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	growing child food

Organic Information

Perhaps the best way to ensure that children receive healthy lunches is to pack them yourself. Enlist your children in helping you choose healthy foods that they will enjoy. Get creative with the fruits and the vegetables-cut them into interesting shapes, such as stars and moons, or skewer them as fruit kabobs. Grow your own veggies and fruits and pick them for their lunches. Band together with other parents to promote healthy food choices-you could circulate a petition with promises to exclude from lunches any processed and/or sugar-laden foods.

A landmark study from the University of Washington's School of Public Health and Community Medicine, published in the October 2002 Environmental Health Perspectives, concluded that "the consumption of organic produce represents a relatively simple means for parents to reduce their children's exposure to pesticides."

Dr. Alan R. Greene, pediatrician and children's health advocate, has come up with The Organic Lunchbox (see "For More Information" in the main article). This program advocates making children's lunches until we have more nutritious meals in our schools. He urges parents to include at least one organic food item in their child's lunch each day.