Schoolhouse Rocks

Public Schools Starting to Offer Organic Lunches

Healthy, organic food is increasingly popping up in, of all strange places, school lunches. The Seattle school district recently banned junk food and exclusive soda contracts (despite the big dollars dangled by soda companies) and started urging schools to offer "fresh, local, organic, non-genetically-modified, non-irradiated, unprocessed food, whenever feasible." A handful of California school districts also have organic lunch programs, and schools in six states are installing vending machines stocked with all-organic snacks, thanks to a program sponsored by organic yogurt company Stonyfield Farm. Lincoln Elementary in Olympia, Wash., put in an all-organic salad bar, while cutting per-lunch costs by two cents, in part by -- are you sitting down? -- eliminating dessert. "Our kids don't need dessert -- they have all this great fruit. It's not like kids don't get sugar," said Lincoln Principal Cheryl Petra, demonstrating how odd a sane voice sounds in a crazy world.