Teaching your child how to eat a healthy and balanced diet is essential to their health, growth, and lifestyle. The eating habits that your children learn when they are young will help them develop healthy habits they will carry with them into adulthood. It is essential that children eat nutritious foods in the correct portions to feed their growing bodies and maintain their health. Although their nutritional needs and energy levels can differ depending on growth rate, age, levels of activity, and body size, kids need to eat a variety of foods in from all food groups and with different tastes, textures, and colors. These are some of the reasons Country Home strives to provide your child with a variety of healthy and well balanced food options every day.
At Country Home, providing healthy meals starts with our cooks. All of our cooks are Food Manager certified through Serv Safe, and they always have access to an on-staff Serv Safe Certified Instructor. This is to ensure that your child’s meals are always prepared properly and in the healthiest way.
Beyond our cooks, our food and menu selections are hand-picked and designed by Country Home’s own Food Service Manager, Jennifer Bennett. Our healthy menu includes a hot breakfast, morning and afternoon snacks, and a hot lunch every day. Every month Jennifer works on creating a well-balanced menu for your children by including only whole wheat and grain options, lean meats, and fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Country Home also ensures that we never provide your child with sugar-sweetened juices or drinks. Our menus are specially designed to go above and beyond the minimum standards of nutrition guidelines which include one dairy, one meat, one fruit (at least), one vegetable (at least), and three grains per day. We also provide low-fat milk for children 3+ and whole milk for children 12 months through 2 years of age. Along with milk, water is provided with every meal and after every activity during the day.
Menus are provided electronically and in all our schools so that parents know the month’s upcoming meals. This allows for everyone to plan ahead, and breakfasts, lunches, and snacks brought from home are always welcomed. We are, however, a Peanut-Free facility. We ask that parents do not send any foods containing peanuts to school because of the severe and dangerous reactions children can have due to their food allergies.
Whether your child eats at Country Home or at home every day, it is important that they are being provided food that ensures healthy growth and development. Fostering your child’s healthy eating habits is an important part of their young development. With obesity being one of the leading causes of death in America and this generation being the first in recent history to have a shorter life expectancy than that of their parents, it is essential that children grow up with a great nutritional foundation.
