A Call to put away the Lunch Box

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

I get Google Alerts about blog posts and articles that mention “school lunch,” and lately the emails have had lots of links to stories about how to pack a healthy midday meal. I’ve been getting alerts about everything from packable recipe ideas to the latest stylish lunch boxes. All of this reminds me that while more than 30 million students participate in the National School Lunch Program each year, another 20 million forgo cafeteria fare and bring lunch from home.

Many parents pack lunch for their children because they don’t consider chicken nuggets a healthy meal. I don’t either. But before you resolve to pack lunch for your child every day this year, think about this: one of the best ways to get better food into public school cafeterias is to put away the lunch box and become a loyal lunchroom customer.

I’ve blogged before about how cafeterias operate much like restaurants. Since their revenue comes from a mixture of federal per-meal reimbursements and student dollars, cafeteria directors need to bring students into the lunch line to stay afloat. They do that by offering the foods kids like — pizza, chicken nuggets, nachos and French fries. The hope is that students will look at the menu and say, “Mom, I want to buy lunch today because the entree is popcorn chicken.”

That means kids have a lot of power when it comes to determining what’s for lunch at school. But it also means that parents have a lot of power. After all, parents are the ones who supply the lunch money.  If parents — and I’m talking big groups of parents — started using that power, cafeterias would probably be pretty receptive. If cafeterias had to cater to parents instead of kids, they probably wouldn’t serve popcorn chicken.

More after the jump

No More School Lunch Baloney

by Claire Stanford

My school lunch awakening began the summer after I graduated from college, in 2006, when I volunteered as a counselor at a free day camp in New Haven, Connecticut. The point of the camp was many-fold: to teach kids about the environment, to keep kids off the street and out of trouble all day, and to exhaust them enough during the day that they’d stay out of trouble when we let them out, too. And, importantly, to give them free breakfast, lunch, and snack every day, provided by the New Haven public school system.

For many kids, school lunch (and the less well-known school breakfast) serve the invaluable function of providing two guaranteed meals a day, something I didn’t realize until that summer. Kids were allowed to bring their own lunch; out of the forty-or-so kids, I could probably count the number who actually did bring brown-bags on one hand. 

Every day at noon, the kids would sit in a big circle on the floor, and we would pass out lunch, the most typical one being a baloney and cheese sandwich (one slice of baloney and one slice of processed American cheese on white sandwich bread), a bag of carrots, and a small carton of chocolate milk. In the middle of the circle were three bins labeled trash, recycling, and food waste. The plastic wrappers for the sandwiches and the carrots went in the trash bin, the milk cartons in the recycling, and anything the kids didn’t eat into the food waste. At the end of every lunch, after everything had been cleaned up, one counselor would weigh the bin of food waste. We recorded these weights on a chart posted on the blackboard; the goal was to get below one pound of food waste. If the goal was reached, the head of the camp promised, she would shave off her eyebrows.

More after the jump

How the USDA Helped Bring Processed Food to School Lunch

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

Most adults don’t have glorious memories of school lunch. It was sloppy Joes, shepherd’s pie, spaghetti with meat sauce, and it was usually on the bland side. But the food wasn’t bad, and it was almost always cooked from scratch by an army of school lunch ladies.

How things have changed. A few days ago, I blogged about some pretty dismal statistics on scratch cooking in school cafeterias. A survey by the School Nutrition Association found that over 80 percent of schools cook fewer than half of their main dishes from scratch. And almost 40 percent of schools cook fewer than one-fourth of their entrees from scratch.

What happened? Part of it has to do with rising labor costs. It takes time — and therefore money — to cook thousands of servings of meatloaf and mac and cheese. Part of it also has to do with evolving student taste. Cafeteria directors say students these days prefer packaged food to home-cooked classics.

But we can’t explain the success of heat-and-serve lunchroom fare without giving the USDA some credit. Thanks to a provision known as commodity processing, cafeterias can divert their government-donated foods to commercial processors and receive table-ready items instead of raw products. Today, schools divert about half of their commodities to processors.

According to the USDA, the goal of commodity processing was twofold: it was supposed to allow schools to maximize the use of commodities, while also opening up the school market for the food industry. By those standards, it has been an amazing success. Schools now turn commodity meat, flour, cheese and fruit into a wide variety of (unhealthy) foods kids love. And companies rake in the money from turning raw chicken into nuggets, strips and breaded patties. Today, over 150 companies — from Tyson to Jennie-O Turkey — process commodity items for school cafeterias.

More after the jump

Alaskans get creative about school lunch (and join the Time for Lunch campaign, natch)

by Slow Food USA campaign intern Stephanie Miller

Here at Slow Food USA, we started our Time for Lunch campaign because providing kids with local, healthy food at school is a goal worth fighting for.  Over the last few months, we’ve been talking with parents, food activists, and food service professionals from all 50 states about the challenges they have faced on the road towards a better National School Lunch Program.

Extreme environments often overlooked in the discussion of local food and nutrition are the frozen deserts, deciduous ranges, and rain forests of Alaska.  According to Kerri Burrows, manager of the Alaska Food Coalition, the main food issue in area schools is not nutrition, but supply.  Traditionally, native Alaskans have relied on a seasonally variable high-protein diet.  But schools still have to comply with the nutritional standards of the National School Lunch Program.  This means that most school food is shipped thousands of miles north from the continental United States.  When perishable foods arrive, they are less than fresh, and very expensive.  To account for these extra costs, school meals in Alaska are subsidized three times as much as the average in the rest of nation. The one thing that isn’t unique about Alaska’s school food is its impact on children’s health: as is the case elsewhere else, childhood obesity is spiraling out of control, especially among indigenous children who rely on a non-native diet full of the processed foods that are popular in the rest of the country. 

Kathryn Carl, of Haines, AK, has been working hard to find a solution to this problem.  She works with a school in nearby Klukwan, a Chilkat Indian village, to serve locally sensitive lunches.  In order to implement the program, the school has opted to not receive lunches from the National School Lunch Program.  They serve about 30 meals a day to local children and elderly residents of the small village.  The program relies heavily on donations, such as local Halibut and Salmon, as well as a garden where they can grow produce such as potatoes.  They are currently trying to raise funds for a greenhouse.  Kathryn’s husband makes fresh bread several times a week, since shipped bread often arrives with mold in the middle. 

On September 7, Kathryn and other residents of Klukwan will hold an Eat-In as part of Time for Lunch’s National Day of Action.  We hope that their example of hard work and ingenuity will inspire discussion in their region and in other local food communities, whatever the local challenges. It’s not always easy to give kids real food at school, but it’s an important and absolutely necessary job: the health of our nation depends on it.

Slow Food Russian River’s Big Plans

by Slow Food USA campaign intern Leah Gorham

Slow Food chapters, members, and non-members alike from coast to coast have started to come up with fantastic and creative ideas for Eat-ins as part of the Time For Lunch campaign’s National Eat-In on Labor Day, September 7th, 2009.

A perfect example comes from the leaders of the Slow Food Russian River chapter in Sonoma County, California, who are deeply committed to getting real food into schools. The chapter is joining forces with Landpaths, a local organization that established a small community farm in a park in an urban Latino neighborhood. By partnering with Landpaths, Slow Food Russian River found both a prime location for an Eat-In—Bayer Farm—and a way to demonstrate the connection between local food production and the value it provides to the community.

The event will be a potluck-style picnic but will also offer up delectable homemade tamales and roasted goat tacos, with ingredients for the salsa sourced directly from Bayer Farm. There will be self-guided tour info stations scattered around the property, with information in both Spanish and English. So far, the expected attendance is around three hundred people, including chapter members, community members, volunteers, members of the California School Garden Network, and local legislators and officials. The Slow Food Chapter has even managed to snag a VIP guest speaker - Maria Echaveste, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton. Representatives from Landpaths, Slow Food Russian River and the California School Garden Network will also give short talks at the event.

Many more great events like this one are being planned all over the country for Time for Lunch. Eat-Ins like the one Slow Food Russian River is planning illustrate the benefits of partnering with local organizations and planning an event that fits the local culture.  An event like this draws high levels of local interest, is fun for all of those involved, and has the power to bring a community together in a positive way.

Keep up the great work in planning Eat-Ins for the Time for Lunch National Eat-In on September 7th. If we act now, we have the power to make lasting change (and have fun in the process)!

What’s on Your Plate?

by Gabrielle Redner

Not only does Catherine Gund’s film, What’s On Your Plate? educates its audience about where our food comes from, it also investigates why getting good food to all people all the time is challenging. The audience follows two seventh graders as they make the journey that food takes, from the farm to CSAs and farmer’s markets, to schools and into the home. Sadie and Safiyah meet all the people involved in feeding the tremendous appetite of nine million New Yorkers. Throughout the film, the girls explore some essential questions: Why does food that is bad for us exist? Why can’t everyone eat healthy, non-processed food all the time?

The timing for this film’s debut could not have been better, as we team up to reform the Child Nutrition Act. Identifying what must be changed seems simple, but taking those steps means overcoming many hurdles, educating key people, raising money, and building networks across the food chain to get the job done.

Sadie and Safiyah know that more fresh fruits and vegetables, even local ones, should be in their school lunchroom. Why aren’t they? For starters, the school kitchen doesn’t have a stove, so cooking is out of the question. They need the money to buy one, and the staff to cook rather than heat up frozen meals. Sadie and Safiyah soon realize that, even with good intentions, change takes time. In this timely film, two twelve year-olds teach all of us a lesson on how to ask questions and build a team. While they are often two against one in their interviews, they do not intimidate. (Not only because they are middle school girls; that could still be scary!). They ask questions to policy makers with open-mindedness and genuine curiosity, and receive candid responses. Ultimately, the girls bring people together to work towards a city filled with better food.

Gund’s film offers enlightenment to all kinds of audiences. Those who know little about the sources of their food learn about farming and the processes of urban food distribution, as well as basic differences between processed and real food. Others who are more familiar with our food system will discover why we cannot fix its broken pieces all at once.

The subplot of this film is the networking amongst like-minded individuals, who all believe in feeding good food to all people. This is a must-see movie. Be ready to laugh, to learn and to be warmed by the sense of community amongst people who love real food.  For more about the movie, click here go to their web site.

Gabrielle is a former Slow Food USA intern and an undergraduate student at NYU who enjoys, among other things, food, writing, traveling and the ocean. 

School Lunch for the Obamas (And How We Can Make Public School Meals Just as Good)

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

Ever wonder what the Obama daughters eat for school lunch? It’s a far cry from the packaged burritos and the slices of frozen pizza served in most public school cafeterias. Students at Sidwell Friends eat lemon herb baked chicken, tuscan white bean soup, local arugula and herb salad and shrimp creole. One of the favorite entrees across the board is pesto pasta with grilled chicken and vegetables.

I’ve been trying to understand for a while why that menu is so strikingly different from the ones in public schools across the country. Is it because Sidwell is a private school? Is it because the
meal program there has a bigger budget? Is it because Sasha, Malia and other students at Sidwell come from families that prioritize good food and pay attention to health?

I had an opportunity last week to talk to Leslie Phillips, the director of business development for Meriwhether Godsey, which runs school lunch at Sidwell and 36 other schools on the East coast. The answer, she said, is none of those. “It’s not public versus private,” Phillips told me. “It’s all-inclusive versus getting kids to buy.”

In many — but not all — private schools, school lunch is mandatory (or, as Phillips likes to say, “all-inclusive.”) All students pay for meals upfront as part of their tuition, and they’re covered for the year. In these schools, the menu is “in the hands of the adults,” Phillips said. Of course, they take into account what kids like to eat and strive to offer a variety of foods. But if they don’t want to sell chips or French fries, they don’t have to.

More after the jump

Why Twenty-Somethings Should Care About School Lunch

By Claire Stanford

For many (most?) twenty-somethings like myself, issues like school lunch can be murky and distant. I’m not eating school lunch; nor do I have children who are eating school lunch (nor will I in the foreseeable future). When I think of school lunch, I mostly envision a Wonder Years-style cafeteria line, complete with mystery meat (or is it called Salisbury steak?) and a scoop of mashed potatoes. Not so bad, not so good, but unchanging and unchangeable. Right? Wrong.

School lunch isn’t unchanging and it isn’t unchangeable. It is changing: it is largely getting worse – looking more and more like fast food, with fewer and fewer nutrients for the kids, and more and more fat and calories. This information alone – that kids were eating pizza and chicken nuggets and baloney and cheese sandwiches – was surprising to me, making my Wonder Years visions look like home-cooked meals. 

But what was truly shocking to me was just how possible it is to change school lunch for the better, just how changeable school lunch (and breakfast) is. For years now, since I realized just how bad school lunch really is, I have been wondering about legislation. There must be some way to change things, I thought, if only there was some way…But I figured that was just the way it is; that’s just what school lunch had to be, that it was a meal put in place by a government action a billion years ago that would take an act of divine intervention to ever get back on the Hill.

And then, this year, I discovered the Child Nutrition Act. For one thing, I had no idea there was one all-encompassing bill that covered not only school lunch, but also school breakfast. And for two, and perhaps more importantly, I had no idea that this all-encompassing wonder bill came up for reauthorization in Congress every five years.

I think a lot of people out there are like me: we know that school lunch is abominable and shameful, but it seems like such a large, vague problem that it just isn’t even approachable. Starting from scratch to fix a problem as widespread and systemic as school lunch is intimidating, but that’s the thing – we don’t have to start from scratch. A discussion of school lunch is actually built in to legislation every five years, and the next reauthorization coming up this September. And that means that we actually have a chance to make a change this year – or if you really think about it, to make a change this year, and then five years from now, and then five years from then.

I care about school lunch because five years from now (or five years from then), I may be sending my kids to school, and I want to be confident they’re getting a lunch that is both tasty and nutritious. I care because my taxes will be paying for the health care costs of diabetes (which one in three children born after the year 2000 will have). I care because better school lunch can help stimulate local economies, by giving workers skills and investing in local farms. I care because school lunch is a holistic problem, with wide-ranging implications; and I care because school lunch is also a specific issue, and because on that most specific level it the food we are feeding children is shameful.  

Want to be part of a country that feeds its children right? Sign the Time for Lunch petition, organize an Eat-In, and be aware that school lunch affects everyone in America, whether or not you or your child is eating it.

Claire Stanford is an MFA student at the University of Minnesota and a blogger at Food Junta.

Tray Trends: Bubble-Gum-Flavored Apples, and Other Sights at the SNA Food Show

First published on School Lunch Talk. Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

Imagine if Las Vegas built a Costco-themed hotel with a particular emphasis on chicken nugget samples and then filled the building with lunch ladies. That’s the best way I can describe the School Nutrition Association’s annual food expo, which is taking place right now in Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Every summer, thousands of lunch ladies flock to the show to sample the newest industry products for school lunch. They stroll through over 800 booths, tasting everything from popcorn chicken and mini cheeseburgers, to whole-grain doughnuts and blue-raspberry slushees. Forget flipping through cookbooks — today, this is the menu planning process for your kid’s school cafeteria.

If you want a bird’s eye view of the problems plaguing school food, this is the place to go. The expo boasted 40 booths showcasing ice cream, cakes, cookies, puddings and other desserts. Over 20 booths peddled poultry (mostly breaded) and 20 more featured beef products. Pizza showed up at 12 booths. Fresh fruits and vegetables showed up at only 10.

I accumulated a thick stack of spec sheets and brochures during my four-hour stroll through the booths this morning. Here’s just a random sampling of the products on display:

More after the jump

Slow Food Charleston says “it’s time for lunch”

As more people across America sign up to organize Eat-Ins for Time for Lunch, we’re hearing some wonderfully creative ideas from organizers.

The leaders of Slow Food Charleston are spearheading “Children Supporting Children for Healthy School Lunch,” a summer-long initiative where kids from the Charleston, SC community will talk about Time for Lunch at tables setup in front of local food markets. Starting June 30th, they’ll be manning (supervised) tables at the Whole Foods Market in Mt. Pleasant, at Earthfare in West Ashley and at Harris Teeter on East Bay Street. Alongside community members, the kids will discuss and answer questions about Time for Lunch, gather signatures for the Time for Lunch petition and provide market-goers with packets of information about ways to get involved.

According to Melissa Clegg, the Slow Food Charleston member leading the program, “This campaign aims to empower children by giving them the tools and the platform to take initiative for the building of their futures and the futures of children without a voice. Every child I have spoken with has identified with the issue of school lunch and been energized to fight for healthier choices that help build our local communities and reduce negative impacts on the environment.”

Slow Food Charleston’s extraordinary work with children and local food education did not start with the Time for Lunch campaign. This past Sunday, Clegg and chapter leader Carole Addlestone held a “Bring-Your-Own Picnic” fundraising event on Wadmalaw Island to benefit their organic garden project at Sanders-Clyde Elementary in downtown Charleston. Last week, the project was featured in Charleston’s Post and Courier.

As Slow Food moves forward with its campaign to give schools across America the resources to serve real food – and to plant gardens like the one at Sanders-Clyde Elementary – Melissa and Carole continue to work with Charleston’s youth. With their help, several children from Charleston schools have written letters to their legislators, letting them know how important healthier school lunches are to our nation’s future.

If you’re in Charleston on September 7th, the day of the National Eat-In, make sure to attend one of the several small community Eat-Ins Slow Food Charleston is planning. To get involved, please write Carole Addlestone (caroladdlestone[at]mindspring.com).