Are Your Preschoolers Getting Enough Nutrition?

You give your kids the best start they can have, confident that nutritious lunches are par for the course at school. Not necessarily so, as Maggie Vink of AOL's That's Fit blog discovered recently:

Due to rising food costs, regulations for Texas day-care centers recently changed and now allow the centers to require parents to send meals and snacks for the children. A subsequent (albeit small) study found that 71 percent of the home-packed meals didn't have enough fruits or vegetables and the number of milk servings was also low.

Whether this is an indicator of a growing trend or not, it certainly made me think twice about what our kids are eating. Cabot has healthy school time snacks like lunch-sized 50% Reduced Fat Cheddar (you can buy a mumbo-size pack online. I get mine in a 36-pack at the local club store). I've done a few other things here at home. I send water (in Sigg bottles) instead of juice with my guys' lunches. (Though they can buy milk if they prefer.) I frequently (too frequently?) send leftovers in a thermos - like the reduced fat Mac& Cheese or the BBQ Chicken Pizza Pockets. And I send carrot sticks and apple slices instead of those snack packs. Every little bit helps.

You can read the complete article at the That's Fit blog on AOL Health.