10 Things a PTA Can Do to Improve Student Nutrition

1. Make copies of the Healthy Lifestyles pages and distribute them to parents in your school.

2. Make Healthy Lifestyles at Home and School a focus of your PTA meetings.

3. Help make school dining facilities appealing to students. Take a look at your cafeteria. Is it a nice place to eat? Ask your kids what they think of the room. Is it dark or sunny? Are the seats comfortable? If the walls are drab, ask your school’s art teachers to have students create artwork (featuring healthy foods) for the walls. Or ask your principal for permission to have a PTA painting party, and paint murals on the walls.

4. Suggest selling bottled water at the school store, front desk and all school events.

5. Eat with the kids: Go in one day and join kids at lunch. (Ask your school for permission first). Pack a healthy lunch or eat what the kids eat. Find out what choices are available at your school, and what they taste like. What do kids pick from the menus, how long do they have to wait in line, and how much time do they have to eat?

6. Make sure your school participates in the School Breakfast, National School Lunch and Afterschool Snack programs. If your school does not participate in these programs, encourage school leaders to do so.

7. Meet with the food service staff at your school and learn about their daily challenges in preparing meals and their suggestions for healthy improvements. Write their ideas down.

8. Use the PTA Fact-Finding Project (included in this notebook) to assess your school’s health. For example, take inventory of the number of vending machines on campus and the kinds of foods they contain. Also take notes on what is for sale in your school store or in other places on or near campus. Are there fast-food restaurants nearby?

9. Talk to students about the food at school. They will definitely have opinions about the time they eat lunch, whether they are rushed, what the food is like, and what they would like to see changed. It’s important to get students’ support for healthy changes in the school environment. continued on back

10. Armed with all the information you have gathered, speak up about what changes are needed. Enlist the help and support of your principal, the school food service staff, and teachers for making improvements in your school’s “nutrition environment.” With the strength of the PTA behind you, you can make a big difference and change your school for the better!

This information was brought to you from the Healthy Lifestyles at Home and School notebook, created in partnership with Parents' Action for Children.