As a federally funded school food program evolved from its inception in the first half of the 20th century to become a permanent fixture in the educational landscape across the country, the NYC school food program became a leading influence in the country’s experiments, failures, and successes in school food service. School and city officials sorted through the wrong ingredients for school lunches and exposed the detrimental effects of decreased funding for school lunch programs. Eventually, engaging students in understanding the nutritious value of the food they consumed righted the relationship between children and their food and connected students to the source of their meals through school gardens and food education programming.

The National School Lunch Act was enacted in 1946 with the “basic purpose…to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children by encourage them to eat more nutritious foods.” Yet by 1972, the New York Times deemed Americans “nutritional illiterates” and the cost of malnutrition had an estimated $30 billion annual price tag. Lack of nutritional awareness paired with the problems caused by the country’s dire economic situation. At this time doctors in NYC suggested nutrition education in schools as a method for improving health and nutritional awareness. However, more fundamental concerns for school security, the basic lack of food for residents across the City, and a lack of funding for such nutritional education programs meant that these suggestions were not made manifest.

In 1977, just two months after the report from the federal General Accounting Office revealed poor nutritional quality in large urban school districts across the country, NYC’s schools adopted the Energy Factor program. Rather than integrate nutritional education programs or involve students in the processes of bringing the food from the field to the lunch table, schools responded to the flash and glamour of the fast food industry that captured the attention of the whole country. Since hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried chicken were attractive to student consumers, they were served as options in the Energy Factor and considered healthy alternatives to “junk food, Twinkies, cupcakes, and the like.” Yet at the same time the NYC School Board implemented fast-food lunches in the three pilot schools, it also contemplated introducing salad bars into school food options. Two seemingly opposite food futures faced NYC students. They could choose hamburgers, which had risen to the status of a nutritionally superior lunch item – at least in comparison to what had been served on lunch trays or brought in brown paper bags from students’ homes previously. Or, on the other hand, there was a glimmer of an idea to provide them with fresh greens on a salad bar. Given heavy marketing efforts for the Energy Factor and continued lack of infrastructure to support healthy food education and school gardening, the future of salads as the preferred lunch choice was bleak.

While the Energy Factor was adopted with the support of school officials and promoted by the head school food administrator, Elizabeth Cagan, by 1980 the “nutritional message” of the program had become questionable. Cagan realized that student retention and and increased participation in the lunch program was not a sufficient goal if it meant a compromise on the healthfulness of the food . Cagan fought hard for the removal of all frozen food pack lunches (the equivalent of a TV dinner) and reduced the number of schools serving such meals from 400 to 100. Nutritional experts like Ann Cook, who promoted school lunch as “where the good food is now,” tried to combat the poverty and junk food stigmas formerly associated with the school lunch program.

In the early years of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, rearranging the priorities and tactics of serving school meals in New York City came to a head. By 2010 a collaboration of the Mayor’s Fund, GrowNYC and other government agencies established the Citywide School Gardens Initiative, promoting garden and food education through funding, garden maintenance assistance, and coordinated educational tools and programs like the Garden-to-Café harvest events. A grant from the Fund for Public Health in New York City propelled the healthy food options in schools to include a salad bar at each lunchtime period, finally bringing the efforts of school food reformers in the 1980s to fruition.

The purpose of the Garden-to-Café program, which is administrated the New York City Department of Education’s Office of SchoolFood, is to help children connect the origin of their food with its related nutritional quality and fresh taste. During the 2011 spring harvest season, the program facilitated events at 19 schools throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Throughout the 2010-2011 school year, the program partnered with 55 NYC public, charter, elementary, middle and high schools, in effect exposing more than 35,000 students throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn to the efforts of the Garden-to-Café program.

The School Gardens Initiative and the Garden-to-Café program are the result of NYC’s commitment to bringing healthy food and nutritional education opportunities to its students. Wrestling with the disconnects between students and their food source; a lack of government funding and a need to feed schoolchildren; and fast food culture and a focus on health, the NYC school food program has ultimately provided substantial opportunities for healthy and local food education and continues to improve the quality of its meals for all students.

I never imagined myself cooking for kids. I spent most of my first three decades as a chef not knowing or caring what kids ate, and not really wanting to feed them. In fact, as a restaurant chef, my worst nightmare was the host coming into the kitchen on a Saturday night, saying, “Chef, there’s a screaming kid on table 19. What do I do?”

My response: “Tell them to leave. Why did they bring kids here on a Saturday night, anyway?”

What a difference a decade makes. Today all of my work surrounds feeding kids healthy food, teaching them how to eat well, and working nationally to assure that all kids have access to delicious, nutritious food in school every single day.

Getting healthy food onto our kids’ plates (or trays) couldn’t be more important. In between commercials for fast food and over-processed junk stamped with a nutrition label, we hear news reports that conditions like obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing across America. But what we conveniently overlook is that our kids are often the ones suffering the most.

According to the CDC, over 30 percent of all children in this country (and 72 percent of Americans as a whole) are now overweight or obese. Of children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will have diabetes in their lifetimes. Those same children will be the first generation in the history of the United States to die at a younger age than their parents.

No children or parents deserve such a terrible fate. We clearly need a lunch line makeover.

From designing gourmet meals in white-linen restaurants to serving on the lunch line, my route has been anything but traditional. After culinary school, I cooked for round-the-world cruises, hotels, restaurants, and catering parties of 20,000 at film and music festivals. As you can imagine, there weren’t many kids to cook for backstage at a Grateful Dead concert.

It wasn’t until many years later that I started really thinking about sustainable, healthy, local food. As I was writing my first book, A Woman’s Place is in the Kitchen, I met women chefs who were pioneers of the organic-local food movement–Alice Waters, Nora Poullion, Odessa Piper and so many more who inspired and educated me on the importance of organic, local, and sustainable. Gradually my eyes opened to Joan Gussow’s teachings and Michael Pollan’s words, all while I was told by sheep farmers in Vermont why I couldn’t buy lamb racks (where does the rest of the lamb go?).

And then, while I was researching my second book, it hit me: bad food is making us and our kids sick. Our food supplies are privately owned by giant corporations, with the profits taking precedence over the very health of our children.

My life as a Lunch Lady began in 1999, when I was asked to become the Executive Chef and Director of Wellness and Nutrition for the Ross School in New York. But apparently, I wasn’t supposed to be just any old Lunch Lady–someone in the press quipped that I was the Renegade Lunch Lady, a moniker that stuck. Imagine that: being a Renegade for wanting to feed kids fresh broccoli!

The well-funded, amazing meal program at the Ross School taught me how important school food is and that kids really will eat healthy food. After going on to work with Alice Waters at the Chez Panisse Foundation and as Director of Nutrition Services for the Berkeley Unified School District, I’m now a fixture in the school cafeteria trenches in Boulder, Colorado. We’re working from the ground up to implement healthy cooked-from-scratch meals in schools throughout the district. After tremendous success in Berkeley, we’re hungry to make a big difference in kids’ lunches and lives in Colorado.

As I’ve chatted with cafeteria workers, school administrators and yes, kids themselves over the years, it’s become obvious that schools need help. If we’re going to change children’s relationship to food and segue schools from highly processed food to fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, whole grains and healthy protein, schools and districts need tools.

With that goal in mind, I founded the Food Family Farming Foundation in 2009. We know that schools face challenges–strict budgets, bureaucracy, and finicky kids–and we’re here to help.

Our major projects, The Lunch Box: Healthy Tools for Healthy Schools and Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, work towards the goal of getting healthy food into every school in America. The Lunch Box is a comprehensive web portal that has recipes, menus, financial tools, resources, technical tools, and educational videos. Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools is a platform that enables us to fundraise for and donate salad bars to schools all across the country. So far we’ve donated over 600.

As I said, what a difference a decade makes. When I began this work almost no-one talked about school food, and President Regan had just made ketchup a vegetable. Today I am so optimistic. We have a President that talks about children, food, and health in the same sentence, and a First Lady who has made children’s health her mission with her Let’s Move Initiative. Today we have a Secretary of Agriculture and a Secretary of Education who are working together to close the achievement gap by closing the nutrition gap, as well as advocates and foundations all across the country who are trying to support their work.

Perhaps the best news, however, comes from parents, many of whom are seeing their kids excited about healthy food for the first time. As one parent told me about our “Eat the Rainbow” program, her son “came home talking about his ‘rainbow,’ requested and ate plain lettuce with his dinner, and when he was still hungry…made himself another ‘rainbow’ with lettuce, grapes and strawberries. His 4-year old sister copied him.”

I am so fortunate to be working as an advocate for better school food and to be working with chefs, advocates, administrators, nutrition services directors, students, parents, and food service workers all across the country who are striving for delicious and nutritious food for all of our children. I’m truly honored to receive a Growing Green Award from the Natural Resources Defense Council, not only for the honor bestowed, but in honor of all of the hard work of the thousands and thousands of people across the country who are working toward the same goal.

This award showcases the fact that healthy school food is becoming mainstream and that, finally, my days as a renegade are coming to an end.

Originally published on NRDC’s OnEarth

Photo: Craig Lee

The successes—and shortcomings—of the Berkeley Unified School District’s revamped school food program received equal billing at yesterday’s premiere screening of short films collectively known as the Lunch Love Community Documentary Project.

On the big screen the audience at Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley were greeted with cinematic images of children contentedly nibbling on fruit, tucking into salad, and choosing produce at a school’s farmers’ market.  But after the viewing, some adults provided a counterpoint to the rosy pictures showcasing Berkeley’s much-lauded School Lunch Initiative.

John Muir 5th grade teacher Stephen Rutherford was hands down the most critical. He talked about long, slow lines for lunch at his elementary school, the challenges for little fingers using swipe cards, the untended salad bar, the rush to eat, the vast amounts of waste, and a tense cafeteria environment.

Some of his concerns echo those raised by parents commenting on a recent Berkeleyside story on Lunch Love Community. “The day-to-day reality of feeding kids doesn’t resemble what you see on this screen,” said Rutherford. “We all had a vision of what school lunch could be and at my school it’s still very sad.”

Joy Moore, a cooking and gardening instructor at Berkeley Technology Academy, a small, alternative to Berkeley High School, said her students often get overlooked on the lunch front.

And a long-simmering resentment—that King Middle School, which houses Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard, the new Dining Commons, and the district’s central kitchen, unfairly receives more resources than other schools—boiled to the surface.

This discontent with the reality of Berkeley’s program reveals just how many obstacles school districts face in trying to improve school nutrition for all its students.

Still, amid the sniping and genuine frustration there was, well, a lot of love for a program that has garnered global high fives for its efforts to improve school food.

BUSD’s executive chef Bonnie Christensen good-naturedly responded to criticisms. She strives, she said, to make school food even and equitable across the district. A career culinary professional who comes from a fine-dining background, Christensen unapologetically admitted that she and her staff face enormous obstacles, including a shoestring budget, to turn out wholesome, tasty food every day. But, she argued, most of the time they do just that.

B-Tech has gotten short shift, she conceded, and she and her staff are working on ways to improve food service there. One real challenge: Equipment brought into the school to enhance meal service has been stolen in the past.

Christensen also acknowledged difficulties in John Muir’s cafeteria, noting that she spent an entire week at the school earlier this year trying to iron out problems. At King, the staff are able to serve lunch in just seven minutes, she said, and added that for a school lunch program to succeed at a site it requires the commitment and cooperation of staff from the top down.

Here’s what everyone seemed to agree on: The program is a vast improvement, if an imperfect one, on what former BUSD nutrition services director Ann Cooper inherited. At the time the lunch menu consisted of chicken nuggets, corn dogs, pizza pockets, and other highly processed fare.

Christensen, herself a BUSD parent, described a program which began with pioneering parents seeking a healthier eating environment for their childrenas a work in progress.

Moore drew knowing laughs from the crowd when she acknowledged that the success of the program came down to relationship building that grew out of years of interminable meetings. (Moore’s advice to others trying to bring about change in school food: serve something to eat at such events and you’ll have taken a first step towards building alliances and creating community.)

Four of the mini films in a series by local filmmakers Sophie Constantinou and Helen De Michiel were shown, including a new segment Feeding the Body Politic, in which former Berkeley School Superintendent Michelle Lawrence, who had dismissed a school food policy as unimplementable nonsense, describes her a-ha moment.

Early in her tenure, a student from Longfellow Middle School died during the summer break from complications related to adult-onset (formerly known as Type II) diabetes, a disease that can often be prevented or controlled through diet and physical activity.

That’s the kind of wake-up call playing itself out in American communities across the country which has helped sparked the current school food revolution. And it’s what motivates someone like Bonnie Christensen, whose work day starts at 4:30 a.m, to get out of bed every morning.

Originally published on Berkeleyside

Photos: Above, Sophie Constantinou. Below, Courtesy Berkeley Unified School District

Putting this plan into action seems like a no-brainer, but its expense, which USDA estimates at  almost $7 billion over five years, is a major stumbling block. Nearly half of that cost would go to put more fresh produce on school breakfast and lunch menus.

As we see it, $7 billion is a bargain when you consider the price of doing nothing.   

The high hidden costs of the status quo

A report by the Produce for Better Health Foundation calculates that diet-related medical costs of four serious illnesses–diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke–amount to $38 billion a year. Obesity pushes the figure past the $100 billion mark.

There is substantial evidence that people whose diets are rich in fruits and vegetables are far less likely to suffer from these health problems.  Yet children eat shockingly little fresh produce. According to a 2009 study by scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just one percent of adolescents ate as many servings of fruit and vegetables as recommended by USDA dietary guidelines.

How can we pay for healthier school food?

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act has authorized increased federal spending of six cents per meal.  That would cover part of the nearly $7 billion price tag. But the USDA projects that the administration’s school food plan would cost 15 cents more per lunch and 51 cents more per breakfast, when you add up all food and labor costs.  Elementary school math tells us that we will still be short by about $6.5 billion over five years.

Schools can make up some of the difference by rearranging menus and increasing efficiency.  But at least half the $700 million needed annually to pay for additional fruits and vegetables⎯should come out of the $5 billion USDA doles out yearly in direct payments to large and profitable farming operations that produce many of the commodities formulated into livestock feed and over-processed, nutrient-poor foods.

Congress will debate the wisdom of subsidies for the largest growers of corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat and rice as it considers the upcoming budget and the 2012 farm bill.  EWG and other advocates for a more rational food policy will press for shifting resources to encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables and level the farming field for producers of sustainably-grown healthy foods.

Finding the money in California

Let’s do the numbers for one state: California. Its schools–which serve about 11 percent of school lunches nationwide–would need roughly $150 million a year to meet the proposed standards. Just buying more fruits and vegetables would cost about $75 million. That’s equal to the subsidies that went to just 200 California farming operations, mostly producing cotton, dairy and rice.  Each collected an average of about $375,000 a year–a jaw-dropping sum.

Tough budget times call for serious fat-trimming. Why give scarce public funds to the state’s largest farm operators when a fraction of that subsidy money could improve our kids’ diets and help fruit and vegetable growers who provide jobs and $15 billion in annual economic value?

California’s upland cotton growers raked in $139 million in subsidies in 2008, yet generated slightly more than $100 million in sales that same year.  No investor in her right mind would take that deal.  Why do taxpayers put up with this kind of lose-lose proposition?

Short term fix: USDA should give schools more, fresher produce

The federal government can help schools in other ways.  For example, USDA should significantly increase procurement of fresh fruits and vegetables under the Section 32 Program, established during the Depression to funnel cash to producers of commodities that did not qualify for agricultural subsidies–fruits, nuts, vegetables, meat and seafood.  This program provides a little more than $1 billion a year for federal food purchases to be donated to school systems, day care centers and other nutrition services.

The 2002 and 2008 farm bills required USDA to spend at least $400 million of its Section 32 funding on fruit, vegetable and nuts.  Under President Obama’s direction, the department could buy even more produce–and cut back on seafood and meat, particularly heavily processed, fatty items like chicken nuggets and fish sticks. The administration can do this without Congressional action.

The USDA should also improve the quality of fruits and vegetables purchased with Section 32 funds.  Obviously, the best way to persuade kids–and adults–to eat healthier is by offering greater choice and fresher food. Yet USDA’s Section 32 procurements are mostly frozen and canned vegetables and fruit. Soggy canned carrots just don’t compare to the fresh kind offered in salad bars that are beginning to sprout up in schools nationwide.

The 2012 farm bill can help make salad bars a reality for more school children if its authors  require the USDA Section 32 program to buy considerably more fresh produce for hard-pressed school systems. Doing so could also provide new financial incentives to local produce farmers who receive very little direct federal support.

We’re hearing a lot about the need to cut, cut, cut.  Everyone agrees that wasteful spending must stop. But we must also make smarter investments—in programs like healthy school food that promise significant benefits and cost savings. Let’s not squander this opportunity or our children’s chances for a healthy start.

Originally published on the Environmental Working Group’s blog

Here’s why. It reduces the administrative burden on schools by authorizing the automatic enrollment of kids who are eligible for free lunch. It will help rid our schools of junk food. It boosts the bare-bones food service budgets that prevail across the country by six cents per meal, so schools can add healthier options. And it provides grant funds for starting “Farm to School” programs, which have been legislatively approved, but denied funding by Congress since 2004.

Take the junk food provision. Long emblematic of the mixed messages that pervade the school food environment, vending machines with junk food first became available in all schools in 1972. “Candy, soft drinks, and snacks are part of real life,” a representative of a Coca Cola bottler from Rhinelander, Wisconsin exclaimed about their push for sodas in vending machines.

In 2002, the Los Angeles Unified School District banned sodas from vending machines, due to a brilliant organizing campaign by school food advocates and youth. Three years later, Los Angeles barred junk food from its schools, too. The new legislation establishes nutritional standards that will get junk food out of schools altogether, not just their cafeterias.

Sure, the six-cent boost is extremely modest and far less than ideal. But it marks the first time in 30 years that schools have been able to spend more on our kids’ lunches. The current rate is $2.72, and the only other increases have been brought on by inflation indexing.

More significantly, the law will bring more sanity to the way school districts price meals. The reimbursements for low-income students will no longer subsidize the price for meals of wealthier students. Simply put, there will be more money available to include healthier meal options on the school menu.

The legislation also makes it easier for school districts to account for students eligible for free and reduced–price lunch and breakfast. That reduces the burden on parents who previously needed to fill out extensive paperwork to qualify.

The Farm to School program now operates in thousands of school districts in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Farm to School approach enables schools to purchase food from local and regional farmers to provide healthy, local, and tasty offerings in the school cafeteria. It also calls for planting school gardens that give students firsthand experience with growing and tasting food, and understanding where food comes from.

Students, parents, and teachers take the lessons from this simple, compelling, and far-reaching system back into the classroom and the community to push for more local and healthier food in their schools and communities.

The funding for Farm to School programs in the “Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act”–by providing resources directly for infrastructure, education, and systemic changes–has the potential to transform the way food is used in schools.

Although the legislation passed, the trade-offs required were emblematic of the current political climate. In a classic divide-and-rule tactic, Republican opponents siphoned as much as $2.2 billion out of the food stamp allocation to pay for it. Understandably, this cynical ploy fueled a debate among the bill’s supporters, who are greatly concerned about the surging levels of hunger in America. Obama has pledged to restore any cuts to the food stamp program.

Despite that maneuver, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act signals a significant change in how we invest in our children and their health.

Originally published on Other Words

We all want our kids to be healthy. In the midst of hectic lives, we try our best. Sometimes, we have good days—an astounding victory for spinach, squash, and sparkling teeth. On bad days, convenience trumps health and teeth stay fuzzy. Such is life. But good or bad, there’s one thing I do every day: make my daughter Helen’s lunch.

I’ve seen lots of examples of school food in action. I’ve toured massive programs where everything comes packaged in plastic, and I’ve experienced joyful triumph in helping to introduce Santa Clara County’s first farm-to-school program. I’ve seen profound differences in the way food is approached, despite similar price points.

When I discovered that my daughter’s school spent $1.98 per lunch (that’s not including labor, folks), I was flabbergasted. I’m not really one for budgets; I’m also not a coupon-clipping supermarket genius. But I knew I could do better. In lean times, knowing farmers and cooking from scratch kept healthy food on our table.

But what if I had just $1.98 per meal? What could I make?

For one week in November, I set out with a budget in mind. I challenged myself to shop only at the farmer’s market and Whole Foods, to reach the price point of Helen’s lunch program. If I could make healthy meals at high-end retail, there is a good argument that with wholesale prices, schools could do it even better.

My week’s worth of menus:

Monday: Chili, cornbread, and a salad. Dessert: Half a fair trade banana, fresh pear slices and chocolate chips. Total Cost: $1.77.

Tuesday: Homemade hummus with pita and vegetables for dipping, and a hard-boiled, pastured egg. Dessert: Freshly sliced pear and chocolate chips. Total Cost: $1.66.

Wednesday: Avocado sushi with bok choi and carrots, and a hard-boiled, pastured egg. Dessert: Fresh sliced pear and chocolate chips. Cost = $1.77.

Thursday: Chicken soup (“pho”) with brown rice noodles, hard-boiled, pastured egg, salad with avocado, black beans. Dessert: Fresh sliced pear and chocolate chips. Cost: $1.96.

Friday: Bean & cheese mini tacos with jicama and edamame. Dessert: Fresh fruit and a black bean brownie. Cost: $1.87.

I‘ve learned a few things worth sharing from my school lunch challenge:

1. A simple look at my food bill destroys the myth that schools can’t afford good food. If I could do it at Whole Foods prices, anyone with a club card can kill the $2 lunch challenge. The big argument that remains is that made-from-scratch foods are too labor-intensive. People need to be trained to cook, and trained people get paid better. But I believe that many people would trade their unwrap-heat-serve routine for the chance to create real food for kids they care about. And for us parents? We can’t keep brown bagging it while waiting for the world to change. It’s time to get involved, and it’s time to get vocal.

2. Even the most conscientious farmers have food waste. The deals I got at the end of the farmer’s market were rock bottom cheap. Schools should capitalize on this “waste” by setting up direct relationships with local farms to take their seconds. Veggies headed for the compost pile and LUTG (looks ugly, tastes great!) fruit could make a monumental difference in the volume of produce schools could afford.

3. Food marketing companies have absolutely convinced us that our kids “need choice.” In the lunch line, a child chooses her main dish, side dish, fruit, and—if she’s in one of the worst districts—the option to forego these selections altogether and load up on chips, candy, and Gatorade. But what if we gave kids one meal? Could we foster the same sense of togetherness and community at lunchtime that we want to see at the family table? What would that look like? It certainly wouldn’t be the card-swiping junk fest that the food marketers want us to believe is our birthright as American consumers.

4. Switching from contract to independent food service is also a way for schools to break the “good sales, cheap food” cycle and improve quality without increasing the price point. I was privileged to watch that transition underway at Santa Clara Unified School District, a massive district of 14,000 kids (46 percent of whom get a free lunch), that went independent about six years ago. When we were working to get Full Circle Farm’s produce into the lunch program, we were seeing amazing changes take place: kitchens were retrofitted; chefs were hired; produce wholesalers were contracted. I’m not saying it was easy. But when that first truck full of watermelons and tomatoes went over to the district’s central warehouse, I got goosebumps. We had grown this good food, and now it would feed kids who needed it.

5. Kids who have a tangible, emotional bond to healthy food want to eat it regularly. Whether they harvest a head of broccoli in the garden or make fresh tortillas in the kitchen, let students be “Chef for a Day.” Getting kids into the act of making school lunches—putting them in charge of the process of creating their own food for themselves and their classmates—is a powerful recipe. We can change kids’ relationship with food with just a patch of dirt, or nine cents worth of corn flour.

So now, it’s time to get real. Let’s take cafeteria-style mashed potatoes (ingredients: potato, maltodextrin, shortening powder, hydrogenated soybean oil, lactose, sodium caseinate diposassium, phosphate, hydrogenated vegetable and/or cottonseed oil, mono and diglycerides, artificial color yellow #6, sodium bisulfite, milk) and replace them with wholesome food.

Parents, do the $2 lunch challenge with me: make one meal for less than $2—for yourself or your favorite little person. Then spread the word. Tell your friends. Put pictures and recipes online. Write a letter to your school district. Write a letter to your local paper. Do what you can to keep the issue front and center.

It’s not about the money—it’s about the mindset.

Photos: Lilia Schwartz

We are preparing for the most thoroughly planned meal in America, and it’s not Thanksgiving dinner. It’s school lunch.

Once every five years school meals are put on the Congressional kitchen’s front burner through reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. In the process of cooking up this legislation, school meals have been researched, reviewed, rallied for and railed against. And while the resulting stuffed turkey that is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids’ Act, is not perfect, it’s pretty darn good.

Congress must stick a fork in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session, get it done and finally serve the kids.

For the last two years, advocates, lobbyists, politicians, and celebrities from Rachael Ray to Michelle Obama have worked to craft a bill that will daily affect the lives of the 31 million children who clamor to the nation’s school cafeterias to quell their grumbling bellies. For this bill to pass, over the next few days we the people must prove to our elected officials that the Child Nutrition Act is a national priority.

This past September marked our country’s first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Yet while one in three U.S. children are obese or overweight, one in four struggle with hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) reported last week that more than 50 million Americans, including more than 17 million children, are food insecure–meaning they lack consistent access to a nutritious, well-balanced diet.

Simultaneous hunger and obesity may seem like a paradox, but the root cause is the same: lack of access to healthy food. Give children nourishing food in the cafeteria, nutrition education in the classroom, and hands-on learning through school gardens, and a lifetime of healthy eating can take root.

We need to show our support for House passage of the $4.5 billion child nutrition bill that passed the Senate earlier this year. If the bill isn’t on the president’s desk soon, supporters will have to start over in the new Congress. It’s like dropping the turkey in front of all the seated family and friends.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act offers a real chance to improve nutrition for all children. By improving opportunities for healthy meals in and out of school, the bill would take an important step towards addressing both child hunger and obesity.

Unanimously passed by the Senate and supported by more than 1,300 national, state and local organizations, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307) will:

• Improve school meals;
• Support farmers through Farm to School programs;
• Address skyrocketing obesity rates; and
• Feed more hungry children.

The bill would help reduce hunger and increase children’s access to healthy meals by expanding the after-school supper program nationwide, better connecting eligible children with free school meals, and streamlining the certification process for the Women, Infants, Children (WIC) program.

The bill would strengthen nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, provide schools with increased resources and training to improve meal quality, and support Farm to School programs and school gardens.

Last week, the House designated October as National Farm to School Month. Now they have a chance to walk the walk, in addition to talking the talk, by passing a bill that will increase access to quality food for school children, foster local farm job growth and generate local economic development. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act establishes a competitive grant and technical assistance program in the Department of Agriculture to increase the use of local foods from small- and medium-sized farms in schools, with $40 million in mandatory funding.

The competitive grant program would help create more Farm to School programs benefiting kids and communities alike. A recent study from the University of Minnesota found the potential economic benefit of Farm to School to the region ranged from about $20,000 if each school served one locally grown meal a month to up to $430,000 if they bought large amounts from farmers.

Now consider that the fast-food industry spent more than $4.2 billion on marketing & advertising in 2009 alone, according to the Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. And our elected officials can’t pass child nutrition legislation that provides almost an equivalent amount in $4.5 billion over 10 years to reduce hunger and provide access to healthy food.

What have you done to help reach the goals of ending child hunger by 2015 and solving childhood obesity in a generation?

Before you pass the turkey, consider helping to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session. You and your family can deliver a strong message to Congress to vote yes on this urgently needed legislation, by sending your photo as part of a nationwide photo petition. Go here for details.

A healthy school lunch for our children is something to be truly thankful for this holiday season.

Originally published on Huffington Post

This iteration of the child nutrition bill has received the greatest amount of support and publicity in its history. The good food movement has gathered more and more advocates, both citizens and professionals, and the public has become more aware of the importance of nutrition programs for children. The bill even enjoys rare bipartisan support. Yet conflict over compromises has been simmering under the radar, splitting would-be allies on the path to reform.

The bill currently on the table, sponsored by outgoing Senator Blanche Lincoln, funds its new, groundbreaking nutrition and hunger programs partly by cutting $2.2 billion in future SNAP (food stamp) funding. It was passed unanimously. The bill authored by the House did not cut SNAP funding; but neither did it find adequate funding. Instead the bill stalled, the August recess came and went, and only half of the $2 billion increase was funded.

Up until this point, a highly organized network of national hunger and nutrition advocacy organizations had been in alignment in accepting the passage of a child nutrition bill only if it left SNAP funding intact. But with the House bill crashing, the path to restoring SNAP cuts obstructed, and the expiration of the Child Nutrition Act looming, these groups began to split over the issue of the SNAP cuts.

Groups focused more on access and the needs of low-income individuals opposed the bill because of the negative impact SNAP cuts would have on poor children. SNAP had just been raided in order to pass teachers’ salaries, and hunger organizations were outraged to see those funds raided again. Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) has lamented the use of “the most important anti-hunger program in America as a piggy bank for other purposes.” According to Kristen Mancinelli, Senior Manager, Policy and Government Relations for City Harvest, an organization that collects food for the hungry, “for every dollar spent by the federal government in SNAP the public sees $1.83 spent in economic activity.”

“Half of SNAP funding goes to children, and the other half goes to adults and seniors in need,” explained Joel Berg, Executive Director at New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “At a time when we are lavishing billionaires with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of extra tax cuts, the idea of paying for modest improvements with school lunches with SNAP cuts–paying for kids’ lunches by taking away dinners from them, their parents, and their grandparents–is both immoral and counter-productive. If such cuts are enacted, they will boost both hunger and obesity.”

Organizations more focused on nutrition, on the other hand, worry that opposing the bill until SNAP cuts are restored jeopardizes the entire bill–and its many valuable initiatives, like giving the USDA authority over competitive foods sold in schools (foods not part of the school food program, e.g. those sold on the premises in vending machines), updating nutritional standards, and expansion of after-school supper programs.

Sophie Milam, Senior Policy Counsel at Feeding America, emphasized that her organization does not like the SNAP cuts, either. But they are concerned that if the current bill is not passed, the next Congress will delay work on a new bill, and that bill will likely not make the same investments and improvements as the current one does.

The White House has stated its commitment to restore SNAP funding, a promise that motivated two former opponents to the bill, Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Jim McGovern, to support it. Hunger organizations Bread for the World and Share Our Strength have also dropped their opposition, according to the Washington Post. This is a measure of how much the White House wants this bill passed–and it begs the question of how much support food groups could have gotten if they had all dug in their heels and remained united in their opposition to a bill that cuts SNAP funding.

“It’s a very tough decision. These are things that many, many people here are struggling with, people who have been working on this bill for the past couple of years. You have to make a decision about what’s going to be a long-term investment,” continues Milam. “You have to live to fight another day, try to secure the best you can for these programs. At what point do you say ‘this is the best we can get right now?’”

While hunger and nutrition groups have split on the national levels, a smaller coalition, NYC Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR), has remained united. Through City Harvest, Kristen Mancinelli has led this group (full disclosure, I work for Brooklyn Food Coalition, which has signed on to the Alliance), which maintains its opposition to the bill until SNAP funds are restored. Even groups tied to national organizations that have chosen different sides have remained in alignment with NYC for CNR’s position, something that has surprised even Mancinelli. This is partly because New Yorkers have more to lose with the SNAP cuts: 1.7 million people in the city are on food stamps.

In practice, the organizing around CNR could be seen as a warm up for the even more massive organizing food groups will be doing to advocate for real change in the Farm Bill. A more conservative House promises a different and more challenging climate for that work.

As told by the documentary Lunch Line, the story of school food is one of compromise and unlikely alliances. Looking ahead to the Farm Bill, I see urban sustainable food advocates joining forces with Christian fundamentalist libertarian renegade farmers like Joel Salatin. Can we look ahead and predict where the fault lines will lie? Is there groundwork we can build? How do we balance idealism and bold thinking with pragmatism? After the child nutrition debate has finished, work on the Farm Bill will no doubt accelerate locally and nationally. I’m hoping we will ask ourselves some of these questions and be open to productive alliances with each other. I’m hoping we will have the wisdom to know when to be flexible and when to be ambitious.

In the meantime, if you care about school food and child nutrition there is still time to lend your support for the bill. See the below links to read more about these organizations’ respective positions and to send a message to our legislators about the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

• Letter drafted by Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) opposing the bill unless SNAP cuts are restored, and their Legislative Action Center.
• Feeding America’s social media campaign and letter in support of the bill.
• Community Food Security Coalition’s action alert.
• New York City Alliance for CNR campaign.

A new compelling documentary tells the complicated story of the federal school lunch program, its origins, challenges, and opportunities, teasing out nuances without leaving viewers in the weeds. Lunch Line, a film by Michael Graziano and Ernie Park, resists taking sides on this divisive topic even while it deals with vampires and wolves.

Vampires and wolves? Early in the film we meet five Tilden Academy students, black teenagers from a Chicago school where 99.8% of the students qualify for free school lunch. The Tilden crew are traveling to Washington DC, where they will compete in the Cooking Up Change contest and create a winning meal that costs $1.00 per serving, meets USDA nutritional standards, and tastes great. When one of the Tilden teens delivers a breathless analysis of the wolves vs. vampires conflict in the Twilight book and movie series, the filmmakers grab this motif and use it to tell the history of the federal school food program.

Wolves are cast as the social reform-minded liberals while vampires play the agriculture-protecting conservatives in a comic book-style illustrated retelling of school food’s origins. In one of the great bi-partisan compromises of American history, “wolf” Senator Jerry Voorhis meets “vampire” Senator Richard Russell to hammer out the 1946 School Lunch Act. The condition of Dixiecrat Russell’s support was that the program be administered by the USDA, an alliance that has proven both detrimental and advantageous. The national school food program is famous among reformers  for suffering a glut of starchy, processed USDA surplus commodities; yet its alliance with the powerful USDA has given the school food program the political clout needed to survive numerous attacks over six decades.

But what to do about the outdated nutritional standards and the program’s role in the obesity epidemic? Is the USDA just dumping subsidies into the school food program? As current and former USDA officials, school food activists, and others debate, the questions become increasingly complex. Meanwhile, we see the non-profit Organic School Project work miracles, bringing fresh organic foods that meet nutritional standards into Chicago public school cafeterias, only to see the program fold for lack of adequate funding.

Lunch Line reaches a climax at this crisis point: there is simply not enough money going into school food to make significant change. But just as some Chicago schools lose the Organic School Project the city responds to demand and transitions more whole foods-based menus. We learn about the national Farm to School program, a healthful collaboration between agriculture and schools. And as the film reaches a conclusion a familiar theme emerges: we achieve victory, or at least something vaguely approximating it, through unlikely alliances and compromise.

The primary focus of Lunch Line is telling the story of American school food. But if the implicit mission of this film is to spur viewers to action, it’s ambiguous as to where those entry points are. We see mostly government officials, bureaucrats, and activists as the main agents of change; more parent activists–especially parents of color–in the film would have made the film more compelling to the people who have the greatest stake in the school food system. Fortunately, the filmmakers are partnering with food organizations for its national screenings, and those alliances, plus a clever worksheet the filmmakers created, could help parents find those points for engagement.

To request a screening of Lunch Line email lunchlinescreening@gmail.com or send a note through the Lunch Line Facebook page. Watch the trailer at http://www.ujifilms.com/lunchline/

In a surprise move yesterday before heading out for five weeks of recess, the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act with unanimous consent, which means all 100 senators agreed to pass the bill without an individual vote. The bill allots an additional $4.5 billion dollars over ten years to fund federal child nutrition programs including school lunch.

First Lady Michelle Obama supported the bill as part of her Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity, writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post last week,”This groundbreaking legislation will bring fundamental change to schools and improve the food options available to our children.”

Though providing less than the requested $10 billion suggested by Let’s Move, this marks the first major step towards the most significant increase in funding on the child nutrition programs in 30 years. In a statement yesterday, the First Lady said, “While childhood obesity cannot be solved overnight, with everyone working together, there’s no question that it can be solved. And today’s vote moves us one step closer to reaching that goal.”

According to Jane Black at The Washington Post, the bill includes money for the establishment of school gardens and for sourcing local foods. In addition, the bill “would mandate that the Department of Agriculture develop nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, not just what is served in the lunch line,” which could mean eliminating “competitive foods” like soda and candy bars in vending machines and a la carte lines. This won’t be so easy for schools to swallow, as the money from these purchases is often used to fund sports and art programs.

The pressure to pass the bill is now on the House, which is officially on August recess, but will be reconvening next week to work on a jobs bill. However, according to Black, the chamber is not expected to take up the bill until after the August recess. In order for the new funding to become law, the House will need to pass its version of the bill, which currently calls for nearly double the funding (and reconcile it with the Senate’s version), in time for President Obama to sign the bill into law before September 30th, when the original funding is set to expire.

The Senate has promised to pay for their version of the bill with monies from other programs at the USDA. On the chopping block, for example, are food stamp benefits, or SNAP. $12 billion in additional SNAP benefits were set to come online in 2013, and have been mentioned as a potential source of funding for the jobs bill, among others. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) claimed that since these funds were already being co-opted, they might as well be used to pay for child nutrition. “I think it’s appropriate if these tax dollars are going to be spent that they’re spent on healthy food for kids,” she said.

Advocates have for the most part thrown their support behind the bill, even though what it offers equals around 6 cents per school meal, which wouldn’t even cover the cost of an apple per child per day. However, the added absurdity of taking food from the mouths of hungry families to give to hungry kids has gotten some groups riled up. The Community Food Security Coalition, made up of around 300 organizations, argues that “programs should not be paid for by cutting food benefits for low-income and disadvantaged Americans, regardless of the merits of those programs. Congress should not be voting to increase hunger.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) agreed more or less with the sentiment in a statement released yesterday:

The legislation rids schools of junk food, issues proper alerts to schools when contaminations occur, guarantees all foster children access to school meals, connects farms to schools to supply them with fresh, local produce, and strengthens nutrition resources for children and young mothers. But if our children are ever going to truly succeed in the classroom and beyond, they need better access to healthy meals in the lunchroom, and this legislation falls short of that goal. Further, I’m disappointed that the bill is paid for in part with future funds from the critically important SNAP program. I will continue to fight for more common sense changes to the program and secure the investments we need to make sure every child can achieve their full potential.

Photo: a la corey