[Ed. Note: Recently a Lunch Tray reader asked a very basic question — how can one parent begin to change school food? 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.
Now I’m yielding the floor to my personal school food “superheroes” — Janet Poppendieck, Mrs. Q, Chef Ann Cooper, Ed Bruske, and Dr. Susan Rubin — to get their thoughts.]
Today, we hear from Ed Bruske, aka “The Slow Cook.” Ed previously worked for twelve years as an award-winning reporter at the Washington Post (he was hired by none other than Bob Woodward). These days, Ed tends an “urban farm” in D.C., works as a personal chef for clients with special needs, and teaches “food appreciation” to school children. He was a co-founder of the group D.C. Urban Gardeners , sits on the advisory board of the D.C. Farm to School Network and contributes to food policy blogs such as Grist and La Vida Locavore, as well as the gardening blog Garden Rant. He is a contributing editor for the food access blog, DC Food for All, and is the blogger behind The Slow Cook and Better DC School Food.
Ed Bruske, aka “The Slow Cook”
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
So, how much time do you have to change the food your school serves?
I wasn’t even paying attention to the food at my daughter’s elementary school here in the District of Columbia until I had an opportunity to spend a week as an observer in the kitchen. Being a former newspaper reporter, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I’d stumbled into one of the most compelling stories of our times.
At the same time an epidemic of childhood obesity threatens to rob a generation of its health and bankrupt the nation with a $147 billion annual tab for weight-related illnesses, agribusiness and corporate food processors are making out like bandits. How could the federal government allow this to happen? Perhaps we’re all to blame for not paying closer attention. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture is actually complicit in the trend toward processed junk served as food in school. How can that be?
Yet, for all its faults, the school meal program is one of the most successful federal social endeavors of all time, right up there with Medicaid and Social Security. It started in the Great Depression as a means to help farmers sell their surplus, then morphed in the 1960s into an anti-hunger crusade. Now some see school food as a teachable moment in which the first lady grows a vegetable garden at the White House and kids learn life lessons in how to eat better and stay healthy.
The problem, of course, is that school food operations nationwide have been allowed to slip into a state of perpetual poverty, making them easy prey for corporate vendors and food processors. Meanwhile, our first inclination is to heap more government standards onto the program in the mistaken belief that we can somehow legislate our way out of this mess without providing the money schools need to serve healthy food.
What I’ve learned over a period of months photographing school meals, blogging about them and traveling around the country investigating the school meals program is that while the movement for healthier school food has clearly identified where cafeteria meals go wrong, it has failed to articulate a clear message about what a healthy school meal should look like and how it’s to be paid for. Too many Americans see this movement as “elitist” and unnecessary. They need to be convinced otherwise. In our current economic and political climate, moms need talking points they can take to their PTA meetings and win with.
For starters, the trend toward sugary, processed foods in school has been in place some 30 years now and the results are clear for anyone to see: it’s killing our kids. Sugar, sodas and junk foods made of refined grains are directly responsible for an epidemic of obesity and realted diseases: diabetes, hypertension, athereosclerosis and a surge in cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children. If this continues, the nation will go bankrupt trying to pay its ever-growing health care bills and we won’t have enough healthy young people to defend the country. This can’t go on.
The first order of business should be to remove unhealthy foods from schools, which makes it vitally important that Congress pass the Child Nutrition Act re-authorization currently before it. This legislation would require the USDA to adopt standards based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine that would lower calorie requirements for school meals, meaning schools would no longer be so pressed to use sugar as a cheap calorie boost. The IOM has also recommended bigger helpings of vegetables and whole grains that will help push sugar off the menu. In addition, this legislation would give the USDA for the first time authority to remove all non-nutritious foods from schools, meaning not just in the subsidized meal line but in vending machines, snack bars, school stores and a la carte lines. Parents need to contact their Congressmen and demand passage of this legislation immediately.
On the home front, every school district is required to have a wellness committee and wellness committees can control which foods are served in school. Parents should insist on a seat on their local wellness committee and participate in the deliberations.
In addition, federal law requires that any school district that hires a professional food service management company must establish a committee of parents, students and others to adivse on the menu. Parents should insist that these committees be established and that they be given a seat on them.
Where flavored milk is concerned, parents need to stand up against it and the dairy industry that is trying to scare schools into serving it. So far, the dairy industry is winning the propoganda war on chocolate and other sugary milk drinks by suggesting kids will collapse in a heap of osteoporosis and rickets if they are denied access these products. In fact, research shows that physical exercise–not milk–is the best way to build strong bones and exposure to sunlight is the best way to get Vitamin D. The dangers of sugar–and teaching kids to expect sugar with their food–far outweigh the benefits of drinking chocolate milk. Schools need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, and should be trying harder–along with parents–to teach kids to drink milk responsibly.
The best and easiest way to teach kids how to appreciate fresh produce may be to install salad bars in every cafeteria. As any parent can tell you, kids generally aren’t crazy about vegetables and are especially turned off by vegetabless cooked to death–the kind they most often see in the cafeteria. Many prefer their produce closer to a raw state, and they can get downright enthusiastic about creating their own meals. But salad bars are an additional expense. Parents need to work with their local schools to see how salad bars can be adapted to individual situations. There’s nothing to prevent local PTAs from raising the funds schools need to install salad bars.
Finally, local and state governments can contribute more financially to making school meal finances healthier. Here in the District of Columbia, a recently passed “Healthy Schools Act” makes our city one of the most generous in the country. The school system already supports the meal program with nearly $7 million in deficit food services spending every year, 25 percent of the budget. D.C. schools banned soft drinks in 2006, and serve free breakfast to any student who wants one. “Healthy Schools” upped the ante by picking up the tab for all students eligible for reduced-price meals. To the federal subsidies already in place, it added 10 cents for every breakfast, 10 cents for every lunch and a five-cent bonus for every lunch meal that contains a locally-grown component.
D.C. parents were involved in the drafting of the “Healthy Schools” legislation. We also were instrumental–along with a newly hired food services director who shares our views–in removing flavored milk, sugary cereals and breakfast treats like Pop-Tarts and Giant Goldfish Grahams from the menu. That’s the power of our daily blog–Better D.C. School Food–and proof of what Margaret Mead said: Never underestimate what a few determined individuals can accomplish.
Still, D.C. schools do not have an overarching plan to teach nutrition education. We’ve recently formed a Healthy D.C. School Food Committee to address that and to lobby for other changes that advance the aims of the “Healthy Schools Act.”
So don’t just complain about the food at school. Get busy and be part of the solution. And by all means keep blogging.
* * *
Thank you, Ed, for this thoughtful, informative — and inspiring — post. I encourage Lunch Tray readers to regularly check out Ed’s Better D.C. School Food. As I’ve said here many times, his blog is not only of interest to DC parents; it’s become one of my go-to sources for information on school food reform.
As the rest of my team of experts shares their thoughts in this “Superheroes” series in the coming days and weeks, I’ll post their responses here.
[Marvel Characters are TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]
Viki says
Thanks Ed!
Better DC School Food is one of my go to blogs for information.
I’ve learned so much by reading his blog.
How meals have to have certain amounts of calories…thus sugar is added to push the calories up.
His blog was where I learned that Strawberry milk was equal to Moountain dew in sugar YUCK! Why would we feed kids this and call it food?
Milk is white. If it isn’t it is a treat like ice cream. Something my kids don’t get on a daily basis.
Healthy Vending Machines says
Having nutritional oversight for these schools and our kids is so important! I can’t believe that 1 out of 3 kids are obese….actually yes I CAN believe that but I don’t want to. Replacing schools’ food/beverage options with healthy alternatives in the cafeteria and vending machines should be top priority right now.
bettina elias siegel says
Patrick – sent you an email off line today re: your machines. I’d like to know more. – Bettina
Maggie says
I’ve learned that while all schools have room to improve, I’m thankful to work at a school (elementary) that has no vending, no snack bar, no “extra” items sold beyond the meals. I’ve learned a great deal about other schools from reading various blogs.
I wonder about the calorie issue – (if I’m not mistaken, for the age levels I work with it will be a range of 550 to 650 instead of the set 664 minimum right now). I know right now that there is only minimum – we struggle to meet that and I do wonder how many go over on a regular basis? I’ll have to scope out some more menus, I guess. Anyway, as far as calories go, I don’t see we’d need to make any changes for the IOM recommendations . Some of the other points, yes, a few things here and there.
The one point I just can’t get on board with is the “salad bar in every school” as some sort of magic potion to solve all ills. I’m trying to locate legitimate estimates about the cost of operating a bar. The purchase price is actually a small part of the whole situation. Time, sanitation, supervision, space…all components to consider.
bettina elias siegel says
Maggie, I too, have questions about salad bars. Chef Ann Cooper says you stock them with USDA commodity food and therefore they’re cheap to maintain, but I’d like to know how that would work practically in my district, if, e.g., just our elementary school had a salad bar purchased with PTO funds. And there’s also sanitation, etc. as you mention. I’ll see what I can find out, and if you learn anything, let us know. – Bettina
Maggie says
I know, I’m looking at it just from the perspective of one school as well, the school that I work at . Space would be an issue…where to put a bar. Time from two angles – food prep and then supervision of the bar as well as time for students to serve themselves. I work at a school with 5 to 12 year olds. I know, someone is bound to chime in that their young child can easily manipulate tongs, spoons, and so on, but I’m thinking the amount of time for 95 – 5 to 6 year olds to serve themselves from a salad bar is going to take much longer than the time available.
Anyway, not wanting to sound like I don’t “get” the thoughts and positive aspects of the idea, but, again, just putting it out there that it might not be practical for all situations.