Teachers: Quick and Healthy: Food for the Fast Lane
Are you stuck on the fast food and take-out meal treadmill, but don’t know how to break the cycle? Take a breath. You can serve healthful meals without a lot of stress. Food experts offer tips for shopping, preparing, and eating more healthful meals.
You’ve made it through the morning the way you usually do -- with a mucho grande cup of coffee welded into your palm for the first hour of the day. That coffee washed down the doughnut you ate in the car on the way to school.
As you rush through lunch of an energy bar and more coffee, you wonder if the family can stomach another night of pizza for dinner -- or if you should vary the menu with chicken from a well-advertised franchise?
One of the major casualties of our non-stop lifestyle is the family dinner of meat, potatoes, and lima beans. Planning and cooking meals have been squeezed out by activities and the desire for more precious down time. Even the media discourage spending time preparing a meal, with commercials urging you to just pick up something and serve it -- why cook when anything you take out of a bag or bucket these days is considered a meal?
"So many educators are busy, and worrying about what to make for dinner gets put on the back burner," said Shereen Jegtvig, the nutrition guide for About.com and a certified nutrition specialist. "When the end of the school day comes, it just seems easier, cheaper, and less stressful to choose fast foods. That’s OK once in a while, but shouldn’t become routine."
Serving more healthful meals does not require the Betty Crocker cookbook, a paisley apron, and giving up more sleep. Plenty of options are available so you and your family can eat well and eat at home without you or anyone else becoming a fixture in the kitchen.
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SO MANY CHOICES… Pick up a whole chicken, a whole meal, or bring the buffet home.
Teachers: Quick and Healthy: Food for the Fast Lane 
"So many educators are busy, and worrying about what to make for dinner gets put on the back burner," said Shereen Jegtvig, the nutrition guide for