Earlier this week, a TLT reader named Ivy Ken alerted me to a terrific blog post she wrote for the DC School Food Project, an advocacy group dedicated to improving the meals in Washington, DC.
In “Why You Should Let Your Kids Eat School Meals,” Ken argues that if all kids in her district ate school meals – not just the 76% of DC kids on free or reduced price lunch – every DC public school family would have skin in the game, and parents would start to agitate for better meals that benefit everyone.
Ken starts off by gently mocking the moms on social media who outdo each other with Pinterest-worthy, nutritionally-balanced bento box lunches, and then writes:
I’m here to tell you that you can stop the madness. Stop packing lunch! It costs money – money that Whole Foods will gladly take from you. It adds pressure to your life, as you berate yourself for not being good at it or for not kicking it up a notch and demanding that your kids do it themselves, you know, because life skills. Studies have shown that lunches packed from home are typically not healthier than lunches served at school, so that excuse is out the window too.
But the main reason to stop packing lunches is because communities have power.
Ken goes on to argue that if lunch-packing parents brought their nutritional knowledge and parental devotion to the cafeteria, it would:
. . . help every kid in DCPS feel that love and taste that delicious food.
That’s what all our kids deserve.
They need your advocacy. When they come home on Day One and say lunch was disgusting, call DCPS and SodexoMagic and tell them. (Or email us at dcschoolfoodproject@gmail.com and we’ll tell them.) When DCPS and SodexoMagic do not improve meal quality to the level you think it should be, join together with other parents, teachers, and students to make collective demands. You have that right! You have that privilege. You have that responsibility.
We need you, parents. We need you to put the lunchbox down, walk slowly away from the kitchen counter, and demand that the taxes you have already paid for the lunches that are provided at your kids’ school be put to the best possible use.
In principle, I couldn’t agree more.
Full participation in a district’s meal program would not only stimulate advocacy, it would also bring in more revenue to invest in better food. And while Ken wants parents to speak out at the local level, her proposal might also raise their awareness of the deeper issue: Congress’s chronic and shameful underfunding of federal school meal programs. So while Ken imagines DC parents calling up their district, my own fantasy takes place on Capitol Hill, where throngs of parents brandishing lunch trays would finally start holding their elected officials accountable on this critical issue.
But here’s how I know there may be a problem with Ken’s proposal: Even while I was actively pushing for better school meals in Houston ISD and publicly sharing all my efforts here on TLT, I still packed a lunch every single day for my own two kids. I never hid this information from my readers, even though I knew some might call me a hypocrite for opting out of the very program I was trying to improve. But I was willing to endure that potential criticism for the sake of my kids’ daily nutrition.
Ken is correct that home-packed lunches are generally less nutritious than school meals, but those statistics take into account all home-packed lunches, including those consisting of a can of soda and a bag of chips. It would be disingenuous to say that parents with adequate means and some nutrition education can’t do better than most schools. Maybe not on a nutrient-by-nutrient basis, but definitely in terms of offering fewer highly-processed foods.
And while I was never a very creative lunch-packer, I also recognize that for many parents, thanks to social media, the home-packed lunch has lamentably become more than just a way to feed one’s kids. It’s also come to signify parental devotion, culinary skill, artistic ability, socioeconomic status and more. (See: “Lunch Packing as a Competitive Sport?“) I just don’t see the bento-box set trading in their heart-shaped sandwich cutters for the still-mediocre processed fare offered in many public schools.
So I think we have no choice but to acknowledge the deep emotions that motivate many parents to pack a lunch. Yet Ken is right when she says we need to raise their awareness of what’s going on in the cafeteria and why it matters.
I’m not sure how we do this, but maybe one approach is showing these parents what school meals could look like, if only the program were better funded. Maybe we share photos of superior school meals in other countries – not in the pointless and misleading way I excoriated in “Why I’m Fed Up With Those Photos of ‘School Lunches Around the World,” but in a meaningful way that would inform and inspire parents to demand better? Or maybe we need to highlight the beautiful school food in progressive districts here at home, the ones with superstar school food directors and, very often, outside funding from organizations like the Life Time Foundation or the Orfalea Foundation.
Would that approach spur their interest in advocating for better meals in their own district and nationwide? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that most lunch-packing parents would happily forego that daily chore in favor of handing their child a meal card – if only they liked what they saw in the cafeteria. The trick is to harness that sentiment and turn it into political action.
Thanks to Ivy Ken for alerting me to her excellent post, which got my own wheels turning. And if you have thoughts to share, I’d love to hear them! Just leave a comment below.
Do you love The Lunch Tray? ♥♥♥ Follow TLT on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! You can also subscribe to Lunch Tray posts, and be sure to download my FREE 50-page guide, “How to Get Junk Food Out of Your Child’s Classroom.”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2017 Bettina Elias Siegel
Laurel says
The other hidden problem with having your child get lunch at school is the ridiculously short lunch periods many schools offer the kids. Our district had to fight for 20 minutes of seated lunch time (not counting time spent in the lunch line) but in practice, it’s just 20 minutes total. If every child went through the lunch line there is no way the kids at the end would have time to eat their meal before the lunch period was over, no matter the quality of the lunch served.
Wendy says
Laurel makes a good point, but increasing the length of lunch time would also have to be advocated for as a part of any effort. I live in a district with plenty of parents who, like you, pack and advocate simultaneously and the district has not been receptive to change. It is slow and laborious. While many parents do see the Pinterest lunch as a way of showing their love and devotion, many of us would also be happy to show it in other ways if we and our kids felt the school lunch was both tasty and nutritious. It would be one less thing to have to do in the evening or early in the morning.
michelle smith says
So you don’t have to show great meals from other countries,there are plenty of schools that are doing wonderful school meals right here. Check out Dayle Haye’s School Meals that Rock on Twitter or Face Book…Maybe we should be putting those on Pinterest. And they are not all supplemented with outside funds. We have to have more cohesive support for change from all parents, even those that pack their kids lunches. Like you! Thank you for all you do!
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Yes – I agree! I often share posts from Dayle’s inspiring feed – and did so in that post about school meals from around the world, too. But to the extent some districts (because of labor costs, size of the free/reduced population, lack of facilities, etc.) can’t match those exemplary meals, I’d love to get parents more up in arms over school meal funding as well. Thank you, as always, for your comments and your advocacy, Michelle!