Score Healthy, Local & Organic School Food
May 14, 2009 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Green Living
Most kids spend a lot of time in school which of course includes mealtime – usually lunch and sometimes breakfast and snack times. The problem is that school food is crazy unhealthy in most places.
School lunch menus are linked to obesity and host of other diet-related diseases. School lunches are over-processed and include a load of starches, fats and meats that have been genetically modified, and shot up with hormones and antibiotics. Plus unless the school is organic, foods most likely contain pesticides. Kids often have no vegetarian meal choices. Lastly you see very few fresh fruits and veggies included in school lunches, even though we all know this is key in a healthy diet. All in all, school lunches mostly suck and our kids are the ones who suffer the health consequences. In fact, the Daily Green notes that the nutrition standards of school lunches haven’t been updated for over 30 years!
According to Organic Consumer:
“Chantal Wei-Ying Clement, who is working on the Appetite for a Change campaign, is lobbying Congress for healthy local and organic food to be included in the Child Nutrition Act. Click here to read Chantal’s first report reviewing the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations for updating the school lunch and breakfast programs.“
What you can do:
- Organic Consumers is urging everyone to get involved with the 2009 Reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. The act is a good opportunity to create positive change. We can help change where the food comes from, how nutritious is it, and how healthy our kids will be.
- Read: How to Change School Food Policy: An Organizing Kit
Write to Congress about the changes you’d like to see for school lunches. - Send an action alert about school lunches to Congress.
What else you can do: Talk to your kids about making smart lunch decisions. Pack them a healthy lunch vs. giving them money to buy lunch. It may seem like more work, but my son goes to a private school with no lunch program at all and once you get into the swing of packing a lunch daily, you get fast.
Do you know what’s being served for lunch at your kid’s school? What do you think of the menu?
[images via stock.xchng and Organic Consumers]
Your research was obviously not done in California, where the State requires any item sold at schools a la carte to meet standards of 35% or fewer calories from fat, 10% or fewer calories from saturated fat and 35% or fewer calories from sugar. In Texas, the guidelines are 30-10-30%. What many people may not realize is that the foods such as chicken nuggets that are prepared for school meals are not the same as those offerred in the retail market, but instead meet these stricter dietary guidelines. I visit 100 school districts in California on a regular basis as part of my job, and virtually ALL of them offer vegetarian choices and ALL of them offer fresh fruits and vegetables. The vast majority have salad bars and have had them for years. Manufacturers have done a great job creating healthier products and the schools have done a great job serving them!
But the reality is that no matter what the standards are, schools are underfunded and over challenged to truly provide consistently healthy meals. Schools are loosing on average more than 30 cents and large urban districts are loosing more than double that. This means that either schools are forced to reduce quality or reduce budgets for classrooms. Reauthorization this year will provide the best opportunity in years to get a real funding increase for schools and fundamentally change school food. No, it won’t be everything, but this is a huge opportunity and everyone needs to get involved to make sure we get positive changes.
Wow, the first 2 replies are loaded with great information. School Meals have very strict nutrition guidelines that must be followed. Those of us who have taken on the challenge of feeding thousands of school children each and every day ought to be applauded and not degraded. If serving healthy school meals were truly considered part of the school day, a practical laboratory that ALL students participated in, the entire atmosphere could be different. Instead, we have to ENTICE students to CHOOSE school meals over numerous other options. That means our option is to prepare foods kids are familiar with and foods they already like. That means our challenge is to prepare the foods that kids already like in a more healthy way, serve them in correct portion sizes, and couple these foods with fruit, vegetables, and milk. And the big kicker? We only get to spend about $1.00 on food for an entire healthy lunch. Try doing that at home for just one month! After that little experiment, we’ll wait for your apology.
Deborah – I’m with you. The challenges for schools are great. We actually hold a contest every year where we challenge high school culinary students to create a healthy school lunch meal that exceeds USDA standards while spending only $1 on food costs per lunch (on average school lunches have about $1 to spend on food costs and the rest of the cost goes to overhead and staffing). It’s a huge challenge but it’s great to see the kids come up with creative ideas. And while i agree that we need to prepare foods that kids already like in a healthier way (low fat cheese, whole wheat crust for pizza), but we also need to include nutrition and food education in the classroom and the cafeterias so we can expand students and give them experiences that they might not be getting at home. There’s no magic bullet, but we do need more money, better education, and figure out ways to prioritize food – and like Deborah said, make everyone understand that food programs are as important a part of the school day as math, art and PE.