Civil Eats

School gardens are an excellent way for children to get to know fresh fruits and vegetables, supplement classroom instruction, and just plain spend more time outdoors. Alice Waters created the model for the Edible Schoolyard over a decade ago and dozens of school gardens have followed suit. With a recent critical article in The Atlantic getting people talking about the value of school gardens again, it seemed an opportune time to take a peek into eight programs that are teaching kids a love of gardening and cooking and then share some resources for starting program to your own school. Read More

The new Dining Commons at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California – feeding students since August – opened its doors to the community on Saturday to show off the latest phase of a revolutionary approach to school lunch. For the first time, several hundred parents, teachers, local food activists and assorted politicians – including Mayor Tom Bates, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier and Congresswoman Barbara Lee – could sit together in this extraordinary new building and share an ordinary school lunch: lentil soup, grilled chicken with roasted root vegetables, green salad and bread, fresh fruit. They paid $100 apiece for the privilege (the proceeds going to support the program). Students pay anywhere from 40 cents to $3.50 for a comparable meal (depending on family income). Read More