I was recently joking with my brother that, much like the seven stages of grief, apparently there are four emotional stages which follow the New York Times‘ acceptance of one’s submission: (1) giddy elation; (2) a creeping sense of worry; (3) cold, sweaty panic; and (4) deep regret that you ever submitted in the first place.
Being in the Times is like being handed the world’s largest megaphone, and for the last few days I’ve been tied up in knots over how my piece in Saturday’s paper, “The Real Problem with Lunch,” was going to be received. Mostly I was worried that somehow I’d wind up offending the very people I was trying to defend – school food professionals – and that, no matter how many times I fact-checked my statements, some glaring error was going to slip through.
I’m so relieved to report that instead the reception was quite positive! Readers seemed genuinely appreciative of the information I shared, and they in turn shared it with others. To my astonishment, at one point the piece was the third-most-emailed story of the day on the Times website, and among the top ten most-viewed!
It’s going to take a lot of time to go through the 400+ comments posted on the piece, but today I wanted to share some thoughts on the feedback I have been able to review:
If You Don’t Like School Food, Just Pack a Lunch
Whenever you talk about school food reform, it’s entirely predictable that a small subset of commenters will ask why, if school meals are so inferior, kids don’t just bring a PBJ and an apple from home. This response is understandable, but it overlooks the fact that of the 31 million kids who eat school food every day, about two-thirds do so out of economic need. Indeed, in many cases, school meals are a child’s primary source of daily nutrition, with breakfast, lunch and even supper eaten at school. (There are even supplemental programs to help hungry children get through the weekend, like the fantastic Backback Buddy program here in Houston.) For these economically distressed families, packing a nutritious lunch from home on a daily basis is just not a realistic option.
American Kids Don’t Get Enough Time to Eat
Many commenters mentioned another factor hindering American kids’ embrace of healthy school food: ridiculously short lunch periods. I agree completely! In fact, my original submission to the New York Times (1,400 words, cut to 850), mentioned that the French school kids in “Where to Invade Next” were given a leisurely hour to eat their meal, which, by the way, was also served on real china and eaten with real cutlery. This is apparently the norm throughout France. But when an American child is hustled through the lunch room in 20 minutes, she barely has time to wolf down her (usually hand-held) entree off her styrofoam tray, let alone contemplate eating more challenging foods like fresh fruits and vegetables.
An Error in My Piece
Yup, at least one of my fears was justified. In the piece, I wrote, “One-third [of American kids] eat fast food every single day,” but based on the citation used, I should have said, “On any given day, one-third of American kids eat fast food.” Thanks to the Times reader who noted this distinction, which somehow eluded both me and my intrepid Times fact-checker.
The Role of Choice and Cultural Diversity
In an early draft of my piece (still on my hard drive, not submitted to the paper), I’d addressed the fact that here in America, we believe strongly in offering choice and accommodating diversity. We would never, for example, forbid parents from sending in a home-packed lunch, we typically offer kids a choice of two entrees, and many schools offer non-pork options to accommodate religious dietary restrictions. Contrast this with France, where home-packed lunches are strongly discouraged, only one lunch option is typically offered, and observant Muslim and Jewish kids are simply out of luck if pork is served (the latter is in fact a source of great political controversy in France.)
The French system certainly encourages student participation in, and acceptance of, school meals, but it would simply never fly in this country. One Times reader picked up on this idea and expressed it very eloquently:
. . . . food plays an enormous role in defining and inculcating culture. The US is, proudly, a country of thousands of different cultures. Out of many, we are one, but at the same time, we strive to respect the individuality of our origins — school lunches must, in some way, both appeal to and avoid offending Cambodian kids, Salvadoran kids, Syrian kids, Nigerian kids, and all at the same meal. Plus of course we have to accommodate, in some way, the gluten-free, the lactose-intolerant, the vegetarian, the vegan, the nut-allergic, the observant Jews, the observant Muslims, etc.
France, by contrast, views kids’ lunch as a way of imparting FRENCH food-culture. Despite (relatively) recent trends in immigration, it remains a much more homogenious society than the US, and that homogeneity is reflected in lunch menus. I’ve seen dozens of them, and the food looks delicious, but it’s all, every bit of it, unmistakably French and largely very traditionally French. There are very few nods to students’ other-than-French ethnic backgrounds, and — so far as I can tell — no accommodations for dietary demands outside what is assumed to be the norm.
Should we use lunch to bolster a single, shared sense of identity, or to honor individual identities?
OK, So What Do We Do Now?
A few people wrote to me directly to say, in essence, “Thanks for outlining the problems surrounding school food. Now what?”
I don’t begin to claim that I have all the answers; indeed, the overarching point of my piece was that it’s unfair to lay at the cafeteria door some deeply entrenched problems in our larger food environment. But, by implication, my piece touched on the many things we might do to support improved school meals (increased funding, improved kitchen infrastructure, eradicating on-campus junk food fundraising, to name a few.)
And there are also many, many things we could be doing to encourage children’s acceptance of healthier school meals: imposing meaningful restrictions on children’s junk food advertising; requiring food education in schools – not just nutrition education, but offering kids a real understanding of our food system, and overtly inoculating them against the allure of hyper-processed and fast food; teaching all children basic cooking skills; getting more gardens into schools; encouraging restaurants to ditch the standard breaded-and-fried children’s menu; imposing taxes on soda (and even junk food); improving food access; and so much more.
And yes, I know many of the items on that list are total pipe dreams in today’s political landscape, but the fact that we’re at least having these conversations, to an unprecedented degree in our society, is a step forward.
The Best Feedback I Received, By Far:
Finally, in light of my fears, nothing made me happier than reading this entry on TLT’s Facebook page:
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Thanks to all who read and shared the piece, and offered such supportive feedback.
Also, by now some of you have read that an agreement has been reached over school nutrition standards as part of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization. I’ll be sharing that news with you tomorrow, along with a round-up of opinion (including my own!) about the outcome.
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