Comments on: Feeding Our Kids Better School Lunch

By: “IT’S O.K. TO WASTE FRIES” and other appalling notions « City Farmer

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:52:56 +0000

[...] ran across an article today at Civil Eats which brought to my attention a campaign developed by Slow Food USA called Time For Lunch. This [...]

By: Jennifer Dusenbery

Jennifer Dusenbery — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:52:09 +0000

Let’s build a connection between kids and their food through Farm to School programs. Farm to School programs can be started parents, teachers, and community members. Local farms offer a direct connection for kids to be aware of where their food is coming from though field trips. School gardens offer endless possililities for hands on learning the food that we eat. Kids will choose the fresh tossed salad made with vegetables from their school garden. Kids will eat an apple that is grown at the orchard that their class visited on a field trip. When given a choice, kids that feel connected to their local food sources will choose fresh food over prepackaged food. Once the excitement for the fresh foods is in the kids, then there’s no stopping it! Elementary school kids will ask for fresh vegetables, fresh baked breads, and whole fruit when they feel connected to their food.
…speaking from experience, I enjoying working with school lunch programs and farm to school programs in New England.

By: Jean Adler

Jean Adler — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:49:19 +0000

Kurt, Great essay. My son ate school lunch as a Kindergartener, in part because he wanted to “fit in.” He would come home from school and immediately ask for something to eat. He didn’t like anything they were serving and ate very little of his lunch. The past four years we have packed him a lunch. He isn’t starving when he comes home from school and I know that what he is eating isn’t junk. I know kids whose diets consist of sugary cereals, chicken nuggets, and french fries. Perhaps they’ll have some milk with that, but usually the drink of choice is a soda. But those parents who allow their kids to dictate what they will or will not eat need to take some of the blame for their kids’ lousy eating habits.
Perhaps more parents need to adopt the food rule from a generation or two ago when it came to eating healthy foods, “You have two choices, take it or leave it.”

By: Kurt Michael Friese

Kurt Michael Friese — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:09:10 +0000

The “Cook for America” idea is a great one and should be pursued, thanks for that.

Anyone wanting more background, besides going to the SFUSA site mentioned above, should check out Tom Philpott’s Jan. ‘09 article @ http://www.grist.org/article/eat-the-stimulus/

By: Candace

Candace — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:47:41 +0000

Great article. I just watched Food Inc and wondered the same thing…maybe the start of healthcare reform should be simplifying how we produce our food. Get back to nature…

I also think that restaurants, particularlly fast food joints, should not package food combinations that exceed the daily recommended fat and calories… Why is over processed food cheaper than wholesome produce? Processed food is transported more, handled by more people, requires packaging….Baffling…

We should rely more heavily on our local farmers’ markets for our health, our environment and our kids will benefit on both counts. Thanks for the food for thought.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:56:36 +0000

One way that school lunch kitchens could reduce their overhead costs would be for the federal government to introduce a “Cook for America” program, where fresh-out-of-cooking-school young people work in public school kitchens for cheap and get their student loans reimbursed after a while, because often cooking schools are ridiculously expensive and in the restaurant world, it’s very hard to pay them back. We’d get well-trained people in our school kitchens that way, too.

Also, having a trained head cook who actually knows how to cook real food for large groups, instead of just reheating things, in charge of all the less-experienced helpers would make things more organized. Maybe we can pull all the old ’40s and ’50s lunch ladies out of retirement? If there are any left, that is.

Jamie Oliver did a show a while back about reinventing school lunches in northern England, where he discovered that for many of the children, school lunch was their only “real” or hot meal of the day. And it was basically fried “nuggets” of meat and french fries (aka “chips”). A portion of one show was devoted to discussing the colonic health of these kids, which was incredibly poor and incredibly gross and sad to hear about. American lunch rooms are just the same.

And what kid in his or her right mind is going to choose salad over a cheeseburger, pizza, and chicken nuggets? Not any that I’ve ever met. My mom didn’t cater to my sister and I growing up. If we didn’t like what she served, too bad. So we learned to eat pretty healthily, after we stopped picking all the veggies out of whatever she made. School kids would, too.

By: Liza Baker

Liza Baker — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:38:51 +0000

Thank you for this concise, powerful, and impassioned summary and, more importantly, your call to action.