OUR ORGANIC MEAL PLAN

At Planet Kids, our whole foods program plays an important role in nourishing your child both inside and out. While we aim to reduce toxins found in the typical fast food diet, we encourage children to enjoy food, learn to listen to their bodies, and form a healthy relationship to food. The children’s meals, made from scratch in our kitchen, are rich in whole grains, a variety of fresh, colorful fruits and vegetables and high quality lean protein such as chicken, turkey, beans/legumes, eggs, tofu, soybeans, tuna, and seeds. Our food is cooked with high quality plant oils such as extra virgin olive oil, canola oil and sesame oil. The major goals of our food program include:

Exposing children to a variety of healthful foods. We believe that it is important for children to be exposed to whole foods early in life. We hope that this will set the stage for lifelong healthy living. According to an article published by Aetna Inc., a child may need to see a new food 10 or more times before they will accept it.

• Criteria of a healthful food: Minimally processed food that grows and can be found in nature such as plant and animal foods. This excludes highly processed foods and those not found in nature such as high fructose corn syrup and non-food chemicals applied to food such as pesticides.

Reducing the risk of preventable disease such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and multiple cancers. Obesity contributes to all of the above conditions. Diets high in fiber and low in refined sugars have shown to be protective against constipation, cardiovascular disease, cancers, obesity and diabetes. Fiber is found in whole grains, beans, seeds, nuts, fibrous fruits, vegetables and sea vegetables. Animal foods are not a source of fiber. When foods such as grains have been refined, they lose their fiber content. According to Dr. Fuhrman, M.D., author of Disease Proof Your Child, “…the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age.”

Reducing common childhood illnesses such as recurring ear infections by boosting immunity. The vitamins and minerals found in whole foods are essential to providing the body with the tools it needs to perform at an optimal level. With the significant growth that occurs in childhood, nutrition is vital and can have both short and long term effects. In addition to vitamins and minerals, plant foods contain important phytonutrients, such as antioxidants, which protect the body from oxidative damage that can lead to disease. While taking vitamins may provide isolated nutrients and phytonutrients, a whole food provides all of the components necessary to properly metabolize and utilize its beneficial nutrients. Only a small fraction of the composition of foods such as fruits and vegetables are known to man! This leaves a possibility that there are many other beneficial components of foods that have not been discovered. Cancer researchers Dr. Levy and Dr. Sharoni, for example, found that the combination of nutrients in tomatoes were more efficient in treating breast cancer than the phytonutrient lycopene alone.

Our program aims to be as organic and sustainable as possible. Why is eating organic so important? The reasons are numerous! Organic farming, which also has a degree of sustainability, is the true way of farming with a variety of crops and nutrient rich soil. The soil is kept rich by being nourished with healthy matter such as compost and bacteria. An organic farm has a healthy balance of beneficial insects. Sustainable farming will give back more to the environment that it takes. The methods of organic farming promote sustainability. This cannot easily be done with conventional farming as it requires more outside resources than organic farming and often depletes the environment by using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and robs the land of important nutrients. Rather than maintaining a healthy bacterial content, important for many plants to receive nutrients, many conventional farms have sterile soil where these bacteria would not survive. Chemical sprays and pesticides are used to ward off unwanted pests. With the healthy balance of crops, insects and bacteria, the environment of an organic farm has the capability of balancing its ‘pests’ naturally. Organic farmers, when faced with a pest problem, cannot spray harmful chemicals such as pesticides and must come up with alternative solutions. The Environmental Working Group says, “There is growing consensus in the scientific community that small doses of pesticides and other chemicals can adversely affect people, especially during vulnerable periods of fetal development and childhood when exposures can have long lasting effects.” In animal studies these effects include cancer, nervous system damage and reproductive effects.

All of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, vegetables and whole grains on our menu are organic. Many of our suppliers are local companies that are passionate about their products.

Below is a chart of ingredients commonly served at Planet Kids:

References

Bell, A.C., Swinburn, B.A. What are the key food groups to target for preventing obesity and improving nutrition in schools? European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2004; 58: 258-263.

Fitzgerald, A.L., Veugelers, P.J. Effectiveness of School Programs in Preventing Childhood Obesity: A Multilevel Comparison. American Journal of Public Health. 2005; 95, 3.

FoodNews from Environmental Working Group. http://www.foodnews.org/. Accessed 5/7/07.

Fuhrman, Joel. Disease-Proof Your Child. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

Kranz, S. Meeting the Dietary Reference Intakes for Fiber: Sociodemographic Characteristics of Preschoolers with High Fiber Intakes. American Journal of Public Health. 2006; 96, 9.

Nestle, M. Preventing Childhood Diabetes: The Need for Public Health Intervention. American Journal of Public Health. 2005; 95, 9: 1497-1499.

Phytonutrients in Whole Tomato More Effective Vs. Cancer than Lycopene Alone. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=news&dbid=94#summary. Accessed 7/25/07.

Our food program is managed by Aliya Hirji, our on-staff nutritionist, who earned a Bachelors of Science in Nutrition at Bastyr University