trip, but when I do, I ask my kids, yes, you can choose one thing from the produce department today.

    [00:33:38] No matter what you want. And we'll create something around that one thing. Right. And so that gets them involved in creativity. My son once came to me and chose a Buddha's hand, which is a citrus. I had never cooked with the Buddha's hand before, and it's got a whole lot of rind. So I picked a kind of Chinese chicken sort of food to cook where I used a lot of lemon rind to create this recipe and then use some of the tentacles from the Buddha's hand as a garnish on some of the dishes.

    [00:34:10] And he really enjoyed and engaged with that. From there, you can really talk to your child about the problems of food waste so that they don't take more than they need, even when they're packing their lunches with you and I say involve them in packing their lunch. I like to give my kids a job.

    [00:34:27] So the thing I've done is I have this stackable snack pack that I give them that's for their after school program, which, sometimes they might eat that earlier in the day and have part of their lunch than in the after school program. That's okay. But I just say, okay, you've got this stackable snack pack and you're going to help me fill it today.

    [00:34:43] So they'll put nuts in the top part. That's smallest. And then they might take orange slices and put them in the middle and then have something like in the bottom part, like goldfish or chips or something along those lines. Okay. And that means that they've got a variety of snacks with them and they've bought into it.

    [00:35:00] They've packed it themselves. They know what they've have. And I think it actually improves their receptivity overall. A simple guide here that shows you a visual of how much a serving is can also help engage them. Like I loved here that this. Particular site. Children's dot com showed that a yo yo is a half a cup serving and to look at vegetables or pasta that way and the meat as a deck of cards.

    [00:35:24] They can relate to that cheese. A serving is four dice. Four dice is roughly one ounce. So it's good to involve them in these visuals too. So here's the nitty gritty. I've given you three steps to build a healthier packed lunch, including a few snacks. Now, the key here is to start with fresh fruits and vegetables.

    [00:35:48] If we can make sure that they are getting three servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, with their lunch, then we're going to be much more likely to help them reach the five servings of fruits and vegetables that health experts recommend we consume each and every day. Yes, we can take this eating a rainbow perspective.

    [00:36:07] I think that's a great approach, but focusing on getting a variety of fruits and veggies, not just fruits, will also ensure that our child's microbiota is much more healthy. They'll get more fiber and more fiber makes the digestion system much more healthy. We need to reduce or eliminate highly packaged and highly processed foods.

    [00:36:29] And if you take one thing away from today, I would say, Eliminate the processed meats. If we can eliminate the processed meats, we're doing our kids a world of good. And that may mean that if you like to pack them, there are school lunches that instead of getting the Hillshore Farms container that's made of plastic of sliced deli meats, you can instead get a whole chicken, make the chicken and then slice fresh chicken for their sandwiches and things like that.

    [00:36:59] They'll enjoy it as much or more. They won't be getting a ton of excess salt that they don't need from the sliced meat, deli meats, and they're going to ultimately you'll reduce your food waste along the way. You won't have as much plastic recycling, which won't likely get recycled anyway. So you'll be impacting your footprint in that way as well.

    [00:37:21] And then focus on a whole fresh foods and whole grains. This is really a no brainer, but the moment we start to go to refined foods where the wheat germ is removed, We remove a lot of the potential benefit of that food. So there's a lot of great things about healthy breads out there. I like to consume organic bread for the most part.

    [00:37:44] I love to pick up bread at my local farmer's market, as well as go to some of our incredible local resources like Alfaro's sourdough. They even sell that at Costco now. So you can get some really great quality breads at these places. Some of which are, fully whole wheat. I even get a cracked wheat sourdough from Alfaro's that I absolutely love and our kids love it too.

    [00:38:08] Companion Bakery has a variety of really fantastic whole wheat breads available. If you are a artisanal bread lover, then I encourage you to check them out.

    [00:38:23] And one last note as I move on here, when you focus on real whole foods, it is best for us to look at options that are as unprocessed as possible. This means things like not overcooking. If we grill on the grill, we may love the sear we get on a steak, but it's actually not as healthy for us.

    [00:38:48] The healthiest way to consume your meat products is baked or steamed or boiled. And so if we can do more foods along those arenas, like stews, whatnot things that are wet cooked tend to retain a healthier profile. Add more plant based snacks to these meals. You can include protein sources that like hummus and veggies, green bean salads, curried tofu, bean and rice burritos, bean dips and chips, quinoa salads with cranberries and nuts chia seed pudding, overnight oats, things like that, that you can make in your fridge that are super easy.

    [00:39:24] They can really be treats and they can introduce a lot of very healthy things into your child's diet.

    [00:39:34] So when we get into building an earth friendly lunch, it may not be a surprise that doing some of the same things or echoing some of the same things I said on the prior slide, they're really right there. So we need to first look at buying local because when we buy local, when we integrate with.

    [00:39:51] locally available foods, they have a lower footprint because they aren't traveling as far. They automatically reduce your waste because they aren't having to travel as far, which means they don't have to be on massive and massive container trucks to go where they're going. They don't have to be as wrapped with plastic before they hit that shipping lot.

    [00:40:12] So you can actually do things like buy berries and a fiber container as opposed to a plastic clamshell. You can find your fruits and veggies with no packaging at all at the local farmer's market. Scotts Valley farmer's market runs from, I think the end of April through November. Ones in Santa Cruz and Felton run all year.

    [00:40:33] Even longer stretches of the year, I believe, but really for about 8 months of the year. We solidly have several options available. We can also find local produce at our independent local health food stores, including those markets like Scotts Valley market, wild roots market. And those are in Wild Roots is in Felton, Scotts Valley Markets in Scotts Valley.

    [00:40:57] You can also find the New Leafs have a lot of local produce even though they're part of the New Seasons Marketplace, which is a Canadian owned organization. But really, you've got local health food stores that have a plethora of products. Local produce that's traveled less than 50 miles to be on that grocer's shelves so you can get fresh, beautiful produce almost any time of year.

    [00:41:20] If you buy local and buy in season, you're going to be doing even better because that will ensure that you've got that product at the time when it's designed to have its peak nutrition. So, eat your summer fruits towards the end of summer. You eat your berries from like spring and you can always get frozen goods of these sorts to to enjoy year round.

    [00:41:44] Number two is to reduce your waste. The first step, of course, is to reduce your food waste. This has to do with your planning. Compost what you can't or save it for later. Consider doing something like making a batch of a stew that you can freeze part of and come back to later. Before you're sick of it, right?

    [00:42:03] So eat some now eat some in a couple of weeks when you defrost it, we can mix our food waste with our green waste bins. So don't forget that. Or you can special request your compost bucket from green waste. We can use reusable packaging and keep those prepackaged snacks to a minimum. If your kid is in love with their Pirate's Booty, get the big bag and repackage in your silicone bag or another clamshell or something to that effect that you reuse.

    [00:42:32] This will reduce the amount of the chip bag material that is out in the environment and it will save you money because that big bag of Pirate's Booty, you're paying a lot less per serving than you are when they're individually packaged. If your kid is a picky eater consider to involving them more in food choices, because in my experience, this helps.

    [00:42:55] I have a child who's 6 years old, and he's autistic on the spectrum, and he develops the foods that he loves, and then will eschew almost everything else, I'm always transitioning or trying new things with him, and I have even done something as silly as, cut the strawberry in a shape to get him to engage with it more generally speaking.

    [00:43:17] Fruits aren't a problem, but some other foods he just won't touch. If I pack the carrots and hummus that you see here, he'll eat all the hummus with his finger or with a carrot, but leave the carrots behind, lick them clean and put them back. He loves the cucumbers, so he would eat that, but from the sandwich, he might only eat what's inside and leave the bread behind.

    [00:43:37] So we listen to our child and then think about the ways that we can pack his lunch differently so that we have greater success with time. And this has meant, in some cases, making him what I call the naked sandwich where the bread isn't there because, but everything else is, and he can eat it with his fingers, the lettuce and the salad.

    [00:43:54] The cheese and maybe the lunch meat or whatever else is in there. I did say lunch meat. We do resort to that from time to time, but I often have something like sliced chicken in there as well. And he loves those finger foods. So we thought about that and we contain more finger oriented foods and his lunch that he can eat kind of piecemeal.

    [00:44:14] And last, eat more plant based whole foods. And this comes through because we know they have a lower carbon footprint. They have a lower water footprint across the board. They are really healthy for you and then contain a ton of micronutrients that are challenging to get in other ways. So generally speaking, if we can get our kids.

    [00:44:35] Not only to eat whole foods, but to be a little bit more plant centered, they're going to be healthier for the long term.

    [00:44:42] I did include in this presentation a couple of other additional resources, but because these are videos you can watch on your own, I'm simply going to reflect on them for a moment and then I will offer the link for you to be able to review them.

    [00:44:57] One of the first resources I want to send you to is Eat for the Earth. Eatfortheearth. org is their website. They are a local community that is inspired to help people discover plant foods and food as medicine. They have this health conference that they're running on Sunday, October 20th, and you can find out more directly on their website.

    [00:45:19] You can also choose to participate in upcoming lectures and events that are hosted by that Santa Cruz not for profit, including Their Community Rx or Salud Entuplata program. The Salud Entuplata program started out first in Watsonville, but is now extending into Santa Cruz with Community Rx. And what this is, is an event where they run you through a basic health screening, you fill out some questionnaires, they take your weight and your blood to check a couple of health markers, and then introduce you to some of the concepts of eating and plant based diet.

    [00:45:51] And then you can actually see the before and after effects after participating in a program for a couple of weeks. And I'll do the health screening again after two weeks. So to find out more about it, I encourage you to visit their site. And you can actually explore a few videos as well on the site that help you to better understand the impact of your food choices on the environment.

    [00:46:13] Their whole perspective around eating for the earth is to champion Plant based sources of food and I think they're a fantastic resource. The next is a video, and this is actually by Foodprint. It's a couple of minutes long, but if you go to foodprint. org, you can watch this video and learn a little bit more about the impacts of food choices on the health of the environment.

    [00:46:37] And then this other piece I have listed is by Vox in collaboration with University of California. And when I showed you earlier in this presentation, a slab of beef next to one of chicken or the slab of beef next to some lentils and showing you the difference of their carbon footprint, those were snapshots taken directly from this video.

    [00:47:02] It's an incredible educational resource and I really think that you'll enjoy watching both of them. I will link both with show notes for this episode and encourage you to reach out to me with questions or with other ideas that you'd like to see me explore in future episodes of care more, be better.

    [00:47:22] I will of course include show notes as well as the video version of this podcast and the audio version on my website at Circle B under the podcast for Care More Be Better. And if you have a specific question you can post a comment or you can reach out to me and social channels as well.

    [00:47:41] The email for my podcast is hello at care more, be better. com. And I encourage you to reach out directly with that. Thank you all for visiting with me today. I hope you have an amazing week and look forward to connecting again in a future episode.

    [00:47:59] Thank you listeners and watchers now and always for being a part of this pod and this community because together we really can do so much more. We can care more. We can be better. We can even help solve some of these real challenges in our daily lives, grow healthier kids and help the climate along the way.

    [00:48:21] Thank you. Thanks for listening to care more, be better a podcast for social good to make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe, rate and review wherever you listen to podcasts and share with your friends to help us reach more people and spread more social good.