Fit Kids: Keeping Tabs on Lunch

It's not the lunch line you may remember from childhood.

"We have come a long way since you pay your quarter and you have everything put on the tray for you. Now, you get to choose what you want and there are a lot of choices,"  says Paulette Vangellow, the director of food services at Pittsford Central Schools.

Kids have credit cards or at least they look like a little credit card.

"At the elementary level, they swipe their card and at the secondary level they  type their number in themselves,” says Vangellow.  

It's a debit card system and Pittsford isn't the only school system using it. More than 80% of suburban schools have adopted the technology.

"Parents can set a limit on the children's account so that they can just have lunch and not snacks--that's something that you can't do with cash."

The debit card system not only helps kids keep an eye on their lunch money, it helps parents keep an eye on whether their children are eating healthy.

"Parents can see that Johnny--oh, he's buying ice cream everyday, I don't want him to and then call our office and set a limit and say no, he cannot have that ice cream, he cannot have that extra snack,” says Vangellow who adds the extra rules are reinforced for parents by lunchroom attendants, “we have to tell them that quite frequently. It will show up, they'll swipe their card or type in their number and it will pop up in a little red flag that says no ala carte, not snacks or it will say 50-cent limit."

For those districts which aren't using the computerized system, parents can still monitor their child's eating habits by having a conversation with the lunchroom manager. Explain what your child is allowed to have and what they cannot have for lunch.