Happy National School Lunch Week! Perhaps there are no holiday cards to honor this event, but in the world of Sodexo School Services and our thousands of clients and customers, this is a BIG deal and worthy of talking about. Each year, 5.2 billion school lunches are served in 99,000 schools. That makes about 31 million meals a day, and Sodexo serves more than 2.5 million of those nutritious meals each day to students and teachers across the country. Our customers have come to expect the best food, the best quality and the best choices in their school cafeterias. To us, providing breakfast, lunch, after school snacks and yes, sometimes even dinner to our customers is our mission as well as our job. There is no arguing the link between good nutrition and student achievement; the facts are in and it’s indisputable.

Are you feeling guilty about not packing a brownbag lunch for your child? Don’t! Here’s what school lunch can do for your child:

1. Lunch keeps kids powered up throughout the day. Because the average meal takes no more than about four to five hours to digest, skipping lunch can cause a student to suffer from afternoon sluggishness. Your brain and working muscles need quality fuel every four to five hours with a mixture of carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats in the right portions. The school lunch program is designed to help students get the right mix of foods and nutrients to keep them shining all day long.

2. Eating lunch helps with weight maintenance. Some students may think they will skip lunch to conserve calories and hopefully lose weight. This technique usually backfires for many reasons. One, students tend to be ravenous later and then overeat calories later in the day. Two, the body becomes more efficient at storing body fat because it perceives it is being starved. Three, both mental and physical energy can suffer. This could mean that performance on the big exam or during the big game could be seriously compromised by skipping meals. It’s not worth it to skip.

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Nothing feels better than that last day of school ... with a long, warm summer ahead of you and NO SCHOOL FOR MONTHS!! Well, from my perspective as the lead of Sodexo's schools division, I hope you enjoyed the food we've served in your cafeterias (in more than 472 school districts in the U.S.). We’ve tried to provide you with great-tasting choices that provide the right fuel to help you learn and grow. We even formed a partnership with The Alliance for a Healthier Generation to help us stay at the forefront of providing specific foods to your schools so you can make healthy choices every day.

But it’s summer ... no school cafeteria for a while. No gym class, no recess ... You’re on your own to make healthy choices for your meals and activities for a few months, and what choices will you make? Have you thought about the food and drink choices that you will make daily, while you’re out of school? It’s important -- it determines your energy level, it determines your state of mind, it helps you sleep better. Exercise in many forms, typical running and biking, or skateboarding, jumping rope, chasing after brothers and sisters, carrying groceries, washing the car, oh, sorry, I got a little carried away and showed my “parent” side. Didn’t mean to do that. But you get my meaning ... healthy food + exercise = healthy YOU! 

Why is it important to me for you to be healthy, to be well-fed and to enjoy your food at school? Well, I know at this stage of your life, it can be difficult to see into the future. But I can ... I can see that you are this country's hope, you are our Sodexo employees, teachers, store owners, business people, political leaders and CEO's ... you are it! But to get there, you need to be healthy, strong and engaged with your own health.

So tell me -- where do you see yourself in the future? How will a summer of healthy eating and activity help get you there? Blog me back! I really want to hear from you.   

Note: For information about Sodexo’s summer feeding program, please visit our site.

WHAT do you do with 54,000 people in the foodservice industry? Well, you put on the National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, that’s what. I was fortunate enough to be Chairperson of this important industry trade-show in Chicago recently and what a great success and a buzz around growth in this industry I was able to witness. No doubt it’s been a difficult time for many in the foodservice industry, regardless of the segment, but what I saw at the NRA Show were exhibitors and operators with buying power exploring the most innovative products and services on the market. Walking around the Show, I felt energy and an optimistic feeling about the foodservice industry. I think everyone is definitely ready to turn a corner and move forward. 

In terms of trends, there was a clear focus on healthy and balanced eating. This tells me that consumers such as you want choice, and what I need to do as leader of the School Services segment of Sodexo is to provide healthy choices for our students to learn early what a “balanced diet” means. I saw so many great examples of choice with hundreds of exhibitors at the Show. 

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