Kim Severson's piece about school food in last week's New York Times food section discusses some of the barriers to producing decent and tasty school food: cooking skills! There are plenty of others, as detailed in Dana Woldow's terrific three-minute video detailing the situation in San Francisco's public schools--as seen by kids in that system. As the kids put it, "We need better school food!"
On the day the Times piece appeared, I was doing a tour of a couple of New York City school lunch programs. One was to a small K-to-9th grade school in the low-income Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. This school may not have had much money, but it had everything else needed to make school food work: a devoted and smart principal, a committed staff, and a school food director who set high standards. The food looked, smelled, and tasted good, and the kids were eating it.
School kids are bombarded with junk food all day long. If they didn't eat so much of it, they might eat real food and support the school lunch program to a greater degree.
How did this school perform this miracle? Easy. Everyone cared that kids got fed and liked what they were eating.
The next stop was Brooklyn Tech. Same food; different experience. If caring was present, it didn't show.
For one thing, the junk-food vending machines were in the lunch room (not a good sign). Worse, they were open for business (a flat-out violation of federal rules). Even worse, nobody seemed to be doing anything about it, at least as far as I could see.
My conclusion: school food can be really good, even in poor neighborhoods, if everyone involved cares about it. Can we teach schools to care? Of course we can.
And officials can make it harder for schools not to care. The New York City Education Department says schools have to cut way down on bake sales, with exceptions for parent groups, parent-teacher associations, and birthday celebrations.
This policy will undoubtedly elicit complaints, but I don't have much sympathy for complainers. School kids are bombarded with junk food from multiple sources all day long. If they didn't eat so much of it, they might eat real food and support the school lunch program to a greater degree. That's why those open vending machines are so troubling. The messages they send are, "It's OK to eat junk food in school," and, "It's OK to disobey federal rules any time we want to." Not a good idea.
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I've never understood why kids nowadays eat burgers and snacks for lunch instead of a healthy meal. Is the art of cooking gone? When I was in school (long, long ago) I still remember the basics, a meat and three vegetables, milk and ice cream. What's wrong with that menu?
As someone from the far side of the pond it appears we have much the some problems. However while schools are very important the most important thing must be the home, children need to learn positive food habits from there. At home when I was young we generally had our meals on trays in front of the TV (the house was small so a seperate room wasn't an option to be fair) thats not good and I had a poor diet in my early adulthood and health problems which may or may not have been related. Now I have a family from the very start we eat together a 'proper' meal most days at the table no TV etc, even if myself or my wife are at work the rest of us eat. The Children have always eaten smaller versions of what we eat. They now have a 'good' attitude towards food. Of course they love going to 'Eddiesrockets' (An American 1950's theme restaurant chain) for burgers chilli fries etc but equally they love it if after mass we go to a local pub for a good traditional roast-- Beef (Meath is cattle country I fear some of my wifes relations wouldn't talk to us if we ordered lamb) vegetables etc. We can not expect teachers to do everything they are our children we are responsible. Yes I know that not everyone has that attitude.
I have mixed reaction to this article and have not responded as quickly as I may have. Marion Nestle is one of the foremost experts on food policy, but I disagree with her on this issue.
If we substitute "better" for "really good" in her conclusion, then I'm with her 100%. However, that is not the case.
My concern is simply this - schools are loosing money hand over fist and I bet that the meal that she looked at costs $1.00 more than federal reimbursement rates. So if the school has enough teachers, and can afford that kind of additional expense, it's a huge win for the school. However, a school district that serves even as few as a 1000 reimbursable meals a day, looses the equivalent of three teacher salaries each year at that cost. Few school will go down that road.
The fact is, good food costs more.
There are huge improvement that can be made by smarter management, better selection, and just making tastier options can increase participation and get more reimbursements into schools. But at the end of the day, schools are loosing on average $.35 per meal, and large urban school districts on average are loosing closer to $.70 per meal. It's just not sustainable.
As long as the federal government under-funds school meals, food will always be in budgetary competition with education dollars. And the moment you have a school board budget argument about spending more money on better food vs. books for the classroom, the war is lost. Not because food is going to loose every time, but rather the construct of the argument leads to the students loosing - no matter what is decided.
What we need is both more caring adults AND more money for better food.
http://www.healthyschoolscampaign.org/blog