Tag Archives: school lunches

Make a Move for Kids’ Nutrition

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A week ago Friday, 500 chefs assembled at the White House (and hundreds more, including me, joined the ranks online) to kick off the Chefs Move to Schools program, part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to improve kids’ nutrition and eradicate childhood obesity within a generation. The plan is simple: chefs “adopt” a local school in hopes that they’ll be able to help transform the kids into healthier eaters. “Chefs are coming from the outside in and they’re bringing good food to the equation,” says Kim O’Donnel, chef and food writer extraordinaire.

chefs move to schoolsPart of that shift has to happen at a policy and administrative level. Right now, each child eligible for a free school lunch is allotted $2.68 per meal from the federal government. The buzz you’re hearing about school lunch reform (both the House and Senate have measures on the table) will wrangle an additional 6 cents and stricter nutritional standards (including on vending machines). That means there’s plenty of room for creative solutions, which is precisely why the first lady tapped this particular group. “Chefs are always making lemonade out of lemons,” says Kim.

The other side of the equation, though, is improving nutrition by getting kids to want to eat healthier–to imbue in them the pleasures of fresh food amidst this world of fast food and drive-thrus. Michelle Stern from What’s Cooking, a blog about cooking with kids for a better body, planet and community, said the first lady had several suggestions for the audience, from cooking demonstrations to planting a garden to working with teachers to introduce food into the curriculum.

But it’s not just chefs who can affect what kids want to eat—and do eat—in schools. You can too. Here are some ideas that bubbled up from my own experience and conversations with Kim and Michelle:

  • Get Kids Involved. “Once you get kids involved in one step, they immediately take ownership,” says Kim. “Even things like taking tortillas out of a package or learning to use a can opener … If they’re invested in the meal, they’re more likely to want to eat it.” You can do this for an entire class, your kids’ friends on a play date (see me and Noe on TV showing how to make food fun for kids here) or simply for your own kids. But it will make a difference.
  • Get Kids Growing. If you have a garden, invite kids in to explore. My husband planted our daughter a “candy tree” (really a cherry tomato plant) when she was less than a year old and the tradition stuck. This year, Noemi and I added a strawberry patch to the garden. It’s incredible to witness the sheer delight she gets from seeing snacks appear day after day. If you have kids and no garden, plant something—anything—in a pot or box or on a sunny sill just to give your kids that experience of watching something grow.
  • Share What You Know. You may well have more to offer your local schools than you think. Know how to bake bread? Fantastic … there’s a science project just begging to be mined. Are you from a country with a rich culinary heritage? Beautiful … a map, a story and a few dishes and you’ve got a social studies presentation. Do you have a computer? Print out or e-mail stories and recipes that you feel could be of help or inspiration to teachers or other parents … you can start right here on !

Was this move on Washington the end-all be-all shift to end childhood obesity? Not quite. “(The initiative) needs some tending and time to mature,” says Stern. O’Donnel agrees that this is a first step and adds, “there are small things we can do in an incremental fashion that are a lot better than not doing anything at all. Let’s not worry about how all of this is going to turn out three years from now. Let’s focus on what’s happening now.”

So this week I extend the challenge beyond chefs to parents and neighbors alike … let’s make a move.

Time for Lunch

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It seems I’m meant to talk about kids’ lunches right now. This past Tuesday, I did a segment on ABC-TV’s View from the Bay on making healthy lunches fun for kids. But even better than peanut butter banana spirals is the fact that, right now, we have an opportunity to be a part of re-framing the school lunch program in America. Here to tell us all about it and how we can get involved is one of our talented new Contributors, Kurt Michael Friese.

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Fifty-three years ago when President Truman signed the first School Lunch Act, he said at the ceremony that “In the long view, no nation is healthier than its children, or more prosperous than its farmers.”  Yet today in America we have steadily rising rates of childhood obesity and early-onset diabetes, so much so that if you were born after 2000 you have a startling one-in-three chance of developing diabetes before you’re old enough to vote.  If you’re a minority, that number rises to one-in-two.  America, too, has more prisoners than farmers now, and among those few remaining the average age is 57 and rising.  It seems America has failed President Truman’s vision in both the health of its children and the prosperity of its farmers. An interesting proposition: fewer farmers=less healthy food.

Yet we have the opportunity to better both sides of that equation. The Child Nutrition Act, the piece of legislation that governs what 30 million kids eat in school each day, is up for re-authorization and Slow Food USA has launched the Time for Lunch Campaign to bring about some needed change. Among the modifications they’re petitioning Congress to make are investing in healthy food (right now, schools are given roughly $1 day per student to spend on food); protecting against foods that are a proven risk to kids’ health; and fostering healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime, in part by getting kids and schools involved with local farms and gardens.

What you can do

•    Sign the petition. If you want to voice your desire for change, sign Slow Food’s petition to get real food in schools. As of this writing, more than 13,000 people have signed.

•    Go to an Eat-in. Think of an Eat-In as the marriage of the traditional picnic to the classic activism of the 1960’s Sit-Ins; this is old-fashioned activism with a hot dish to share.  In all 50 states, local Slow Food members and friends of the organization have put together more than 280 grass-roots potluck picnics to occur simultaneously on September 7th, Labor Day. From Bellingham to Bay St. Louis, Carlsbad to Cambridge, people will gather with their friends and neighbors to show their support for getting real food in schools and everyone—whether or not you’re a Slow Food member—is welcome.  Bring some food to share, preferably something homemade with local ingredients (for ideas on eco-friendly picnic ware, click here).

•    Spread the word. If you do attend a sit-in, or even if you just want to help, tell people—post on Facebook, tweet, send an e-mail blast, start a conversation in the school parking lot—about the Eat-ins and the need to bring real food into our schools.

What is “real food?” you may ask. The answer is simple: real food is food that is and does good from the ground up. It’s good for the earth, it’s good for those who grow it, it’s good for our bodies, it tastes good and makes our community, country and planet a better place. As Truman alluded to all those years ago, real food grown by real people is essential for our health–as individuals, as families and as a nation.

kurt-thumbKurt Michael Friese is the founding leader of Slow Food Iowa, serves on the Slow Food USA National Board of Directors, and is editor and publisher of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. He’s also Chef and co-owner of the Iowa City restaurant Devotay, a freelance food writer and photographer, and author of A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland.