A school nutrition club inspired by a teacher’s diet soda is catching on with lunchtime meetings.
At Rancho Viejo Middle School in Hemet, sixth grade teacher John Bragg drinks diet soda with his lunch. Students began to point out to him how it was bad for his body, and from those discussions they developed a plan for an official club.
Now 10 to 25 students get together each week to talk about food. Sometimes they have guest speakers such as nutrition specialist Stephanie Johnson and Hemet Unified School District chief manager Angela Phalen.
“For whatever reason, they like to analyze each other’s lunches,” Bragg said. “We start off with a lesson and talk about a topic for about five minutes and then they spin off into other topics.”
“When eating, we want to be sure food has nutritional value,” said Bragg, while eating his lunch of brown rice and green beans. “Things that come in wrappers or bags don’t have the highest nutrients – natural foods are more powerful for your body.”
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