Experienced and professional experts answer questions relating to all round family health in Canada. Send in your queries to editor@asianpacificpost.com

SHEFALI RAJA:

I hear this question often and can sympathize with the parent trying to get their kids to continue to enjoy and eat cultural foods and retain a sense of who they are or their origins.

To begin with, when kids are young you have a bit more influence in getting them to eat what you would like them to eat, but as they get older they start to want to make their own decisions and need the freedom to some degree to do this.

Discuss your feelings with your child and see what his reasons are about wanting to take non-cultural foods at lunch.

It can be as easy as a compromise of suggesting that he eat the cultural foods 2-3 days of the week and making another lunch of the child’s choice the other 2-3 days. Or deciding together that the dinner you cook will include the foods he wishes to take for his lunch.

Based on the fact that a healthy lunch is made up of whole grain such as wraps, roti, whole wheat bread or crackers and some form of protein such as eggs, lean meats, or peanut butter etc along with some vegetables/fruits and a yogurt. This type of lunch would very much compare in terms of being healthy as the cultural lunch you were sending.

Also keep in mind that kids who make their own lunches are more likely to eat it.

If you are not satisfied at this point you might want to consider discussing the issue with the teacher and find a day when the class is learning about other cultures etc. You can volunteer to bring in your traditional foods to the school for all the kids to try. This might make your child more comfortable with taking such foods to school.

I agree that 10 minutes is not enough time for the children to eat especially for the slow eaters or the younger child.

Try to explore how much more time they actually have to finish their lunch over and above the 10 minutes. The amount of time is often based on the issue of supervision as the teachers are on their lunch break too then. Suggest that your child take a part of the lunch out with them i.e. the apple or part of the sandwich etc.

If you have noticed that this is a concern amongst many of the kids at your school it might be worthwhile to bring this up at the Parent Advisory Council Meeting to see if the issue can be addressed by setting some type of a school food policy that states something like "an adequate time i.e. 20 minutes will be provided for the students to eat their lunch."

For more information on this go to http://www.knowledgenetwork.ca/makingithappen/index.html