Variety

An important consideration in school diet is to prevent monotony, which becomes so common from economic reasons, or more often from carelessness. It is much easier to yield to routine and force of habit or to leave the matter to the indiscretions of an unintelligent cook. But a little study and thought expended upon this subject can always result in furnishing varjety in a wholesome diet without material increase of expense.

Hours For Meals

The hours for study and for meals should be so regulated that sufficient time should be allowed before each meal for children to wash and prepare themselves comfortably without going to the table excited by hurry, and they should be required to remain at the table throughout a fixed time, never being allowed to hastily swallow their food in order to complete an unfinished task or game. An interval of half an hour or more should intervene for recreation after meals, in order that digestion may be well under way before any mental exertion is required. Constant nibbling at food between meals should be forbidden; it destroys the appetite, increases the saliva, and interferes with gastric digestion. The number of meals for children should be adapted to the age of the pupils. For young children from ten to twelve or thirteen years of age it may be necessary to furnish food somewhat oftener than for older ones.

If children live at a distance from their school, or if they are weak and easily fatigued and inclined to sleep over in the morning, their hours for study should be so adjusted that they are never obliged to hurry their eating in order to be on time for school work. The teachers should consider themselves quite as responsible for regulating this matter as are the parents.

Children should never be hurried off to school in the morning with an insufficient and rapidly eaten breakfast. Their appetites are often poor at this hour from the effects of an ill-ventilated sleeping apartment, and if they are subsequently kept at school for five hours without luncheon they are very ill prepared for mental work. Or they ride to school without exercise after a hasty breakfast, take a hurried cold lunch at noon, and perhaps a warmed-over late dinner, and at six or seven o'clock a fourth meal, after which they are expected to study and go to bed.

The fact is being more and more realised by teachers and the public in general that the breaking down of health at school is quite as often, if not oftener, due to impoverished nutrition as to overwork.

A fact which is sometimes overlooked in the dietetic treatment of growing children is that their digestive processes are so active that the stomach is emptied somewhat sooner than in the case of adults, and their meals being promptly absorbed, it is natural for them to become hungry if the intervals between the hours of eating are prolonged. In some schools, children are given their last meal of the day at six o'clock in the evening, and they may not breakfast until seven or half past seven or even later, leaving an interval of over thirteen hours during which they have no food at all. The evening meal is usually made light, on the ground that they can sleep better, and it is, therefore, sooner digested. Robust children can perhaps thrive on this treatment, but those less strong are injured by it. For some school children of from ten to fourteen years of age it will be much better to give the evening meal later, at, say, half past seven o'clock, and the breakfast at seven, and if they awaken hungry during the night there is no harm in their having a glass of milk and a cracker.

Very delicate children whose appetites are poor and who do not do proper justice to their regular meals should be given an extra allowance of hot broth or hot milk or an occasional cup of chocolate with bread and butter and rusk between meals.

These general rules are applicable to those children who, during one or two years, seem to develop with extraordinary suddenness and rapidity, growing sometimes two inches or more in six months and attaining a height quite disproportionate to their frames. The demands of this rapid growth must be met by proper nutrition or serious subsequent impairment of vitality may result. Such children should have their meals made tempting by good cooking and pleasant variety as well as an agreeable appearance of the food.

Meat which is carved in unsightly masses and vegetables which are sodden and tasteless will be refused, and an ill attempt is made to supply the deficiency in proper food by eating indigestible candy, nuts, etc. Children often have no natural liking for meat, and prefer puddings, pastry, or sweets when they can obtain them, and it is the more important that meat should be made attractive to them at the age when they need it.

It is unnecessary to discuss further questions which after all must be controlled by tact and circumstances of individual cases, and the line must be drawn with care between making a child too fastidious on the one hand in regard to the nature of its food, and on the other impairing its constitution by monotony of diet and ill-cooked viands. Children at school should be especially required to eat slowly, for the habit of fast eating is almost contagious, and as it is much easier to acquire than to overcome, the foundation of dyspepsia and lifelong discomfort may be laid in this way in childhood.