Fork in the road

Let’s (re)do school lunch 18

lucnchAre corndogs a vegetable? There has been a cultural revolution in this country over the last 50 to 75 years, a sort of intellectual cleansing that has removed from most people’s minds any understanding of food, of cooking, of the pleasures of the kitchen and table, and replaced it with the language of the drive-thru, the shopping mall, and the convenience store. Michael Pollan recently addressed this problem well.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our schools, where our kids are not taught about food and cooking, not even the “Home Economics” of my high school years. No, instead the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) teaches something called “Family and Consumer Science.” There you have it—we are not raising citizens, we are raising consumers. Our children are being taught one way of surviving in this modern, fast-paced world: the way of conspicuous consumption.

A recent federal mandate required that every school district write and implement a “Wellness Policy” that addressed, among other things, the epidemic of obesity and childhood diabetes now rampant in our youth. This was a noble endeavor; however, it needed to be more than a mere academic and bureaucratic exercise. What is called for here is a true revolution, one that, like all revolutions, will be very difficult to conduct in the face of the stalwart forces of the status quo. The fear of change is a very difficult one to overcome.

Like all of us, our children are what they eat, and they cannot be expected to learn and grow effectively on fat, salt, and corn-sweetener-laden government-subsidized surplus.  What is offered to them today is the result of the entrenched bureaucracy at the USDA, the immoveable object of parental indifference, and the irresistible force of union and administrative fear of change. Unlike the rest of the student’s school day, the lunch period is conducted not by the curricular side of the school system, but by the maintenance side. Meanwhile, the hardworking members of the ICCSD Food Service staff are restrained by inefficient kitchens, ludicrous time restraints, and a budget that is laughable at best. How well would you expect to eat on $1.60 per day?

We need a paradigm shift. From the parents and the rest of the taxpayers in the district, we need an understanding that spending more money is not “just throwing money at the problem,” it is an investment in the health and well-being of our children and our community. Parents must no longer choose to ignore the situation to the proven detriment of their children. From the teachers’ unions we need the flexibility to see that there are other models for the school day and the school year that can be effective besides the one we have in place, which was created over 100 years ago to fit an agrarian calendar so that kids could be home to tend to the farm when needed. The school year in the U.S. is 180 days long. It is 240 in Germany—and 243 in Japan. School days and even school weeks are longer too. A longer school day will provide the time necessary for children to eat healthily. Today they have 30 minutes or less, and most of that is spent standing in line.

If we move lunch away from the maintenance side of the equation and over to the curriculum, food will gain the attention that is necessary for it to demonstrate its own importance. We cannot continue to teach one thing in health class and peddle another in the lunch room. Teaching about food, its history, its culture, its etiquette, and its importance to our health and community will ensure a more productive and enjoyable future for our kids. To those who say “don’t try to tell me what I can and can’t feed my kids,” I say this: First, the USDA is already doing that, and in a demonstrably unhealthy way. Second, they may be your kids, but they’re our future.

This Labor Day, Slow Food USA will formally launch its Time for Lunch campaign with “Eat-Ins” scheduled all over the country—as of this writing, 227 in 49 states (step up, Mississippi!). In partnership with Sustainable Table, The Center for Ecoliteracy, Roots of Change, Edible Communities, and other organizations,  Slow Food is calling on Congress, during its reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, to put real food on our children’s lunch trays. To do so, they must double the federal contribution to school lunches from $1 to $2 per meal.

Modeled on the sit-ins of the 60s, these Eat-Ins are potluck picnics to raise awareness. They are a call to action for our kids, alongside Slow Food’s signature celebration of local, sustainable, traditional food. Here’s a simple salad that’s delicious and ample enough to bring to to an Eat-In near you.

Anchovy, Goat Cheese and Romaine Salad
8 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon kosher salt
40 anchovy fillets—rinsed and chopped
6 ounces red wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon black pepper
6 heads romaine lettuce—rinsed and coarsely chopped
12 ounces fresh goat cheese—crumbled
1 cup red onion—minced

Place garlic, salt, and anchovy fillets in food processor; pulse until chopped. Add red wine vinegar, and then puree. Slowly add in olive oil while motor is running. Add black pepper. Toss greens with vinaigrette. Garnish with goat cheese and red onion.

 

Kurt Michael Friese is chef/owner of Devotay in Iowa City, serves on the Slow Food USA Board of Directors, and is editor-in-chief of the magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. His new book, A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland, was published in August 2008. He lives with his wife Kim in rural Johnson County.

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  1. Morgan Posted 10:35 am
    17 Aug 2009

    Here's an intriguing interview with Mark Winne, who is championing efforts to close the food gap. The good news is that 10% of public schools in the US are participating in small farm to school projects. Let's boost it to 90%.http://www.ecohearth.com/eco-zine/eco-heroes/824-closing-the-food-gap-an-interview-with-mark-winne.html 

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  2. amylynn1022 Posted 8:28 am
    18 Aug 2009

    When I was growing up we only had _20_ minutes for lunch, most of which was spent in line.  I remember that there was a comment about that in the local paper and I swear that the person who was responding in favor of these ridiculously short lunch periods managed to say both 1) if they had more time than that they would just get in trouble and 2) all these kids have appaling table manners.  Duh!  Maybe if we didn't have to wolf down our food our table manners would be better.  But we also would have  been more likely to notice how dreadful our food was.  I think the solution is simple--this is a case where what is good for the geese is good for the gander.  Change the rules so that all the school district employees, right to the top, have the same lunch breaks as the students and not a minute more.  If you can pressure them to eat the same food so much the better. 

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    1. lyrivyzy Posted 5:49 pm
      18 Aug 2009

      I'm a teacher. I usually eat lunch in less than ten minutes, sometimes not at all. I used my own money to purchase a minifridge for my classroom last year because any food I kept in the room got eaten by rats. We didn't have a staff fridge or very much other equipment we might need.
      If I had any control over the school schedule, do you think I would have 7th graders sit through 100 minute math periods with no break?
      Sorry if I sound upset, but that's because I am. Punishing the teachers (who are already being punished in that way, we only get breaks when the kids do something else -- like lunch) is not the answer. I would LOVE it if the kids got healthier lunches and more time to eat them.

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      1. amylynn1022 Posted 8:26 am
        19 Aug 2009

        I apologize.  I should have read my message more closely before I posted.  I have several teachers in my family and I know that they get as little or less time to eat than the students.  I also know that they are not the ones determining the lunch periods.  I was directing my comments at the administrators and state regulators that set these idiotic rules.  My experience is that they are not as a rule eating twenty minute or less lunches in a school cafeteria and are less than empathetic towards those that do.  And I don't imagine that they have rats eating their lunches, either.  Disgusting.And, yes, 100 minutes of math without a break is ridiculous.  And I like math.  Even in college classes more than 80 minutes almost always had break periods.

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  3. nestwife Posted 8:54 am
    18 Aug 2009

    I don't think this could possibly be correct:"Slow Food is calling on Congress, during its reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, to put real food on our children’s lunch trays. To do so, they must double the federal contribution to school lunches from $1 to $2 per meal."How could Slow Food not be aware that the federal contribution is already $2.68 per "free" lunch, not $1? I think what Slow Food means is that the federal contribution needs to be about doubled, to about $5 per "free lunch"; that way, after labor and overhead expenses, there could be more than $2 left to pay for the food, where currently most school districts can only spend about $1 of that $2.68 on food.     Five dollars per lunch is not an exhorbitant amount of money; schools in Alaska already receive well over $4 per lunch from the government, supposedly because of their higher transportation costs. But the rising cost of all food over the past 18 months has impacted the lower 48 states too. If every state received the same reimbursement as Alaska, our kids would be eating a lot better, but just one extra dollar is not going to get the job done.

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  4. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

    Kurt Michael Friese Posted 10:02 am
    18 Aug 2009

    "Nestwife" -Perhaps I could have been clearer.  It refers to the amount actually spent on food.Under the National School Lunch Program, the USDA reimburses schools
    for every meal served: $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a
    reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. Since these
    reimbursements must also pay for labor, equipment and overhead costs,
    schools are left with only $1.00 to spend on food. How can schools be
    expected to feed our children and protect their health with only a
    dollar a day? It’s time to build a strong foundation for our children’s
    health by raising the reimbursement rate to $3.57.
    More details on the Slow Food platform are here

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  5. nestwife Posted 10:33 am
    18 Aug 2009

    Thank you for the clarification. Just FYI, I have been involved with trying to improve school meals in my community for over 7 years. While a free lunch reimbursement of $3.57 would be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (and certainly better than the current 09-10 scchool year reimbursement of $2.68 per free lunch), it is NOT enough to fix everything that is wrong with the school meal program, and provide our kids with the scratch cooking and fresh "real" food which we all want. The typical school district spends about 45% of every dollar of revenue on food, another 45% on labor, and the remaining 10% on overhead, which includes pest control, garbage collection, utilities, the costs of running a nutrition department office, etc. An extra dollar of reimbursement is only going to yield about 45 cents more for food! The only way to get the $2< which is needed as a minimum for food alone is to both increase the total reimbursement to about $5 and also to require that a baseline amount (like $2) MUST be spent on the food.And all of that does not even begin to address the need for additional separate funding to rebuild school kitchens so that they can do scratch cooking. Then there will of course be higher labor costs to pay for the higher level of skills needed for folks with actual culinary training to do the cooking. In my home district, only an 8th grade education is required for a job in a school cafeteria. With all due respect to the hardworking folks who are staffing our school cafeterias, they do not have the skills to scratch cook, and it is not likely they can be retrained to the level one could expect of a culinary school graduate.Let's not do things by half measures. If we are all going to be taking the time to organize people to write to Congress and demand higher funding for the child nutrition act reauthorization, then let's ask for an amount which might reasonably make an improvement in the current situation. Lowballing that figure at $1 really does the whole movement a disservice. One dollar is NOT going to "fix school food!" It might cover the cost of local fresh produce instead of canned veggies, but who is going to cook those local carrots and peas and parsnips into a tasty stew - the worker who has never used more than a box cutter and a can opener? And where is that person going to do the cooking - in the school kitchen which currently has just a freezer and a rethermalization oven?We need a reimbursement of $5 per free lunch (to cover higher costs for non commodity fresh food and higher labor) plus sparate additional funds for rebuilding school kitchens. That is the only way we will "fix" school food and it is sure going to cost more than $1 per lunch!

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  6. Daniel Saltman's avatar

    Daniel Saltman Posted 12:14 pm
    18 Aug 2009

    I hear a lot of schools are really trying to turn this around. Removing vending machines form school property and replacing them with juices and other healthy snacks.

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  7. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

    Kurt Michael Friese Posted 12:17 pm
    18 Aug 2009

    This is undoubtedly a long-term process and we would also like to
    see more spent on school lunch programs year-over-year.  Slow Food USA
    did a lot of research with industry experts and school lunch advocates
    to come up with a number that we felt was attainable. $5 would be great, but in budget times like this it's simply unrealistic to think we could get such a provision passed.I agree that our children deserve better and the first thing
    we need to do is get Congress to address that need.  The actual amount
    will be debated by our legislators, so it's important to not only
    debate the need for more funding on Grist.org, but also to write our
    legislators to make sure our opinions are heard when the
    reauthorization is put before Congress. 

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  8. nestwife Posted 12:46 pm
    18 Aug 2009

    Asking for an amount of money from Congress which you think is possible is fine, but please don't mislead people (or Congress) into thinking that $1 more per free lunch is going to fix anything. That just leads to even more unreasonable expectations for what schools "should" be providing to students, while letting the federal government off the hook for properly funding child nutrition. After all, with a $1 increase, our legislators would be able to say, "Well, we gave the schools the money they asked for, so why haven't they used it to fix school food?" I get it that money is tight, and that we may not get $5 per meal, but why not at least ask for what is the true cost? That way, if Congress settles on $3.57 or whatever, it will be on them to explain to the citizenry why they are shortchanging the child nutrition programs.

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    1. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

      Kurt Michael Friese Posted 6:28 am
      19 Aug 2009

      You and I are close to agreeing here.  I'd just change where you say "please don't mislead people (or Congress) into thinking that $1 more per free lunch is going to fix anything...." - to - "...is going to fix EVERYthing."  And we have no delusions that it will fix everything.  But doubling the amount spent on ingredients, incentivizing the purchase of local, sustainable food, protecting against food that put children at risk, teaching children healthy habits, and building a School Lunch Corps will have a big impact on health (and on the local economy, BTW).  Please do read the platform.It took nearly 20 years to get Congress to raise minimum wage by a dollar, and that's something they don't even have to budget for.  If they'll do this, they'll see rapid return on investment and that's the best way to get anyone to do anything again - fast ROI.

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  9. rob8522 Posted 8:26 am
    19 Aug 2009

    Actually a change is much needed in the food habit of children at lunch breaks in schools.Designer Jeans   

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  10. nestwife Posted 8:39 am
    19 Aug 2009

    Thanks - I have read the Time for Lunch platform - have you? Are you sure you understand it?As I pointed out earlier, asking Congress for $3.57 (or $1 more than the free lunch reimbursement in 2008-09) is not going to double the amount spent on ingredients (as you seem to think), not even close. At best schools might have 45 cents extra to spend on ingredients out of that dollar. In the absence of any stipulation that the extra $1 be spent entirely on food, the rest will go for labor and overhead. The Time for Lunch platform does not call for any such stipulation; therefore, it is misleading to claim that an extra dollar of reimbursement would double the amount spent on ingredients.Likewise, incentivizing farm to school is no guarantee that more districts will participate, because the challenges of implementing farm to school often go beyond the simply financial. Here's an article that sheds some light on this issuehttp://tinyurl.com/l552c8I don't see anything in the Time for Lunch platform blaming teachers, so I must assume that is your own take on the issue. Placing the blame for the current 180 day, 6-7 hour school day on the teachers unions is missing the point. There is only so much money the government is willing to appropriate for public K-12 education and it only stretches so far; here in California, our governor has just slashed K-12 funding (again!), our schools are losing programs and staff, and class sizes are increasing. I have 18 years of experience as a public school parent (how many years do you have?) and in all that time I have never met a teacher who would not be willing to work a longer day or longer year, but they would expect, of course, to be paid for their time.Teachers are the most underpaid, undervalued professional working class in the country. Calling for a longer school year in order to provide more time for a longer lunch period and more nutrition education, without also calling for a massive infusion of new funding into K-12 education to pay for it, is incredibly disrespectful of teachers, as it implies that they should be willing to put in these extra hours on their own dime. And again, this is not part of the official Time for Lunch platform. In fact, it seems more than a little ironic that you are attacking the teachers unions while promoting an event which Slow Food has planned to take place on Labor Day! 

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    1. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

      Kurt Michael Friese Posted 8:57 am
      19 Aug 2009

      I do not blame teachers.  Nor do I blame the workers in the kitchens.  In fact, we are trying to help them, give them the necessary tools.  The dollar increase is mandated directly toward ingredients, and the Food Corps idea helps the workers in the kitchens.  I do blame any entrenched interests that fear change.My ideas for a longer school day and year are not part of the Slow Food platform, nor did I say they were.  And of course they would cost more money and of course we should spend it.  To those who say I'm just throwing money at the problem I say gimme something else and I'll throw that too.  Schools should be cathedrals and teachers should be among the best paid people in the country.  Sadly no one has figured out a way to pay for that yet.  Until America realigns its own priorities, its not going to happen.This does not mean we shouldn't do what IS possible.  I admire your desire to fix everything all at once, but I refuse to do nothing simply because we can't do everything.  This platform is not - nor does it claim to be - a panacea.  But it offers a path to improvement and we should take it.

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  11. nestwife Posted 9:45 am
    19 Aug 2009

    Please show us where in the Time for Lunch platform the extra $1 is "mandated directly toward ingredients." This is the section of the platform which addresses the reimbursement:"Invest in children’s health.
    Give schools just one dollar more per day for each child’s lunch. Under the National School Lunch Program, the USDA reimburses schools for every meal served: $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. Since these reimbursements must also pay for labor, equipment and overhead costs, schools are left with only $1.00 to spend on food. How can schools be expected to feed our children and protect their health with only a dollar a day? It’s time to build a strong foundation for our children’s health by raising the reimbursement rate to $3.57"If the platform had said "It’s time to build a strong foundation for our children’s health by raising the reimbursement rate to $3.57 and mandating that the additional dollar be spent on higher quality food" then that would be "mandated directly towards ingredients", but that's not what it says. Other voices in the "fix school food" movement, including Ann Cooper, have repeatedly called for mandating a set minimum amount of any increase for better food (and it has to be "better" food, or else you will find some schools just serving a bigger corn dog.) I wish the Time for Lunch platform were more explicit about this.

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    1. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

      Kurt Michael Friese Posted 10:41 am
      19 Aug 2009

      Well it is the intent nonetheless, and I encourage you to attend your local eat-in and make your feelings known there.  in addition, please feel free to voice your concerns to the Campaign Staff, listed here, and to Ann Cooper herself, who supports our initiative.

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  12. Surfing Nutritionist Posted 5:07 pm
    23 Aug 2009

    Isn't the irony of our school lunch situation that much of the shrinking of the lunch times was probably justified by need for more time for other subjects (math, english, etc.) to improve standardized test scores? And where do we stand as a nation in terms of education? Exactly. So let's admit it, that approach isn't working. I wonder if the lack of stronger academics also has anything to do with shrinking PE time, vanishing art/music classes and junky eating? Hmmm?While I can see us winning small increases in money for food/lunches over time, isn't the reality that we won't see significant increases until we see major shifts in how our food is produced on a large scale? Since food is made seemingly cheaply, won't we be just funding a bigger quantity of poor quality food?It seems almost every week I read another encouraging story about a school doing a "kitchen garden" type program and trying to create grassroots solutions to the school lunch program. If you add all of those programs up, do the equate to a significant percentage of the total schools or is it merely scratching the surface? Is there any larger body uniting them all together to give them a bigger voice collectively?

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    1. Kurt Michael Friese's avatar

      Kurt Michael Friese Posted 5:50 am
      24 Aug 2009

      " Is there any larger body uniting them all together to give them a bigger voice collectively? " Funny you should mention...Slow Food in Schools

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