Monthly Archives: February 2010

Radio interview

Media,

A couple weeks ago Jason Croft of Sidetrack contacted me and requested an interview. I decided to do it. You can find the podcast of my interview with him here: http://will.illinois.edu/sidetrack February 2010

Before you click:
* The interview starts around minute 5:00 and lasts about 10 minutes.
* I was very nervous and so I stumble a lot! I am not a professional speaker and the project had only just begun.
* When we chatted, I said my least favorite meal was pizza or hot dogs… But by that early point in the project I had yet to eat the PB&J, which is unequivocally the worst so far.
* You can hear my toddler very, very faintly in the background off and on after minute 12:20. I was so focused on chatting that I didn’t realize it.

January Recap

School Lunches,

Every month I complete of my project, I’m going to write a reflective follow-up on what happened (please pardon me that we are already one week into February):

January Stats:
18 school lunches eaten included:
 (4 – pizza lunches)
 (2 – hot dog lunches)
 (2 – chicken patties)
 (2 – cheese sandwiches)
 (2 – pasta dishes)
 (1 – PB&J that I will never forget…)
 (…other meals you will have to check out for yourself…)

What I learned about school lunch:
1) More people than I ever expected are interested in improving school lunch and reading about my misadventures.
2) School lunches normally consist of a main dish with some some meat product (often combined with a grain), a fruit product, a vegetable product, milk, and an additional grain if the meal needs it to comply with federal regulations.
3) The meals contain a lot of processed food items.
4) The food is bland and usually tasteless.
5) There is a lot of salt in the meals and they are low in fiber for the most part

What I learned about myself:
1) I finally figured out that I’m lactose-intolerant (I wasn’t drinking a lot of milk before so I never knew)
2) I’m proud of myself
3) I’m enjoying the project more than I expected

Reading up

Going retro,

I feel so ignorant about nutrition. My formal education about nutrition began and ended studying the food pyramid in 8th grade. I guess it’s just assumed that after minimal instruction, school children know everything about food, what to eat and how to make it. My informal education began much earlier: being bombarded with commercials from food companies and fast food vendors side-by-side with diet fads and obesity in the popular media.

My readers (you!) really ask some terrific questions that I don’t have the answers to (thankfully lots of other commenters do). But it bothers me that I can’t answer these basic questions about nutrition (and school lunches) so I’m taking a crash course: I checked out a bunch of interesting books at the library. Here’s what I’m going to attempt to read over the next couple months (in my spare time):


Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes
Healthy Eating by Harvard Medical School
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
Nutrition for Life by Lisa Hark and Darwin Deen 
Free for All: Fixing School Food in America by Janet Poppendieck


Do you have any book/audiobook recommendations for me?

Vending machines

The Food,

Disclaimer: this is not from the school in which I work, but from one I visited another time. My school does not have a vending machine.

Like I said in a previous post, there will be some gaps in school lunch consumption in February.

So instead of my usual lunch post, I’m sharing a photo I took of a vending machine that I saw at a different school. When I walked by the vending machine, I was taken aback. It was visually shocking. What you see are lots of pop*tarts on the bottom, rice*krispie*treats on the top, and some generic peanut butter cracker/cookie sandwiches. I felt obligated to take a picture of the vending machine because it startled me. I did it as discreetly as I could and I tried to keep moving so I don’t know how much the items cost.

I should also say that there was another vending machine nearby that held the usual assortment of chips, chocolate, and candy.

Many schools have given up vending machines due to the belief that they are making children obese. I think there are many kids who eat unhealthy foods right after school. If you have a vending machine snack that has upwards of 200 calories every single day after school, you will start to gain weight.

I was trying to find more articles about vending machines in the schools. What I did find were some companies that are trying to develop healthy vending machines. I personally like this idea a lot. What do you think? Is there such a thing as a “healthy” vending machine?

Here are a couple companies that I located online:

http://schoolhealthyvending.com/
http://www.vendnatural.com/technology.asp
http://www.healthyvending.com/

Socio-economic status

Uncategorized, ,

My husband and I went to excellent elementary and secondary schools and then we graduated from college. Although we both have had no formal education or training in nutrition, we have a basic grasp of healthy food and how to nourish our bodies and those of our littlest family member too.

We would be considered “middle class” by most Americans, but if you compare us to the rest of the world, we are in the top 3-5% of income worldwide and our standard of living is high (we have all basic necessities met as well as lots of fun extras). Consider that half of the world’s population subsists on less than $1 per day and you get really happy about your life if you live in America.

Through my “middle class” eyes, some of the meals offered to the children at my school make me wonder, but then again I have no training in nutrition (just an interest). All I can say is that I wouldn’t want my toddler eating the school lunches. Lucky for us because of our socio-economic status we can make sure that our little one gets the best possible food either at the best possible school or through meals we pack for him at home.

Some have asked what the kids think of the meals. Well, they always try to say something positive about the food. I hear “good” or “great.” I’m thinking that if they didn’t like it, they just don’t answer. Overall, none of the kids want to sit around and discuss their lunches. I don’t pry because I know that for some, the school lunch is their best (or only) meal of the day.

What do they know about food? Can they have an opinion if they can’t compare the meal to anything? For example, at different times over this past weekend I prepared catfish, edamame, swiss chard, rice, rolls, avocado, eggs, sausage, and bacon for my family for various meals.

Socio-economic status makes it hard for these kids to experience food in the way that “rich” people like us get to. So when these students are given food, they just say “thank you.”