Flea over at One Good Thing reviews the book Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. It sounds like something I have to read. The Nation published this interview with one of the authors, Ann Cooper, in which she describes the major changes she was able to make to the Berkeley School systems school lunch program.
When my daughter was in child care, the children were served wholesome, delicious food, with vegetarian options. The kids loved it. In our (otherwise excellent) public school here in Minneapolis, where most of the kids are eligible for free breakfast and lunch, the food they serve keeps them alive, but it is otherwise dreadful. So we've made her lunch every day since kindergarten, and talked about healthy food choices. When she attends school in Spain, they serve simple but nutritious and delicious food. The idea of serving the kids junk food would simply not occur to them.
I asked my daughter what she thought of the school cafeteria food her friends eat. She made a face and said, "It's packaged and it's usually wet. The french fries are soggy. It would cost the same to have actual chefs preparing the food as to get the packages." When I asked her how she knew that, she said that they learned it in their "Life Skills" class when they saw the movie "Super Size Me." Hah!! I guess I'd better put that in our Netflix queue and see it myself. Clearly at least some of the teachers are trying to educate the kids about nutrition, and that's an important step.
Flea points out that the most famous instances of this kind of change are those driven by chefs like Alice Waters with the Edible Schoolyard program, and occur in large cities. She wonders about whether such efforts can happen in places with fewer resources, and about how poor people can afford to eat organic food when it seems to be so much more expensive. These are a great questions, and it got me thinking about what it would take to make this kind of change in our public school food service right here in the Twin Cities (and especially since there is a public forum tonight for the school board elections coming up).
Is it already happening? It's not as if we don't have celebrity chefs, a thriving sustainable agriculture and co-op movement with a long history, and rich sources of local foods. Here in winterland, we can't have a year-round garden in the backyard the way they do in California, but it wouldn't be hard to make huge improvements right away. But you do have to get parents to organize and lobby for changes in collaboration with the school board and elected officials, break out of the corporate stranglehold on food contracts, and join the movement. I've discovered at least one local school district, in Hopkins, that has made major changes in its school lunch program, with great success. So, not only can it be done here, it has been done here! Looks as if I should register for this "Bioneers" conference coming up Oct 20. because it sounds as if it will combine inspiration, education, and some hands-on pragmatic organizing ideas.
Here are some web resources I intend to explore, when I've finished with work today:
I am a member of a food co-op called The Wedge, which has an organics FAQ and lots of educational links. The Center for Ecoliteracy has a program called Rethinking School Lunch, which has a guide on how to do it. This is linked from Alice Water's site as well.
The Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine has an initiative called Health School Lunches for educating legislators and administrators about making school lunches healthier. They also have this great guide to resources for parents. They are dealing with the fact that huge numbers of schoolkids in the U.S. get their lunches through the National School Lunch Program, so change has to happen in partnership with this effort. I am dismayed, but not surprised to find that their 2006 report card gives the Minneapolis School District a D+
Jamie Oliver, another celebrity chef in London, has an ambitious and visionary program called "Feed me better" Let's hear it for celebrities who use their powers for good!
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7 comments:
Unless I have this garbled, Alice Waters now has one of the schools in N.O. growing its own organic food.
The New Yorker article about Berkeley was funny ... writer not from Bay Area, clearly; described the chef as living in 'nearby Montara' if I am not mistaken ...
I read that entire article in The New Yorker a few weeks ago. The thing is, the woman who made changes to the Berkely School system was paid privately by a donor.
My daughter's lunch is horrible. I know there is not an oven or a stove in the whole place. Everything is microwavable only.
I have been meaning to write something about this because it brings back childhood memories, but I cannot find my New Yorker.
She lives in Moss Beach, which is quite far from Berkeley!
I haven't read the New Yorker article, Moksha, but I'll look for it.
I think the link to the Ecoliteracy site, with its guide for "how to do this where you live" is a good place to get ideas. We are looking for yet another Superintendent in the school district. I think that makes three in four years.
I found the article, it is in The Education Issue, The New Yorker.
"The Lunchroom Rebellion" An haute-cuisine chef goes back to school. By Burkhard Bilger.
I found it when I was looking through passages that I highlight questioning grammar structure.
It does mention that Ann Cooper lives in Moss Beach and she has to get up at 3:30 to be cooking by 5:00.
Thank you! I'll look for it. Moss Beach is a place my mom used to take use when we were kids living in San Francisco. I can't imagine getting up at 3:30 to work, but my sister did it for years when she was a baker.
Another thing to put on your netflix queue - Jamie's School Dinners. Jamie Oliver, a tv chef in Britain, has made it his mission to change the way school lunches are done in Britain. He takes over a school lunchroom and the results are really quite interesting, particularly the pushback from the kids, the dinner ladies, and the penny-pinching bureaucrats. Although it's never spelled out as such, one of the problems seems to be economy of scale. It's dirt cheap to produce all this crap and ship it out frozen to thousands of schools. Getting fresh ingredients is much more expensive, both in terms of money and labour. It's a real uphill battle since the long-term costs are easy to minimize and ignore for short-term savings.
-Ann, thanks for stopping by and for the recommendation. I will definitely look for it!
I think Oliver is very smart about the scope of the changes that need to be made to overcome the corporate mentality and how it has affected all the players. The article on how the Hopkins school district had to work on changes that appealed to the kids is interesting, because it seems to have worked well.
My mother and sister are both in the food business, and I've seen them organize meals for large numbers of people in restaurants, catering, and cafeteria settings. One of the biggest cost factors is actually waste and portion size. The ingredients themselves are a part of the cost/value equation, but another part is whether or not the school district will pay people to wash dishes, instead of throwing away disposable containers and utensils. Nutrional value and ecological cost are factors that the corporate food service model distorts. I'm interested in the fact that even though we all complained about the food in the high school cafeteria, I actually remember that it wasn't that bad. And the cafeteria food my daughter is served in Spain is actually GOOD.
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