Eating-In on Labor Day

Are you attending the National Day of Action to Get REAL FOOD in School Lunch?

You should!!

And chances are, there is a local Eat-In happening in your community.

The Time for Lunch Campaign is a national project sponsored by Slow Food USA, to encourage support for dramatic change to the Child Nutrition Act, which is up for re-authorization by Congress this fall. Rather than feeding kids USDA commodities (tator-tots and canned corn), Time for Lunch is built on this comprehensive platform:

1. Invest in children's health.

2. Protect against food that puts children at risk.

3. Teach children healthy habits that will last through life.

While encouraging President Obama and Congress to

1. Give schools the incentive to buy local.

2. Create green jobs with a School Lunch Corps.

You can read the complete platform here.

Show your support for changing the way American school children eat lunch, by sharing good food with new friends at an Eat In this Labor Day. A map of national locations is available here.

At the very least, sign the petition to get REAL FOOD in school lunch. They are searching for 6,000 more signatures before September 7.

School Food That's Worlds Away

Oh to be a kid in Paris. To play along the banks of the Sienne and wander in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. To ride the carousel at the Jardin du Luxembourg and play peek-a-boo in the narrow streets of the Marais.

And to eat cauliflower gratin, braised lamb with rosemary, and stinky soft cheese. For lunch. At preschool. As reported Monday on NPR, this is precisely the kind of menu served at the 270 public day-care centers throughout the city. Along with homemade applesauce, local and organic produce, and even tomato garnishes in the shape of a rose.

Sign me up. These kiddos even get an afternoon nap. It would be erroneous to pretend our country's culinary heritage is even remotely in line with the French. And yet I can't help wish our national conversation was about feeding school children asparagus instead of the newly developed peanut butter recall widget:

FDA Product Recall List

Was it by coincidence that just days after NPR's story about school-foodie paradise, the New York Times today featured an op-ed by Alice Waters? She implores Washington to do away with the National School Lunch Program, the inefficient and unhealthy emphasis on government commodities, and the school food that hardly constitutes food at all. Calling our current lunch program a "junk food distribution system", Ms. Waters suggests a complete overhaul that would cost about $5/child for wholesome, nutritious, and freshly-cooked school food. (A bit more than the $2-$3 per child cost as noted by NPR in this story, and one that appeared in July, where the French chef serves 800 high-schoolers ingredients from within just 30 miles of the school in Salon de Provence.)

A tasty proposal that sounds tres bien to me.
Meanwhile, gourmet food isn't the only thing the French are serving up. Cookbook author Deborah Madison spent some time in France's lunchrooms, observing not only what was on the menu, but how it was dished up: in a relaxed, convivial atmosphere, with a 2 hour lunch and exercise period, on real plates with real silverware, and in a comfortable, nurturing, colorful "cafeteria". Her report is available here, at culinate.com.

Since I work in schools teaching cooking to children, and see the enthusiasm and curiosity parents, kids, and educators have displayed for our exploratory culinary curriculum, I think there is a possibility that our school cafeterias may begin to look more like France's. But without the kind of sweeping change Ms. Water's demands, with cooperation, funding, and support from bureaucratic entities like the Departments of Agriculture and Education, as well as a commitment by local school districts, I worry it won't happen any time soon. And in California, where public schools are again taking a multi-billion dollar budget cut, I worry even the most well intentioned schools will struggle to serve up something good.

Mr. Kass, head to the kitchen. It's time to get to work.

"Inevitable" Change for School Lunch

After much ado about converting the White House lawn to an organic garden; a sustainable foodie outcry for a new breed of White House chef, led by Alice Waters; and a call among devoted fans for Michael Pollan to lead our nation as Secretary of Agriculture, it is safe to say that one week into the President's new term, little talk of our food supply has graced the lips of Washington's movers and shakers.

Or has it?

Though Mr. Obama may be spending much of his time working out bailouts, sending George Mitchell to the Middle East, and questioning Sidwell-Friends' response to the snow, he did have some time to give the green light to bringing Sam Kass, the 28 year-old chef who cooked for the Obamas in Chicago and founded Inevitable Table, into the White House kitchen.

A spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama indicated that Kass is passionate about local, sustainable, healthy food. A good sign for anyone dining at the White House -- and for our nation as a whole. It's a little too early to predict what effect Kass' cooking and philosophy may have on American school children. But there is promise. As reported on several New York Times blogs today, including The Caucus and Tara Parker-Pope's Well , Mr. Kass is committed to re-thinking what the National School Lunch Program serves up. (Few veggies, a lot of fat, and a hefty dose of HFCS.) The full text of a recent talk Kass lead about school lunch reform is available here.

Mr. Kass, you and I have got a lot in common -- with the same first names, the same age, a similar passion for eating and cooking, and an equal devotion to changing the way we feed America's children. The new presidency is all about hope. And boy have I got high hopes for you.

What Happened to Home-Ec?

Our dog goes nuts for kids. Babies in strollers, toddlers with mom, awkward teenagers -- they're all Auggie's best friend. For a real treat, some mornings I take him on the "school tour" in our neighborhood. We pass 1 middle school, 3 pre-schools, 1 elementary school, and a community college. We also encounter numerous treat-bearing crossing guards. Auggie gets more pets and attention in that 45 minute walk than your average mutt does in a week.

This morning we passed several groups of middle-schoolers ambling towards class. And most of them were still working on 'breakfast'. (You know, the most important meal of the day.) Hot cheetos. Caramel popcorn. Jolt, Vault, Monster. (Engery drinks, in case you weren't sure.) Chicken nuggets. I was so appalled I think I would have been relieved to see some breakfast junk food of yesteryear. Think Pop tarts, Egg McMuffins, and breakfast sausage Hot-Pockets.

In reality, I guess I wasn't too shocked. In fact, it was watching too much consumption of hot-cheetos before 9am that propelled me into the kids' cooking and nutrition business anyhow. As a middle school teacher, I was all too accustomed to the sugar highs and lows these junks foods caused, especially during first and second period. The implications for students who start their day with a healthy breakfast is astounding, from test scores to type 2 diabetes to behavioral and attention disorders. And by now, it seems teachers, nutritionists, doctors**, and (some) parents all know this.... so who's telling the kids???

The lack of health-education (it's not just sex-ed) and life-skills classes in our schools is devastating, and is no doubt one of the many factors contributing to our nation's growing obesity rate. When I was a kid, I was taught the difference between Fruit Loops and fruit salad. Sure, I loved my annual birthday box of Fruit Loops. But I understood why I ate fruit salad the rest of the year. Kids today are simply not receiving the requisite nutrition and culinary education to make good choices about what they eat. Not only are schools not teaching it, they're not serving it either. Nearly 80% of US school cafeterias do not meet the USDA nutritional guidelines for school lunch (how can they when they get just $1.00/child?), and many offer items from Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Kids aren't dumb; they probably know that a Double Whopper isn't the best thing for them. But I don't think they realize the lifelong ramifications of the food choices they make.

With a quick search on google for "home economics in schools today", I could hardly find an article or website that discussed cooking and health education in American schools. (The most relevant was from 2001.) Of course, there are some exemplar school district programs, like Alice Water's-influenced Edible Schoolyard in Berkley. And there is excellent curricula for interested teachers, such as Dr. Antonia Demas' Food Is Elementary. But we've yet to come close to anything as radical as UK's recent mandate which requires secondary schools to teach health education and cookery to all the country's children.

In previous political campaigns, I've gotten pretty fired-up when the candidates debate education reform. During Wednesday's final debate, it got barely a sound bite as the last topic posed by Bob Schieffer. And you can be sure that building kitchen classrooms, planting school gardens, improving the nutritional quality of cafeteria food, and home-economics classes weren't in either of the candidates' responses.

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**In fact, only 40% of medical schools require doctors to take a nutrition course, and 6 of the top 16 US hospitals have fast food in the cafeteria.