By: Chef Ann Cooper and Sunny Young

Eating a full and substantial breakfast can change your day. It can take you from a groggy and tired state to a ready-to-conquer the world mentality in minutes. It gets your metabolism going first thing and is essential to a healthy lifestyle. For children who are constantly growing, breakfast is the key to a focused and productive day. A child who starts their day with a morning meal will prepared to concentrate in class and have a solid foundation for their education to grow. Breakfast is important! But there are a significant group of Americans who cannot afford breakfast for their children, whether it is an issue of time and/or money. That is why it is essential that more schools serve breakfast to students.

In every school and district I’ve worked in over the past twelve years, we have served or given access to breakfast to all of the students.  Over the years of working in schools across the country, it has become apparent that the best way to assure all students eat breakfast is for it to be served in the classroom.

There are so many reasons why we need to change how we feed our children:

• The CDC has stated that of the children born in the year 2000; one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will have diabetes in their lifetimes.ⁱ
• The CDC has stated that those same children will be the first generation in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents – because of what we feed them. ⁱⁱ
• Both the achievement gap and the life expectancy gap – between rich and poor have grown over 20% in twenty years. ⁱⁱⁱ
• Over 72% of all Americans are now overweight or obese. ^iv
• Over 30% of all children between 4 and 19 are now overweight or obese. ^v
• We currently spend over $260 billion a year (on the healthcare costs), over $5 billion a week on just two diseases; diabetes and obesity.

In realizing how important healthy food is to our children, it should be mandatory to make sure they all begin every day with a healthy breakfast! There are all kinds of pros as well as perceived cons to Universal Breakfast in the classroom; however I believe that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

The naysayers will often tout the following as reasons why we shouldn’t serve breakfast in the classroom:

• Kids spill – there can be messes to clean
• Who will take out the trash?
• What about ants and mice?
• Breakfast takes time, as much as 20 minutes, and teachers are trying to teach
• Union negotiated agreements often state that teachers do not do food service work
• The government should not be paying to feed kids breakfast – that’s the parent’s job

All of the above issues are true, but NONE of them should be a barrier to feeding our children the most important meal of the day.

When I ran the Food Service in Berkeley, CA we implemented Universal Breakfast in the Classroom in all of our schools and now where I currently run Nutrition Services in Boulder, CO we have implemented it in numerous schools.  Large districts all across the country are also realizing the importance of breakfast in the classroom and children in DC, Memphis, Maryland and New York, to name a few, are now eating with their fellow students at their desks.

• Do kids spill? Well of course it can happen, but that would certainly be a ludicrous reason to not ensure they receive a healthy breakfast! In my experience, it has never been an overwhelming problem.
• Does breakfast in the classroom mean that trash needs to be emptied? Yes – however there are many ways this can be accomplished, including having the students participate in recycling and composting.
• Does it take time for kids to eat and can this cut into teaching time? Of course – however talented teachers all across the country have figured out ways to use this time as teaching time.  From reading and journaling, to discussions about food, farming, and nutrition – there are so many ways to use breakfast time as teaching time.
• Should teachers be required to help their students at breakfast? – I’ll leave this discussion for the teachers and their unions – but hungry kids can’t learn and malnourished kids can’t think.  It should be all of our collective responsibility to ensure that no child is hungry in school and that they can learn to the best of their abilities because they are well nourished.
• Should the government be responsible to feeding our children, well I guess the same question can be asked of education; shouldn’t parents be responsible for teaching their children to read and write – why is it the government’s job?  In America we have made education a priority and that should include the entire school day.

It should be a birth right in our country that no child is hungry in school and that every child, every day has delicious/nutritious food in school – universal breakfast in the classroom is one avenue toward this goal.

Finally I’d like to add that for many, many school districts with a high free and reduced population, universal breakfast in the classroom can be cash-positive and can help assure healthier food for lunch as well as breakfast.

For more information on breakfast in the classroom programs, check out the following:

The Lunch Box Universal Breakfast Video on thelunchbox.org USDA – FNS Nutrition Explorations Meals 4 Kids

ⁱ www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/estimates11.htm#1
ⁱⁱ www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/estimates11.htm#1
ⁱⁱⁱ  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
^iv  www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm
^v  www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm

By Chef Ann Cooper & Chef Beth Collins

Walk into any typical public school cafeteria these days and you will see one staple across the board: French Fries. According to the USDA’s School Nutrition Standards, vegetables must be served every day and French fries are the most often served vegetable in schools. Easy to make, portable for on-the-run students, and ubiquitous, French fries sell. But as we all know, counting French fries as a vegetable on the school lunch menu is a bit of a travesty. In this day and age when childhood diabetes and obesity are rampant why are other fresh, colorful and delicious vegetables not required more often in school meals?

In Fall of 2011, potatoes and the proposed meal patterns for school breakfast and lunch made headlines across the nation.

In August Senator Udall and Susan Collins (R-ME) sent a letter to the Senate agricultural appropriators urging them to add language to the FY2012 spending bill that states;

None of the funds provided by this Act shall be available to implement new nutritional standards in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs that would unnecessarily discriminate against certain vegetables, including white potatoes, corn, lima beans and green peas.

Until January of 2011 when the USDA released the proposed meal standards a potato serving could “count” as a vegetable in a reimbursable school meal every day of the week.  In the proposed pattern starchy vegetables are limited not because they can’t be healthful or are less expensive, but the Institute of Medicine that studied the NSLP programs extensively state the reason for the limitation of starchy vegetables to once a week is to “encourage students to try new vegetables in place of the familiar starchy ones.”  Does this mean we need to worry about the future of French fries?

I’m sure Senator Udall also has the children of the United States on his mind with his opposition to the USDA’s proposed rule.  But will the potato farmers of Colorado (Udall’s home state) really go out of business if the kids in Colorado and elsewhere eat a variety of vegetables?  Colorado is the nation’s fourth leading producer of white potatoes.  Potatoes have been a cornerstone of school meals for decades and potato growers and processors  have invested heavily to ensure potatoes maintain their heralded place as the number one vegetable consumed in school meals – everything from tator-tots and French fries to potato pearls for instant mashed are readily available to school food authorities (SFAs) across the nation.  It’s time to make a change.

Is the potato being discriminated against or have the rest of the “specialty crops” been ignored so consistently and for so long with the rise of our fast food nation that most kids don’t know the virtues and deliciousness of broccoli, zucchini or butternut squash, all of which also grow in Colorado?

Running a school food service program in Colorado serving 1.6 million meals annually, we find a place for potatoes at our table.  The difference being that unlike many districts where the potato arrives frozen as ready-to-bake or ready-to-fry, they arrive whole and raw from Colorado farmers. Boulder Valley School District cooked 26,000 pounds of potatoes from scratch last year.  Potatoes made up 20% of our fresh vegetable purchases totaling over 125,000 pounds..  The kids love our potatoes; mashed, roasted, gracing our pot pie or the salad bar.  Here in Boulder we truly believe that our children cannot learn to love the rainbow of all vegetables unless we give them the opportunity.  Clearly, our purchase history reflects the ability to both educate and feed.

We believe Senator Udall’s and others’ opposition to the change in starchy vegetable servings is ill-served.  As a nation we need to take responsibility for the current state of our children’s health.  If we open the lunch tray to more required choices, our kids will have a better chance to be healthy adults. We respect the concern of our colleagues in the School Nutrition Association  that the proposed rules may enact hardship on the SFAs to comply.  We should be concerned about the cost of meals and the SFAs’ ability to procure and serve meals that our children will eagerly accept.  But instead of opposing the new meal pattern, perhaps Senator Udall and the rest of nation will ask for more than 6 cents a meal in the reimbursement rate to give SFAs realistic economic support to comply with the new meal patterns.  School districts will require equipment, training and educational resources to assure success in school cafeterias across the nation, and a future of healthier Americans.

The Story of the USDA commodity food program in schools.

One issue not often alluded to in discussions of fixing school lunch across the US is the USDA commodity food program.  This program was designed to support agriculture by helping to keep prices high by buying up surplus agricultural product.  Former Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz’s now famous proclamation to agriculture to “get big or get out,” began a system where farmers are often paid to produce crops that aren’t needed and in fact would lose them money if not for the price supports.  Watch the movies King Corn and Food Inc for good in-depth explanations of this incredibly bad system.

In school food, this program gives school districts approximately 19 cents credit per each reimbursable lunch served in the prior year as their commodity foods allocation, which in many school districts accounts for approximately 15 – 20% of their food budget.  The most utilized commodity foods are often unhealthy, especially when not eaten in moderation.  Items like cheese, ground beef (high in fat), canned vegetables (high in sodium) and canned fruit (high in added sugar) frequent the USDA offerings.  Even though this is a federal program the items available may vary from state to state and in some cases from district to district, a full list is available on the USDA website.

However, if unprocessed cheese, chicken, turkey or ground beef are acquired through the commodity program and utilized in a “scratch cook” environment the resulting food can be delicious and nutritious and can help food service departments balance their budgets.  Sadly, that is rarely the case in school districts across the country; in fact the system tends to be wasteful, expensive and produces food that is making our children sick!

The lion’s share of all “free” commodity food get “processed” into yes… highly processed mostly unhealthy food and unfortunately this “free” food is what’s on most kid’s plates.  What this looks like on the plate is chicken nuggets as opposed to roast chicken, burgers with all manner of additives, pizza pockets, corn dogs, beef ribletts, “grilled” cheese sandwiches and uncrustables and as well they may contain added trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup.  All of these items come pre-packaged and frozen, are often heated from frozen in their individual plastic wrappers and even served in the same wrappers so they’re never touched by human hands.

Manufacturing this “free” food, results in costs to the districts in fees, which in many districts may amount to tens if not hundreds of thousands and in the case of large districts, millions of dollars for this free, unhealthy food.  But there’s a tremendous amount of profit for manufacturers and distributors in all this free food.  The real cost?  Our children’s lifelong health.

This egregious and I think honestly unconscionable system is not only promoted by the USDA but “sold” to school food service staff and administrators as a cost effective way to get “healthy” food on our kids plates and under the USDA guidelines it’s all healthy.

So if we truly want to fix school food, if we truly want to stem the obesity crises, if we truly want the next generation of children to be healthier than the current one, then we need to fix the commodity food program and replace it with a system that values fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains and clean protein.  And further, we need to find our kitchens again, both at home and in schools, and start cooking and then teach our children how to cook as well!

If you would like to help make lunch healthier at your school, please visit us online at: www.thelunchbox.org for free tools and resources for schools, districts, parents, kids, and advocates.

I helped to found the Food, Family, Farming Foundation (F3) so my vision for The Lunch Box Project (www.thelunchbox.org) could become a reality.  The Lunch Box is an accessible web portal toolkit, free and accessible for all to use to improve how we feed our children each school day.

From scalable recipes that are school-tested, to budgeting, inventory and management tools, and lunch personnel training videos, The Lunch Box makes what I’ve done (as the Renegade Lunch Lady) in school districts where I’ve been the lunch lady-on-duty fully available to any citizen who wants to work for healthy school food in every school.   Reversing the trend toward obesity and diabetes in children is everyone’s job and school lunch reform can actually happen with this new type of tool:  TheLunchBox.org.

I recently heard that the superintendent of a large school district signed a contract with Coke, which would allow soda, sugar water and other drinks into the 72 schools of the district. The district has over 80% Free and Reduced students, is demographically diverse and mostly poor – an extremely “at risk” community. Given that the district is one of such need, I can understand why the superintendent would feel the need to take a soda companies’ money, however the part of the story that really raised my ire was his statement that Bill Clinton’s Alliance for A Healthier Generation, had “approved” the offerings that Coke would be supplying to these children.

I went back and looked at what the guidelines allowed and found that “sugar water” is allowed with up to 66 calories per 8 ounces as well flavored milk with caloric content of up to 150 calories per 8 ounces. These types of guidelines promote excess sugar consumption and are teaching a generation of children that water (a necessity of life) is sweet and that milk should taste like a dessert. Just imagine that your child only drank “sugar water” and for every glass, they consumed 66 hidden calories and if the only milk your child drank was chocolate or strawberry and hence consumed 40 – 50 more calories than if they consumed a low-fat alternative. If you did the math, you’d find that if your child consumed either of these alternatives (never mind both) that they would consume approximately 6 ½ pounds of additional sugar per year!!

This is such a travesty when seen in the light of our Nation’s obesity crises. The CDC has reported that almost 70% of all Americans are overweight or obese and in children the number is rising over 30%. In the case of the school district in question, the need of additional funding that our government is incapable of providing, places the soda companies in the all too willing and able position of doing so – in exchange of course for the future health of our children. And, if this situation wasn’t enough of a moral dilemma, then we just need to look back to Clinton’s Alliance for A Healthier Generation, who blesses the entire debacle.

I’d like us all to ask ourselves the question, “Why Do We Need To Sell Our Children Soda” and further why is a former President’s non-profit promoting it? We are in the throes of a public health time bomb in the form of this obesity crisis, which the CDC says will result in the children born in the year 2000, being the first generation in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents. With this crisis, in conjunction with President Obama’s statement that our Health Care system is on the verge of bankruptcy – perhaps we as a Nation need to demand that our children’s education is funded in a way that doesn’t mortgage their future health!

Yet again last night I found myself discussing the Nutrition Services budget for the Berkeley Unified School District. Berkeley has been extremely supportive in its efforts to bring healthy food to all of the students of the district. Over the past decade there has been support from parents, advocates, administrators, foundations, teachers, staff, school board members and the community at large – tremendous support! And yet as the state’s budget deficit widens, potentially even doubling, lunch ladies like me are being asked to cut and cut and cut again in an effort to help balance school district’s budgets; and all because of the state’s woes.

So much of the success of this country over the centuries has been predicated on the premise of our children having a better life than our own. Mothers over the eons have gone hungry to feed children – fathers have worked tirelessly to feed their children – as a nation we have always made the health of our children a priority – until now – it seems.

I do understand the need for the state to have a balanced budget, however with all of the money we spent as a state, I don’t understand in the least, the need to literally take healthy food out of the mouths of our children as a way to balance the budget. In the past year the state’s prison budget has ballooned to over $10 million, which exceeds the entire federal government’s budget for the National School Lunch Program (which feeds over 30 million children lunch each day) by more than 20%. At the same time, the state has reduced its contribution to school meals from 21 cents (apparently our children are not even worth a quarter a day), to basically nothing for the remainder of the school year.

Equating this to what’s on our children’s plates in schools means less fresh food and more processed; which equals less healthy children, farmers and planet. Most schools use the state reimbursement to augment the far too small federal reimbursement in an effort to serve children healthy food. In this vein, most districts are spending under a dollar per child per day for lunch – less than a dollar a day. To put this in perspective we just need to go to our favorite local coffee shop and buy a Vente Latte, for which we’ll pay close to $5, 5 times more than we spend to feed a child lunch. It’s crazy!

We need a change! We need to make our children’s health a priority! We need to come together as a community and demand that our legislators balance the state’s budget without cutting Nutrition Services; in fact we should be raising the state’s reimbursement rate. Come on, aren’t our children worth at least a quarter a day, and for the entire year, not just for the first few months of the school year.

And if we don’t?

The Centers for Disease Control has stated that of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans will have diabetes in their lifetimes. As unimaginable as that it, it gets worse, the result of this pandemic will be that this generation will be the first generation in centuries to die at a younger age than their parents.

So as our legislators try and balance the budget, as our legislators think about cuts that need to be made; perhaps we need to prioritize the health of our children and find other budget cuts besides the food on our children’s plates. As important as so many worthy expenses are that our taxes pay for – what could possibly be more important than our children and their future.

I grew up as a chef under the tutelage of male European chefs, because in 1977 when I entered the esteemed halls of the Culinary Institute of America – male European chefs dominated the educational staff. So it is probably no surprise that I learned that all great food came from Europe – all great food came from far away and if I wanted to become a great chef – then I needed to cook like the masters and that meant not cooking with local ingredients.

Fast Forward to 1990 when I became the Executive Chef of the Putney Inn in Vermont and my journey toward local – sustainable food truly began. The transition wasn’t an easy one and one day I found myself in Puerto Rico with Chef’s Collaborative, sitting on the grass listening to Joan Gussow talk about what was happening with the fledgling Organic movement and she warned that if we weren’t careful – the Organic Industry would be filled with the likes of Organic Twinkies.

Along my own path of organic – local – sustainable, I wrote “Bitter Harvest” and became a member of the National Organic Standards Board; a position I resigned from in large part, because all we ever discussed was what chemicals could be used in Organics. As my journey and knowledge of these issues has progressed I became a “lunch lady” and started to dedicate my time to changing children’s relationship to food and school food advocacy work.

All of which lead me to spending two days at the Natural Products Expo this year and Organic Gummy Worms, which some unwitting producer proudly showed me as he crowed that these were the first certified Organic Gummy Worms – an idea to showcase sustainable agriculture to children. At which point my head exploded. But as I kept walking the show of almost 2,000 presenters and attendees totally ten’s of thousands, I was struck by the plethora of organic junk food – I’m only glad Joan wasn’t there to witness this – although I’m sure she wouldn’t have been surprised.

I think that the Organic and Natural foods industry, which has come under fire recently for food safety issues, needs to lead the way toward a healthier more sustainable food system. A system where our children’s health is of utmost import – not just more business as usual that puts a higher priority on corporate profits than our children’s health. During the show as I was “railing” about Organic junk food a friend said that organic junk food is somewhat better than its non-organic namesake.

With that in mind I share the following which is an excerpt from my book “Lunch Lessons” that speaks to these issues.

Organic Pop Tarts? Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes

We have been writing together for many years and have grown to respect each other tremendously and most often think very alike, however we agree to disagree ever so slightly on organic junk/processed food.

AC: My initial exposure to Chefs Collaborative was at a symposium in Puerto Rico in 1996. On the very first day I found myself sitting under a tent listening to Joan Gussow talk about the growing trend toward organics and the USDA’s forthcoming Organic Standards Act. One of the most powerful moments for me, was when, as part of her speech, she asked whether “organic food should simply mirror the existing food system, with its highly processed sugary junk food; or should it be something more? Should it also reflect the socially responsible farming practices that were traditionally part of organic and family farming?”

A decade later, I feel strongly that organic junk food is antithetic to healthy food. Every year I go to the Natural Foods Expo and see aisle after aisle after aisle of organic candy, organic fat and salt laden chips, organic sugar coated cereals and I’m appalled. We need to be teaching our children about healthy food choices—we just don’t need an Organic Twinkie—we don’t!

Sure, I can understand that if McDonalds only served organic french fries all the potatoes in this country would be grown without chemicals, and that would be a good thing. But just because a Twinkie or a gummy bear or an M&M can be organic, doesn’t mean that we should promote them to our children. Junk food is junk food—organic or not!

LH: Of course, I agree with her on a very fundamental level. Junk food is junk food and why bother to make it organic. But I tend to think there are varying degrees of junk food out there and I also believe that not all processed food is junk. As the busy mother of two children I like to know that I can offer them an organic alternative to some of the conventionally processed snack foods that take up so much aisle space in the grocery store. Sometimes kids like to have a treat and maybe the best we can do with the limited time we have is a processed organic cookie. Personally, I’d rather know there are organic choices out there for my kids than not. Fig Newmans over Fig Newtons? You bet. I work, take care of two kids, run a household and participate in a host of community activities. I don’t have time to bake fig bars every day, and to be honest, it’s not even possible for me to procure all the organic ingredients I’d need in order to bake the equivalent here in my own home. I was faced with a similar dilemma when I started thinking about my son and daughter’s first foods. I wanted to make my own, but then I realized that there was no way I’d find organic blueberries and winter squash and pears and zucchini in my local market. There may have been a few organic produce items available, but if I stuck with those my children wouldn’t have been able to get the variety that is so important to developing bodies and palates. Because I preferred knowing that my kids were getting 100% organic food I opted to buy Earth’s Best baby food and recommended it to everyone I know.

Have I fallen into the organic sugared cereal trap? I will sheepishly admit here that yes, I absolutely have because I was in a hurry and being tortured by a four year old who wouldn’t stop hopping on one leg while begging for a particular sugar-coated chocolate puffed rice cereal. I bought it, we tasted it, and we both came to the conclusion that it was disgusting (while my husband needled me in the background over having paid more for a box of organic junk as opposed to regular junk) and we threw it out. And I learned my lesson.

Just as with everything else in life, it makes little sense to condemn the entire organic processed foods industry because some of what’s out there is junk. It’s up to us, as parents, to determine which products are good and which aren’t. There are some merits to a great many of the processed products we’re seeing out there. I’m all for embracing the ones that make sense for my family and, as Ann pointed out, organic on a larger scale is better for the planet anyway.

Sometime in late 2009 or early 2010, the government will vote to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, which funds the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). I believe that the NSLP is in need of a complete overhaul. The inception of the program was predicated on the fact that there were malnourished children all across the country that couldn’t learn or think. As these same children grew into adulthood, they became a National Security liability, because many of them were too malnourished to become an active part of our armed forces. Over the decades the government has set about to assure that nutritious food was being served and the program came to feed over 30 million children a day with a price tag of over $8.5 billion a year. Another function of the program was promoting large scale agriculture and what resulted was a system at odds, supporting large scale farmers, who often produced food that when consumed as the majority of a daily diet is not necessarily healthy or promoting children’s health. To my mind there is a clear case of conflict of interest; supporting agribusiness companies producing cheap corn, soy, pork and chicken and also being responsible for our children’s wellbeing.

In an effort to control the program as it got larger and larger, more and more regulations were put in place. The system of controlling over 100,000 schools fell to the states who interpreted the federal guidelines, the adherence of which demanded that school districts spend up to a third of their payroll budget on paperwork, counting kids (to assure that no hungry child who didn’t qualify was given free lunch) and number crunching. The result of this system is that Nutrition Services departments find themselves and their teams spending an inordinate amount of time striving to follow guidelines as opposed to feeding children. We’re tasked with free and reduced forms, daily student meal counts, monthly reports by free, reduced and paid students, production reports, menus and recipes and nutritional analysis either by the day or week.

The nutritional analysis of what we feed our children has led to a system where chicken nuggets, tater tots, chocolate milk with high fructose corn syrup and canned fruit cocktail or even in some cases popsicles are an acceptable meal. Nutrient analysis allows the governing bodies an easy way to access whether a school district is complying with the guidelines, but is a system where the importance of numbers has replaced the importance of food. This is a system that demands milk at every meal, yet takes no account of the millions of children who are lactose intolerant. This is a system that demands a minimum of calories, but not a maximum; which makes no sense in a country where over 30% of the children are over-weight or obese. This extremely flawed system results in agribusiness companies formulating Products (often mistaken as food) that fit the numbers, but have no real relationship to food as we know it, or at least should know it.

As for my team and I, we’d like to be spending all of our time and money feeding children delicious healthy food and educating them on where their food comes from and how it’s produced. To make this happen, the NSLP truly needs a makeover!

I believe that the following guidelines, if put into place, would help us focus on feeding children “real,” healthy and delicious food.

• Make meals, both breakfast and lunch universal, a system where every child is fed every day. This would alleviate the need for free and reduced applications and tracking.
• Replace the current system of tracking menus by nutrients, to one where the guidelines are based on healthy, delicious balanced meals. These meals should be made up in large part of fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains and include plant based protein.
• Replace the definition of nutritious food, which the system is based on; to one that defines and is based on real FOOD (see full definition below).
• Raise the federal reimbursement rate to $4.00 – $5.00 based on the cost of living of the area and dedicate a minimum of $1.75 to be spent on food. Additionally, dedicate at least $1.00 be spent on fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains with a priority placed on procuring regionally produced food.
• Dedicate resources to building and or rebuilding kitchens in school districts to accommodate scratch cooking.
• Dedicate resources to set-up a training program to teach school food service workers to cook from scratch.
• Set-up a National Chefs Corp which allows culinary students to work off student loans by working in K-12 schools.
• Institute hands-on experiential learning in the form of cooking and gardening classes that become a mandatory part of the educational system.
• Dedicate resources to a National marketing campaign to help change children’s relationship to food, so that healthy/delicious school food – becomes cool food.
• Underscore the importance of eating healthy food by instituting questions on the SAT tests that highlight sustainable food and agriculture.

This may seem like an incredible task given the size of the system and the immensity of the challenges – but I did say it was a makeover that was needed. However, the alternative is unthinkable. The CDC has stated that of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every 3 Caucasians and one out of every 2 African Americans and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime – the result: the first generation in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents.

With the first African American family in the White House, with the achievement and life-expectancy gap (based on the have and the have-nots) ever widening – I believe that this is the Social Justice issue of our time and that we have a moral imperative to take on this seemingly Herculian task.

In the end, if successful, we will assure the health of all children for generations to come and we just might save the planet in the bargain.

HEALTHFUL FOOD PRINCIPLES

Healthful Food is wholesome.

• It includes whole and minimally processed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy, meats, fish, and poultry.
• It contains naturally occurring nutrients (e.g., vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients).
• It is produced without added hormones or antibiotics.
• It is processed without artificial colors or flavors or unnecessary preservatives.

Healthful Food is produced, processed, and transported in a way that prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources, and the cruel treatment of animals. The process of healthful food production:

• Upholds the safety and quality of life of all who work to feed us.
• Treats all animals humanely.
• Protects the finite resources of soil, water, air, and biological diversity.
• Supports local and regional farm and food economies.
• Replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

Healthful Food should be available, accessible, and affordable to everyone.

• Distributed equitably among all communities.
• Available and emphasized in children’s environments such as childcare, school, and after-school settings.
• Promoted within institutions and workplaces, in cafeterias, vending machines, and at meetings and events.
• Reflective of the natural diversity found in traditions and cultures.

From Prevention Institute

Not a day goes by without the media addressing America’s growing obesity crisis, and lately the discussion has settled on our children. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that if American children don’t get their weight in check, their anticipated health problems will significantly shorten their lives, and make them the first generation in our nation’s history to die at younger ages than their parents. In fact the CDC has said, of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetimes, most before they graduate high school. This may mean that within 10 years, by 2018, that 40 – 45% of all school age children could be insulin dependent – the potential health ramifications are overwhelming, the more so, because this is ALL preventable.

The state of our nation’s food supply is unconscionable, the fact that agribusiness controls 90 percent of that supply, and of just how little most Americans know about how the food they consume is produced and processed. As a chef and an advocate for children’s health and life-long wellness, I hope to inspire action on the part of parents, administrators, health care professionals and advocates to make change – before it’s too late.

Why focus on children’s health? Pound for pound, they’re the ones most strongly impacted by the chemicals used to produce and process food. They eat more food than adults, which means that any antibiotic and hormone residues in their foods collect in their tissues in greater concentrations. And because they’re young, they’re also the ones most easily influenced by change. It occurred to me that if children could be educated from the start to make better food choices, they would carry these “lunch lessons” well into adulthood. Affecting the generation already most at risk would also help ensure the sustainability of our future food supply.

My journey began at the Ross School, a private school on Long Island, where we transformed the lunch program by hiring professionally trained chefs, redesigning the dining area, and, most important, expanding the menu to include regional, organic, seasonal, sustainable fare. Meat moved off the center of the plate, and vegetables, grains, and legumes took center stage. Salads became a school favorite, and, best of all, wellness and nutrition education were adopted as permanent elements of the school’s curriculum. The program was a huge success, but everyone wondered if something like it could be established in public schools.

Alice Waters was the first to bring such changes to public schools, with her Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California. When I was offered the opportunity to implement change throughout the food system that serves the Berkeley Unified School District, I decided it was time to jump into the “belly if the beast,” public school food. The challenges we continue to face in the Berkeley public schools are many, but over the past three years we have transformed the lunch program of the entire district.

Taking on the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is no small task, even at the local level. The system is riddled with red tape and systemic problems, not the least of which is that, at its heart, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the NSLP, has a dramatic conflict of interest: According to the 1949 Farm Bill, whose purpose was to aid and protect farmers and help stabilize rural economies through a commodity-foods program, one of the USDA’s main areas of responsibility is to provide assistance to farmers and producers. Today, the commodities program offers a high level of support to food producers who have considerable lobbying clout in Washington, DC. Many of those producers distribute products that are made into foods that are high in fat and low in nutrition and, once delivered to the public school system, by law cannot be sent back, sold, or given away. Given this system, it’s impossible for the USDA to act in the best interests of both our nation’s food producers and our children.

Today, as the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley Unified School District, I coordinate 90 employees in 17 locations, who serve over 8,000 meals per day and touch the lives of all of the 9,000 students in the district. We are responsible for producing and serving delicious, nutritious food in the cafeterias, as well as for the implementation of the district’s hands-on cooking and gardening curriculum. Our vision is to “teach every child to seek, grow, prepare, and eat nourishing, delicious and sustainably grown food, empowering them to make choices that have a positive influence on their personal health, family, community and surrounding environment.”

Recipe for Success A strong school-lunch program eliminates processed foods and puts a high emphasis on fresh whole foods cooked from scratch. But, as you might imagine, choosing fresh, locally grown foods presents schools with all kinds of challenges. Unlike those of 20 or 30 years ago, most of the cafeterias in today’s schools lack fully functional kitchens and the trained staff to operate them, which makes actual cooking a virtual impossibility. Additionally, inadequate funding makes it extremely difficult to shift from processed to locally grown fresh food.

In Berkeley, we identified five challenges: food, finance, facilities, human resources/education and marketing.

FOOD: To permanently and effectively implement a healthier school-lunch program, we began by saying NO to:

• Highly processed foods full of sugar, salt, fat, additives, preservatives, and coloring. Ingredients in many of these types of products have been linked to ADD and ADHD.
• Trans fats, because there is a direct link between them and high levels of LDL (“bad” cholesterol).
• High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is highly unnatural, highly processed, highly controversial, and extremely prevalent in our food supply. Statistics show that since HFCS was introduced to the marketplace in the late 1970s, the rate of obesity in the US has more than doubled. Prior to its widespread use, obesity rates had been quite stable.
• Fried foods, with their high fat content, are bad for everyone—but a recent study by the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care found that, among 14,000 people surveyed over a three-year period, 9-to-14-year-olds who increased their consumption of fried foods gained weight above what is considered a normal rate over the course of a year.
• Refined sugars and flours. White flours and sugars have been stripped of their nutritional value and enter the bloodstream quite rapidly, causing a rise in the glycemic index and producing the effects of hypoglycemia: shaking, sweating, altered thinking and behavior. Instead, we’ve chosen to promote complex carbohydrates, overall a much healthier choice.
• Vending machines that sell soda, candy, and chips should be removed.
• Competitive foods are foods that are sold in school cafeterias but that are not part of the NSLP and are therefore not regulated by USDA policies. This means that, day after day, children with money can buy such unhealthy items as fried foods, cookies, sodas, Slushees, and chips. Competitive foods should be eliminated from all schools.
• Hormones and antibiotics. Foods produced with antibiotics and hormones are more dangerous for children than for adults because antibiotic and hormone residues in foods collect in children’s tissues in greater concentrations than in adults. In the US, the severe overuse of antibiotics in the raising of food animals may create strains of bacteria with resistance to those antibiotics. Experts also have grave concerns about how the presence in our food of hormones such as estradiol is affecting the puberty rates of pubescent girls, and have noted that increased hormones are directly linked to higher rates of cancers of the breast and ovary.

We said YES to:

• Gardening classes, because hands-on experiential learning is an extremely effective tool in connecting children with food. They learn that carrots and potatoes grow underground, and that a freshly picked ripe tomato tastes remarkably different from one bought in a store. Classroom teamwork helps create an atmosphere of shared personal growth as children learn to make wellness choices that will last a lifetime.
• Cooking classes can be amazing experiences for children. Not only do they learn a valuable life skill, they expand their palates while taking ownership of their creations. And sitting down to eat with their classmates is also an important part of the learning experience.
• Tastings held in cafeterias, as well as during cooking and gardening classes, are a great way to get students to try unfamiliar foods. Even something as simple as tasting different varieties of the same type of fruit can be a palate-widening experience for children. Perhaps their parents or caregivers have only ever bought Red Delicious apples, and the first time they’ve had a chance to try a green or yellow apple, or even a different variety of red, is at school. Because Red Delicious may never have been to a particular child’s taste, he or she assumed that they simply didn’t like apples—and now can’t get enough green apples. Also, when children see friends eating something that they themselves have never even considered trying, it gives them the confidence to branch out and take a little risk. Often, they discover they like it.
• 40-minute lunch periods and Recess before lunch are mandatory parts of a healthy school-lunch program. No one likes to be rushed through a meal—we like to savor what we eat, and take our time to chew, swallow, and digest our food. Shoving it down in a mad dash to get somewhere else gives us indigestion, or forces us to eat less to avoid stomach upset. Children are no different. They need time to enjoy their food and the company of their friends in a calm atmosphere. Holding recess before lunch helps ensure that, when it’s time to sit down and eat, children will be hungry. It also means they’ll return to class ready to learn, with that burst of energy that comes after eating a good, healthy meal, rather than wasting that energy by running it off immediately after lunch.
• Child-size salad bars are a must for a healthy school-lunch program. Giving children a variety of fresh vegetables, fruits, grains, and proteins is a great way to augment their diets, help them try unfamiliar foods, and make healthy choices. We know that one of the things that encourages children to try new foods is repeated exposure. If they see green beans on the salad bar every week for six or seven weeks, eventually they’ll get curious about them. One day they’ll put a few green beans on their salad, and whether or not they like them, they’ve taken a risk and expanded their palates, and perhaps have realized that trying something new can be good. The next time they see something new on the salad bar, they’re even more likely to give it a try.
• Cooking from scratch absolutely must be the focus of any healthy school-lunch program. Schools across the nation need to say good-bye to chicken nuggets and hello to roast chicken, toss out the French fries and get busy roasting potatoes and other colorful root vegetables. Canned fruits and vegetables should move over and make room for fresh ones.

FACILITIES: I found that Berkeley’s kitchen facilities, like those of most public school districts, were in a state of disrepair or nonexistent. Refrigeration, heating, serving, and cooking equipment has since been installed in all 17 locations. The central kitchen has been remodeled, and a second central kitchen is being considered. Rebuilding cooking facilities is a mandatory part of the change toward a healthier food system.

FINANCING: All US public schools need more money to adequately finance their breakfast and lunch programs. Currently, the federal reimbursement rate is $2.57 per lunch. In addition, all districts receive 18.5¢ more per child for commodities foods. California schools receive another 19¢ from the state as a reimbursement for both breakfast and lunch.

Most schools spend less than $1 on food per child per day. With an increase of 50¢, to $1 per child per day, we can feed kids healthy food. Just think about this, many of us typically spend more on our daily coffee (a Vente Latte is often $5) than most schools have allocated for food for a week’s worth of meals for their students.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Unlike school-cafeteria staff of the past, most of today’s kitchen workers lack adequate food-service training. In Berkeley we provided uniforms, implemented culinary training programs, and developed guides for professionalism, pay scales, new job descriptions and staff configurations—all essential for running safe, effective, and healthy kitchens. If we want better food for our children, then we have to hire and train professional staff.

MARKETING: It’s one thing to make the food, another to get kids to eat it. Many successful school lunch programs around the country have employed traditional marketing techniques that treat children as potential customers: they “sell” the food. Attractive advertising, packaging, and service have been shown to increase consumption of a larger variety of school-lunch foods. A marketing campaign both supports and augments nutrition education as part of the basic curriculum. “Big food,” spends $20 billion a year marketing non-nutrient food to children, we schools needs to focus on marketing school food as cool food.

If we are going to positively impact the health of our children and our children’s children, then we need to make a change and make it now. I believe that we must demand the following:

• Universal Breakfast and Lunch – healthy schools meals should be a birth-rite in America
• Make school meals a health initiative and move oversight of the program from the USDA to the CDC
• Raise the federal reimbursement rate for lunch to $4.00 with a sliding scale based on local demographics
• Raise the dietary guidelines to ensure that chicken nuggets, tater tots, chocolate milk and canned fruit cocktail aren’t a reimbursable meal
• Promote fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains
• Eliminate all highly processed foods and foods of minimal nutritional value

Perhaps, just perhaps if we can do all of this we just might save our children and the planet as well.