Health

Imagine a theme park where a family of four could get in for fifteen dollars – for the entire day. Imagine arriving by public transportation or enjoying free parking right outside the park’s entrance. Imagine bringing your own food and drinks through the gate, rather than paying extortionist prices for less healthy options. Imagine never waiting longer than ten or fifteen minutes to board a ride, and never worrying about losing a child in the crowd. Imagine a place where people of all levels of physical and cognitive ability are welcome and even celebrated.

Open your eyes. You’re at Morgan’s Wonderland.

He was always the worst-behaved child in the room. It didn’t matter where he went. Or when. Three-year-old Cameron* simply couldn’t control himself — ever.

“He was bouncing off the walls all the time,” recollects his mother, Susan*. “I loved him dearly but couldn’t bear to be around him because he was so obnoxious, in-your-face, he could never sit still, never stop moving, couldn’t control his impulses—he was always hitting, kicking, jumping or touching.”

Desperate to figure out what was going on with her son, Susan stumbled onto an article about a little girl whose behavior seemed nearly identical to Cameron’s and who was “cured” through a special diet.

It happens to the best of us. Speeding through the supermarket, we grab the staples of the “kid lunch”: string cheese, small bags of chips and cookies, single serving applesauces and puddings, Lunchables. Uncrustables. Maybe a package of brown lunch bags, plastic spoons and paper napkins. It’s easy. It’s convenient. And sadly it’s, oh, so typical. But not if one school in Austin has its way.

Walk into many a school cafeteria in this country, and you’ll see kids settling down to those hastily packed lunches. By the end of the meal, each child has a small handful of garbage: chip bags, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, juice pouches. Every year, one child can produce an amazing 67 pounds of lunchtime trash per year. This, according to wastefreelunches.org, an internet site run by a group of “green” California moms who are getting the word out about the trash generated by the nation’s schools. Over a 13-year school career, the mounds of garbage produced by a single person can reach more than 870 pounds! How many plastic baggies does it take to produce a pile of trash that heavy? It’s a mind-boggling amount of waste being dumped into our landfills on a daily basis. By some estimates, an average size elementary school can generate more than 18,000 pounds of lunch waste every year.