“Wilma” is an anonymous child nutrition professional who works in an undisclosed school district somewhere in the U.S. She and I have corresponded a bit by email and I’ve appreciated her valuable perspective from “behind the lunch line.” Recently Wilma had a moment of frustration and sent me an email which I felt ought to be required reading for any public school parent concerned about school food. I asked her if I could post it here, and she agreed.
I’ve sat on this email for a while, debating whether or not to send it… and then your post this morning ["School Food Reform: Can't We All Get Along (We Can and We Have To)"] hit home. I almost reached a point where I wanted to throw my hands in the air and say “to the (hell) with this. . . ” Then I visited some sweet 2nd graders who reminded me why I do what I do.
In your post, you say we all want the same things and I truly believe we do, but I really am feeling worn down at the variety of opinions from the community for what’s best for the kids.
Maybe I need to vent about my parent hot button here in my district, or gain a refreshed perspective of the parent’s side with a pep talk, so humor me as I lay on your cyber-food-reform-therapist couch (because I think you have empathy for both sides, so I’ve hired you as my therapist) and vent . . .
I sit here and wonder: Ultimately, where is school food reform headed?
All organic?
No added sugar?
No genetically modified foods (soy, corn, ect)?
Be the birthday cupcake cop? (nooooo thank you!)
Only oatmeal for breakfast?
I feel like all the different reform voices I follow on the Internet, and my parents here, seem to have their own personal agendas and ideas of what reform should focus on. Is it physically possible for the district to remove all added sugar? Is it reasonable to request all organic? Where’s the limit on what the government can provide vs. what you can expose your children too at home? I have my personal philosophies on food, and I’ve found that everyone I talked too has an idea of what “healthy” is. I’m sure you won’t be amazed that everyone’s “healthy” is different. How does a government program take everyone’s definition of “healthy” and apply it to the school lunch program?
I have a friend who runs an organic co-op who believes that no one should cook their food. She’s a walking testimony of being obese with diabetes (in her early 20′s) before and now runs 7 miles a day, diabetes-free, and wearing a size 0. Should we move to an all raw diet? It would save on labor not having to cook the food. . . I know that’s an extreme example, but I like to think it gets the point across that we all have a unique relationship with food.
My other issue is that my parent base here never (maybe I should say rarely instead of never) recognizes a win. You know this reform thing moves slowly… as most government things do, but when there’s a win you should appreciate it. I feel like I’m just getting hit with “you should” and “why don’t you” all the time. Let’s stop and celebrate that we have fresh salads daily. And kids eat them (woo hoo!).
I also feel like my parent base doesn’t understand that I am trying to menu for such an extremely large span of socio-economic backgrounds. From the very poor to the ridiculously wealthy. . . How can I maintain my efficiency as a large district, and cater to the wide spectrum of taste diversity while {insert any reformer’s agenda platform here}, and stay in my tiny little budget? It gets old real fast when they don’t believe I’m on their side, and they think I sold my soul to Pepsico/Frito Lay for a rebate on chips . . . It’s really easy to shut down and just ignore parents when they come to you so defensive about their “platform” for school meals. Aggression towards your school’s child nutrition staff is not going to solve the problem. It probably will make it worse.
As a district, we are moving to fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains, scratch cooking more, frozen over canned, whole muscle meats when possible and also focus on reducing sodium. There is still MUCH more progress to be made, but we are moving towards the goal of more real food. I really struggle with the parents who only care about their one hot button issue, whether it be sodium, whole grains, added sugar, dyes and processed products, organic. Where do we draw the line? How do we (as a collective whole) define successful food reform?
So Therapist Bettina, what would you say to a poor little child nutrition professional who feels beaten up and under appreciated for the efforts that she does?
Here’s a slightly edited excerpt of my answer to Wilma:
I agree wholeheartedly with you that there are a ridiculous number of agendas out there, and many of them strike me as ranging from nice-but-it’s-never-gonna-happen (100% organic, e.g) to scary-Food-Police (e.g., Get all sugar out of the food. All the sugar? Really??) And I’ve also seen, just as you have, how some parents from upper income levels have no clue about the challenges of introducing new, more healthful foods to those children who may not be getting exposed to similar foods at home or in restaurants.
Back when I was mulling over this exact quandry, I happened to talk to a friend about it and she said, in passing, that all we really want is to see “more whole food” on the lunch tray. And I thought – yeah, that sums it up pretty well for me. Just more stuff in its original condition (muscle meat vs. nugget, baked potato vs. tater tot, fruit vs. juice slushie). And then to that I’d add a strong desire to move away from “carnival food” — sandwiches instead of pizza, a bowl of soup instead of a corn dog (even if the pizza and corn dog are “better” in some way.) Speaking personally, I don’t care right now if it’s organic and local, or conventionally grown and shipped from Brazil. Those issues are important, but seem like battles for another day . . .
And now, Wilma, I’m sorry to say that our time is up. You can pick up your bill from the receptionist outside. :-)
Even on the HISD Food Services Parent Advisory Committee, I’ve seen a spectrum of views about what the “ideal” school food would look like. And I’ve also seen how other parents can quickly dismiss (or entirely overlook) hard-won school food improvements if they don’t relate to their particular hot-button issue, or because they’re too busy gearing up for the next battle. You can imagine, then, the frustration of child nutrition professionals who are trying to satisfy everyone’s competing agendas on limited funds, and who are often unfairly regarded as The Enemy.
How would you, the TLT readership, respond to Wilma?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with you. I think what you describe is the lowest common denominator of good nutrition: whole foods, cooked in ways that mirror home cooking (not shipped in already frozen and shot full of stuff that makes them tweak your dopamine receptors in ways that homecooked food never could), and menus that look like home-cooked food, too (totally agree with the “carnival food” thing).
The best part of the lowest common denominator menu: it can be done almost as cheaply as the current carnival food menu. We’re talking typically cheap foods like chicken drumsticks, beans, sweet potatoes, etc. that are also nutritional powerhouses.
Janet Poppendieck talks about this in her book: “home cooking” for a lot of students is fast food or frozen prepared meals purchased from a grocery store. I want to say that even the concept of what “home cooking” means is privileged in a lot of ways. If the idea is that school food should look like home food, the bad news is that it already does.
If “home cooking” is privileged, it’s not for reasons of expense. Plenty of from-scratch homecooked meals can be made at a minimum of expense.
I’ll bet a lot of the fast food served at dinner time comes from the fact that both parents are working 40+ hrs/week and they’re tired. Many of my colleagues at my professional gov’t office are bringing restaurant food home for dinner, for themselves and their young children. They might or might not be aware of the nutritional issues with this plan, but they are doing it nonetheless because it’s the only way they know how to squeeze a family dinner in among all the other challenges for their time.
Cooking a few meals on the weekend and eating leftovers during the week is also an option.
Thanks for giving “Wilma” a platform, Bettina. I so understand what she is saying! As co-chair of my school district’s student nutrition committee for the past 8 years, I get exactly the same kind of feedback from parents and other advocates – some demand farm-to-school, some want only organic, some want to ban HFCS, etc. – and few understand the USDA regs which govern the meal program, or the limits of what can be accomplished on the inadequate government reimbursement.
“Fixing school food” becomes a kind of glass-half-empty, glass-half- full exercise. Sometimes I get so discouraged by how much more we need to do, and how much harder it will be, given that we have already harvested all of the low hanging fruit. But then I look at where we started, and how far we have come, because even just taking baby steps every year adds up to a lot of progress over time, and I feel inspired to keep moving.
When I first got involved with school food in 2002, I created a visual aid which I still use to this day. I call it the “Healthy School Food Continuum”, and you can see it here (although I will warn you that I have not updated it for a few years.)
http://www.sfusdfood.org/ppt/hsc/index.htm
This link takes you to the “evolving” model of the continuum, on which you can track our progress, but I also have the original version I used back in 2002, which is just a piece of posterboard, with pictures at one end of all the junk food being sold/served at that time in our schools, and underneath, the flames of hell licking at the soda bottles and chips….then on the other side, pictures of the food we wanted to be serving, the all organic, locally grown, politcally correct fruits and vegetables grown on the worker-owned co-op farm where everyone had great health care benefits, and the free range, non-corn-fed animals who never had an unhappy day in their lives until they were turned into school lunches. Up above this “vision” were rainbows and all the angels singing. Connecting both sides was a thick black line – the continuum.
I showed this poster to our nutrition committee and explained to them that we were starting on the flames-of-hell side, and that we would probably never reach the promised land of the angels and rainbows, but that as long as we were moving towards it every year, and away from the flames of hell, then that would be how we would measure our progress and that we would have to be content with that. Now, 8 years later, I still use that poster to explain our work to those just starting to try to grasp the issue, and to cheer our group on when we get discouraged. The last time I did this presentation this past fall, I was happily surprised to realize that in 8 years, we have come more than 3/4 of the way towards the side of the angels, and that the flames of hell are far, far behind us.
Maybe “Wilma” and others like her, who are the real heroes in the fight for better school food, who do their work day in and day out without benefit of media adulation or hundreds of throusands of outside dollars to support their programs, might find comfort and inspiration in making their own Healthy School Food Continuum and reminding themselves of just how far they have come against overwhelming odds.
Dana: That graphic is very helpful! I may steal your idea.
I would say . . .
GOOD for you for giving a hoot! Good for everyone that is in some way affected by the efforts you put forth. I am a resident in Altona, NY and I can only hope that someone as caring as you would be involved with the food at my school. Fortunately, there is someone; me! Who am I? Not really anyone and that is what I have decided to change. I am going into my second semester to become a nutritionist. In the meantime I have been speaking with the lunch manager at school, getting a feel for “where we are at” as far as the food goes. I was not a horrified as I had expected to be. We have removed deep-fryers and put in salad bars but there is still much to be done. I can sympathize with you about victories that should be celebrated, only being shrugged off or not noticed at all. While I have not attacked my school over it’s food, I have been angry on the inside for how little is being done, even in light of all the nutrition knowledge that is out there. Luckily, I read Susan Levine’s School Lunch Politics and have a MUCH better understanding of all the forces involved with school lunches and breakfasts. Where is all of this going? Not really anywhere; the point is that people “just don’t get it!” until they truly WANT to get it. Until then you will have uneducated opinions and vicious attacks based on fear; you will have people that don’t care and don’t want to know. I commend you, I am inspired by you, I am uplifted by hearing your thoughts. Thank you is what I have to say. We will have a nutrition revolution in this country; maybe before worst comes to worse, maybe not. But I will see you there! Good Luck Wilma! By the way; I am 27 with two young children, and very low income…too old, busy and poor to start educating and make a difference? I think not!!! Love for the people; hope for a revolution.
Thank you Wilma. As Bettina knows and others may recall, I’m also a child nutrition professional, food service worker…lunch lady. *smile*
I work in an elementary school (one of 10 in a medium? side district) as a head cook, so my boss, the district’s food service director, deals with more of the suggestions and changes, but I do assist with menu planning and have served on district committees, and do encounter the suggestions from parents who might be eating with a child (may I admit I cringe most of all when the sentence starts with “I don’t know why you don’t just…”)?
I can only agree with what Wilma has said. Her experience is not a isolated case. I am happy she was able to state what I had not been able to edit into a coherent response!
I’m amazed and saddened by those who wish to make changes who would suggest that the food service department be left out of the discussion. We’re not the bad guys…really. I appreciate Bettina’s blog because the folks here are aware of the constraints we face and look for solutions that are possible and attainable.
And I love the continuum – I hope we will get to the angels and rainbows someday. But,yes, getting everyone to agree what the “perfect” program looks like, that’s a big step.
Maggie – I haven’t forgotten you, my other CNP!
I love that you both are reading and commenting here – it’s so important to get all sides in the discussion, and no one is more aware of the obstacles (and the realistic possibilities) than people who do this for a living everyday. – Bettina
Thank you Maria for your words! I appreciate the encouragement from all the TLT readers. Keep it up!
Dana, What a great idea- tracking the baby steps… As I think back to my career in child nutrition we HAVE come a long way!
Bettina, thanks for allowing this platform for discussion from all sides of the lunch tray. It truly is a great tool and resource for everyone who cares about child nutrition in schools, home, and everywhere in-between.
OK, that’s a medium “size” district not “side”.
shame on me! i am guilty of appearing ungrateful and for lobbing too many “you shoulds” over the fence. i say “appearing” because I’m not actually ungrateful for the baby steps that have already happened. what i am is deeply saddened that the baby steps and progress made is not enough. there are still kids left behind who choose the carnival food every morning and every lunch and leave the newer healthy fare on the line.
as wilma said “You know this reform thing moves slowly… as most government things do”
while reform moves slowly kids are suffering. it’s hard to celebrate when there is still so much to do and young kids are so negatively impacted.
this post did inspire me to write a thank you note to our CNS director for implementing a one week lower sugar breakfast pilot in one SBISD elementary school. read that here – http://tinyurl.com/35y649f
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