New to School Food Reform?

Recently a Lunch Tray reader asked a very basic question — how can one parent begin to change school food? Here’s what she wrote:

Recently my son started all day Kindergarten. I was extremely concerned when I looked at the menu for his school lunches and showed my husband. In addition, I’ve noticed that he’s coming home everyday with a dum dum in his back pack and all this week he’s told me that they’ve either had rice krispy treats or cheetos for snacks. We’re not super health food freaks but we do limit the amount of nasty stuff our kids can eat. I send him a healthy lunch 4 out of the 5 days of the week because he doesn’t want to eat the school lunch. My concern is the other children who cannot afford healthy meals and have no choice but to eat the crap the school is serving for lunch and breakfast. I would like to do something but I don’t know what. Where would you suggest I start?

I responded to the reader in a series three posts:

Part One offered advice for bringing about change at the classroom level (e.g., teacher rewards and snacks);
Part Two dealt with changing the school-wide food culture (fundraisers, wellness programs, etc.); and
Part Three talked about change at the district level.

Each of those three posts also contains numerous links from around the Internet to help the parent in her efforts.

Then I asked six of my personal school food “superheroes” to add their thoughts. You can read each of their posts here:

Janet Poppendieck – here.
Dana Woldow (San Francisco school food advocate) - here
Ed Bruske – here.
Mrs. Q – here.
Dr. Susan Rubin – here.
Chef Ann Cooper – here.

Collectively, these nine posts provide you with the best thinking of leading school food reformers on how to bring about change.

So get going, don’t get discouraged, and please share your experiences on The Lunch Tray either by leaving a comment or by emailing me using the Contact tab above.

Good luck, and know that you have a supportive community here on this blog.