Camp Food
Shannon Sliger
My son Salter LOVED camp this past summer. He went for two weeks.
Salter eats well at home. At home we do no cow's milk or yogurts. We do use cheese occasionally but he doesn't care for it so he has little. We drink almond milk and water and that's it. He is not allowed to have soda ever. It isn't about the caffeine, it's the high fructose corn syrup and he knows that. He knows which candy has just sugar and which has corn syrup. He's just informed me that there is a coke now with just sugar. Great.
We eat organic chicken, veggies, soups, salads, whole grains, fruits and smoothies. He never gets sick. He hasn't missed a day of school due to sickness in years.
So when I checked out this camp and saw they did canteen with a coke and candy bar each day, I half thought they were joking. I hoped they were.
I dropped my boy and then spent the next two weeks looking through every picture for a glimpse of his hair or trace of his profile. I missed him real bad. I also checked the menu each day. It was downright disappointing. I wondered what I was thinking.
When I picked him up, I gave him a green juice right away. He was totally annoyed. But he drank it. I later learned that he drank "suicides" every day to wash down his skittles. Suicides are all the coke products mixed together.
His eyes were pink but I thought it was because he was holding it together as long as he could. When they were still red the next day and he had a cough and fever, I knew. He was so sick for 2 weeks.
I 100% think it was due to his immunity plummeting eating junk food and having dairy gunk him up again. He is not going back to this particular camp. Although I like tradition, canteen must be modernized. I can't feed him well all year to have him go away for a month and eat terrible food and get sick. Camps should keep all the old ways but feeding our kids junk should not be one.