Monthly Archives: March 2010

Guest blogger: Child Nutrition Act (and what you can do)

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***Our news guest blogger: Brandon Smith twitter.com/greenletters is back to share information about the Child Nutrition Act. He is investigating the latest in school lunch news. ***

When I went searching for news about school lunches, I found the main stories right now are about this website. That’s both wonderful and scary at the same time. What I mean is, these personal anecdotes are what our country needs to get the ball rolling with school lunches. (To me the “issue” is an ageist and classist injustice.) But where were the traditional news sources this week? A lot happened and it seems as though much of it was overlooked by them. I hope the journalists are just taking their time to put together really thorough reports.


Here’s the best summary of the debate surrounding the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, now known by this shiny name: “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.” (The Child Nutrition Act was originally up for reauthorization in Sept. 2009 but the deadline was extended.) This is courtesy of the Washington Post blog, All We Can Eat.

This week Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack voiced his approval of the above-mentioned Act, which was revealed March 17 to great fanfare—several health organizations and big players in the food industry back it.

But things aren’t as well and good as it would seem. Vilsack had implied, in his Feb. 23 Huffington Post article, that he was on board with the President’s recommendation—of $10 billion extra for the program over the next 10 years.
Unfortunately, in endorsing this version, Vilsack stooped to accept less than half of his original recommendation, or $4.5 billion over the next 10 years.

Here’s what he said in his press release:
“Though we believe that additional access and nutrition goals can and should be accomplished by passing a more robust bill that supports the President’s request of $10 billion in additional funding, the bipartisan announcement today is a very positive step forward.”

Vilsack is very much a big-agribusiness insider, and as much as he might be behind his boss’ plans and believe in the fuzzy big-picture goal of helping children, the “big agribusiness” way of thinking brought us to this point. School lunches aren’t funded well enough to purchase commodities other than super-discounted ones, and policy often mandates that excess commodities (no matter their nutritional relevance) be purchased for the program. This benefits massive farming operations and agriculture-related companies—not children.


How can you make a difference?

The Healthy Schools Campaign has done a great job breaking down these issues for the good of the nation’s kids.

Healthy Schools Campaign also has a way to take action, in a form letter here, that you can send to your senator with the push of a button. It urges a “strong” reauthorization of the nutrition act:

“The current proposal by Sen. Blanche Lincoln includes several excellent health-promoting policy elements, but I am concerned with the level of funding included in the bill.  The bill allocates only $450 million per year to child nutrition, a mere 45 percent of the funding proposed in Pres. Obama’s budget. This increase barely acknowledges increased food costs without beginning to provide adequate funding for healthier school meals that would truly support children’s health and academic success.

Specifically, I urge you to support a Child Nutrition Act that includes: 

* Increased funding for the school meals program, at minimum the $1 billion per year for 10 years that Pres. Obama has proposed.

* Increased quality of meals served in the school meal program; including less use of highly processed foods which are high in fat and sodium, increased fresh and high quality frozen fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, and reduced overall sodium content.”

Also this week, Michelle Obama wrote a piece for Newsweek promoting her letsmove.gov. I wanted it to be longer, but I understand she has a lot going on.

A documentary on school lunch (called “Lunch”) in America premieres this week (March 22) at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, DC. Here’s an excerpt from its website:
In Lunch, a revealing documentary short, director Avis Richards investigates the causes and the consequences of “growing up in a junk-food culture.” Through numerous on-site interviews with food workers, doctors, educators, and students, Lunch provides a candid, penetrating, and disturbing account of the National School Lunch’s Program’s failure to promote the proper dietary habits to ensure our youth’s physical, social, and psychological well-being. The documentary also explores viable alternatives to the hamburger hegemony, talking with farmers and other community leaders about their efforts to put locally-grown, whole foods back on the menu and make diet and nutrition a core part of every school’s educational model.
Here’s another reminder about how bad these lunches can be: The NY Times reported on fast food beef: how it’s treated with ammonia and how bad it can be for us. Here’s a fun-but-sad story about how a mom kept a Happy Meal on a shelf for a year and it didn’t decompose at all. Talk about preservatives! Why am I talking about fast food? Because USA Today reported on how school lunch standards can be lesser than the standards for fast food.

I don’t think the decision-makers (adults in their 40s-70s) realize the extent to which we’re shafting the next generation, particularly those from lower-income families. Tom Friedman of the New York Times often opines there’s a lot of talent—genius, really—in the lower-income “brackets” that our country wastes—because we don’t give them a fighting chance. I’m sure teachers like Mrs. Q realize this all too well. How many potentially nation-altering future engineers or authors don’t do well in school because of their nutrition and lack of recess?

Brandon Smith wrote for daily newspapers in Ohio before his current gig as a Science Journalism student at Columbia College Chicago. A bio is available at brandonsmith.com/about and he tweets at twitter.com/greenletters.NOTE: all guest bloggers have contacted me of their own free will, have given consent, do not know me personally, and are not receiving compensation.

Open thread: Food culture

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What kind of food culture represents the US? What is the “food” legacy are we leaving for our kids? What foods are part of your (American) culture? Do you incorporate ethnic foods? How do you involve your kids?

Thanksgiving is my favorite food holiday. I think it’s safe to say that turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and sweet potatoes are part of the American food culture. Also regional parts of the country have specialties (Northeast – clam chowder; Louisiana – Cajun and Creole; and on…). For more info: Cuisine of the United States

Does a food culture of burgers, hot dogs, fries, etc represent the US accurately? And why do we feed that to kids at school?

Day 45: chicken patty

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Today’s menu: chicken patty, peas, banana, garlic bread, milk


Definitely edible! The peas, banana, and even the garlic bread were good! Yum. The chicken patty was called “Chicken Parmesan” on the menu. I guess that’s why the sauce was there. I’m assuming parm was sprinkled on the patty or it was an ingredient in the breading. I did not taste cheese at all. The chicken patty is what it is.
This meal ranks high up there in comparison to what I’ve eaten before. I really can’t complain. But I’m wondering wouldn’t it be cheaper to send cooked whole chicken parts (legs, thighs drumsticks, etc) directly to the school, instead of a sending the chicken from the farm to the processing plant and then sending the patty to the school. Would it be possible/feasible to cut out the middle man?

Marrying nutrition and cooking

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I have a confession to make: I think nutrition is boring…

I know.

You start talking about calories and fat… you’ll lose me the first time you say “gram.”

BUT I love to cook. I must own more than twenty-five cookbooks. One of my favorite things to do is to open a cookbook, choose a recipe, go shopping for ingredients (invariably I’m missing one thing in my cupboards), and then create a delicious meal.

It’s a lot harder to find time to make elaborate dinners when you are a working mom. Those care-free days are gone. Over the past year I have been forced to start meal planning. That means every week I sit down and write out what we are going to eat every night and then I write a grocery list based upon what I want to make. And as much as I dragged my feet over confining myself to a “restrictive” meal plan, coming home after a long day and knowing what I will be making for the family is really, really nice.

Why is nutrition so dull and cooking so dynamic? My reasoning: Nutrition is the “theory” and cooking is the “practice.” Let’s combine them to make our students well-rounded and knowledgeable about wellness.

So how can we get kids excited about nutrition? By teaching them how to cook. I mean, how fun is it to stir, flip, and fry? Bake, roll, and rise? Kids won’t even know they are learning. It’s like a science experiment with dirty dishes as the only downside.

Day 44: Hot dog

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Today’s menu: hot dog, whole wheat buns, beans, fruit cup, milk (for new readers: the milk is not pictured because I’m lactose intolerant)

I forgot to grab a ketchup packet so I had a rough time getting the hot dog down. The beans were good, but I avoided the fruit cup as usual and just munched on an apple I brought from home.

Kids love hot dogs and I also like a good hot dog in the summer (as I’ve said before I like to have a frank from the grill or at the ballpark). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hot dogs in moderation, but I get upset when hot dogs are offered frequently to kids, especially during the winter when kids require more robust nutrition to prevent illness.

I worry that kids are getting offered junk and convenience food because adults believe that that’s all they will eat for school lunch. Obviously we want kids to eat, but should not cater to what a 7 year old would theoretically prefer to eat.

Does a schoolchild have the decision making power or the palate to have a preference? Aren’t we in the business of educating children not them dictating what they want? Do they really have a clue what they should or shouldn’t be eating?

Guest blogger: Texan mothers dish it up – Part 1: High School

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*** Please welcome our next guest bloggers***

We are a pair of new mothers who teach in an urban district near

Dallas, TX.  School lunch became an obsession of ours one day last
fall, when one of us was handed the menu for our babies’ daycare.  Our
crusade for better food for our toddlers has now grown to include the
high school students where we work.

Think back to your high school years.  Do you remember eating lunch in the cafeteria?  The way it smelled….  The way the food tasted….  And how pleasant it looked there on your tray, all ice-cream-scoop-shaped and congealed….  Mmm.  Dee-lish.

Then there was the alternative “snack line,” with its ubiquitous offerings of French fries (with or without the chili cheese) and gallons of Ranch dressing.  (I’m not going to lie; I scrounged through the seats of my car for enough change to purchase the aforementioned items.  Even now, my mouth waters a little when I think about it.)

Fast-forward 15 years, and you’ll find 30-year-old me at an urban public high school where I teach Social Studies and work with technology integration.  Of our approximately 1,700 students, 72% qualify for free/reduced lunch (this statistic increases to 74% district-wide).  For many of my students, this is the only meal they get each day.

So, what are they eating?

Today’s menu includes two choices: chicken alfredo with a breadstick, or a pizza cheese stick (what?) with spaghetti sauce.  As I walked through the cafeteria a few minutes ago, I didn’t see a single student eating either of these options.  I remarked to a young man that the chicken alfredo sounded good, and he said, “Yeah, until you see it.”

Most students were eating nachos; a couple had some sort of submarine sandwich.  I saw one student with chicken nuggets.  All of them had French fries with large plastic containers of ketchup (someone should really fill them in on the Ranch dressing thing).

When I asked the students for their thoughts regarding school lunches, they said things like:

It’s not good, but I eat it.
It is not very nutritious.
It sucks [expletive]. You cannot hide the truth!
It needs real improvement.
It’s nasty.

I encouraged them to elaborate:

I pay $1.85, and it’s not worth it. [Note: this is the full price, not the reduced price.]
The food tastes old.
We have no willpower.  If they put cookies out, we’re going to eat them.
They serve the same thing all the time. [This is true.  There are four school weeks in the month of March.  The menu for the third and fourth weeks is just a rehash of the first and second weeks.]
We would love to have healthier options.  If they gave us healthier options, we’d eat them.
It’s hard when you’re trying to lose weight.  I wish there was something healthy.

It bothers me to see that nothing has changed in the 15 years since I was eating in the cafeteria.  It kills me to know that this is the only food some of my students will eat today.  It ANGERS me to realize that they’ve reached an age where they KNOW they should be eating better, but their family’s financial situation is such that they’re powerless to change it.

These students, the 74% of children in this city whose families cannot afford to feed them lunch, if anything at all – these students KNOW that they’re getting shafted.  It’s time we speak up.  It’s time we demand change.  It’s time we help those who can’t help themselves.

The ironic twist to this story came in the form of an email that went out to the staff this week about how the food “auditor” is going to be here in the next couple of days and we need to make sure we are adhering to the State guidelines.

sigh.

***

Thanks for your post. Readers, stay tuned next week for more from these particular guest bloggers: Part 2: Daycare food

NOTE: I set up guest blog posts to auto-post during the day the night before

Day 43: cheeseburger

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Today’s menu: cheeseburger, corn, peach fruit cup, popcorn chips, milk

I’m feeling so yellow after this meal. Can you get over how everything is the same color? And then there’s two corn-based sides…

I love popcorn. It started because of my Grandma, who was a popcorn fanatic and ate it whenever she watched a movie. I’m not referring to movie theater popcorn, but popped on the stove, drizzled with real melted butter, and consumed while enjoying an old movie in her den. Good food is all about memories and family, no?

I’m trying to figure out why the popcorn had to be made into crisps?! Popcorn is good without being further processed! The last picture is a look inside the package at this strange food. It didn’t taste like popcorn to me.

There is no money

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You should know that my job is on the chopping block just like so many educators. So even if I don’t lose my job for the blog, I still could be shown the door because they don’t have money to pay me.

 Right now all over the country school administrators and principals are making some very difficult decisions. Cost cutting measures include: laying off all administration and ancillary staff including secretaries, assistant principals, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, nurses, classroom aides, etc; closing pre-school programs, gifted programs, art, music, computer class, and extra-curriculars because they are not required by law; making kindergarten half-day thereby consolidating classrooms; offering early retirement to older, expensive teachers; letting go new teachers and closing their classrooms; and increasing class sizes to 40.

Have you ever seen a classroom with 40 students? I have… on multiple occasions. It’s chaos. How does even the most talented teacher manage the behavior of 40 (small) people? I couldn’t imagine leaving my child with 40 kids and one person. And that person would be in charge of educating my kid? Yeah, right. It’s called bad babysitting. Read: Reduce Class Size Now and Class Size Matters

Research has found that for kids K-3 they need a teacher:student ratio of 1:20 (or less) to learn effectively. Many wealthy districts already provide classrooms that size. The classrooms at my school are already in the 1:30 range.

Have you ever met a kid walk into kindergarten without any preschool experience and no prep or support at home? Yeah, I have… these kids haven’t been read to, don’t come from a print-rich environment, and don’t know rules and structure. Early childhood programs make a huge difference for children, especially those from disadvantaged homes. Read: Why investments in early childhood work.

I have gotten a couple questions from readers asking why I’m tackling school lunches when teaching positions are being closed because there is no money. I’d like to respond by saying: it’s not “either/or.”

We need make the long-term investment in children. We need to fund education. We need the best teachers. We need to feed students the best food we can find so that they can reach their potential as leaders. We are the USA after all! We act like we are the best, but look at how we fund education and school lunches. Do we really value children?

…Oh yeah, and let’s add recess back because the last time I checked running around was free.