Having been a teacher for quite a number of years, I have watched in dismay as food standards in school canteens, and in children's lunches, have declined. If we believe that food is the fuel for sound thinking, brain development and physical energy, then we are clearly failing children.

Think about the trust that is vested teachers

The reality is that parents send their children to school to be cared for and to be nourished academically, physically and nutritionally. The three are co-dependent. We cannot take any one of them out of the equation.

In many ways we do a pretty fine job of teaching the core subjects. Under gentle direction, children become thriving writers, confident mathematicians, curious scientists, watchful environmentalists and much more.

As teachers, we ensure that they have their daily doses of both sunshine and physical activity. Where we fall down badly is in the field of nutrition.

Look at their lunches!

If you take a look inside children's lunch boxes, you will find a plethora of non-food 'food', and in all too many cases, precious little live food.

It may be the case that parents are simply, and understandably, ill-informed. Let's face it, there's a wealth of persuasive advertising out there in the media that would suggest that so many processed foods, with their added this and their fortified that, will be so good for our developing kids.

Parents buy the hype. They succumb to their children's pleas, and they give in to peer-pressure.

Do you rely on school canteens for nourishment?

All this is bad enough, but now, with a growing reliance on school canteens from time-poor parents, to provide lunches and morning teas, it would seem to me that schools need to be better informed about the foods that are sold, if we want our children to have some protection from the growing number of autoimmune diseases that are plaguing our children.

Some of the things for sale in school canteens are simply bottom-of-the-barrel, commercial fare that is so denatured that one begins to wonder where it might take children in terms of future health.

Corporate greed has triumphed over caring about their health.

At such a tender age, children's palates are already so spoilt by the chemical colourings and flavourings, that the freshest of seasonal fruit has no appeal for them. Where does conscience step in where our children are concerned? Who can be their spokesperson?

Be wary of potential diabetes onset

I don't purport to be an authority on diseases such as Type One Diabetes, but I have witnessed a steep and worrying rise, a pandemic if you like, of this disease that wasn't here ten years ago.

It is not unusual to witness in most schools, the line up of children outside the medical room, waiting for their medication.

Moreover, the Diabetic Association allows these children to have highly-processed food as part of their portions!

Who says there is no cure?

Now we are told by the medical fraternity that there is no cure for Type One Diabetes. They say the causes are not linked to diet.

Then how was Victoria Boutenko able to completely reverse her son Sergei's Type One Diabetes through a natural, raw-food diet? Not to mention Doctor Robert Young, who also reversed a little boy, Gabriel Roman's diabetes by having him follow an alkaline diet regime.

I am not suggesting that children be put on a raw food diet. What I do suggest, however, is that we have some ruling system that dictates what we can and can't feed children when at school.

Clearly we can't mandate what parents feed their children at home, but at school we have a duty of care that in this day and age, we need to follow.