Our Opinion: Callaway Hills: A lean, mean, food-service machine

We give an A+ to Callaway Hills Elementary School for achieving something schools have been struggling for years to do: serve healthy food.

It was recently reported the Alliance for a Healthier Generation has named the school among America's healthiest schools. It honored the school with its Bronze Award for making changes that promote healthier eating and physical activity for students and staff.

The alliance was started by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation as a response to growing child obesity.

The alliance's Healthy Schools Program recognizes schools that meet or exceed stringent standards, including serving healthier meals and snacks, getting students moving more, offering high-quality physical and health education and empowering school leaders to become healthy role models, said Kelsey Chrisman, the Jefferson City Public Schools Healthy Schools program coordinator.

"Specifically, our school has an extraordinary Cooking Club and Garden Club along with before- and after-school physical activity programs like the Fitness Club," she said. "Aside from home, school is the place where kids spend most of their time, making healthy schools vital to preparing students for success."

Like other Bronze Award winners, the school will be featured in the alliance's national America's #HealthiestSchools campaign through local and national media outlets.

Doctors and nutritionists have long known that a good diet is one key to a long and healthy life. In recent years, schools have increasingly, through a combination of self-desire and regulations, to provide healthier meal options to students.

School lunches offered today are generally much-improved from what we ate as children: reheated frozen mystery meat, with sides filled with carbohydrates and sugar.

Obesity and diabetes have become an epidemic in our country. As individuals we can eat what we please and serve our children what we please. But meals provided through government programs should fuel our bodies, not simply taste good.

We commend Callaway Hills for making positive contributions not only to their students' minds, but bodies as well.

And we hope other schools in the area will look at Callaway Hills' success, and replicate it for so more students in the area will be healthier.