Turns out, kids love pizza

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Cafeteria directors say you can lead a child to healthy food, but you can’t make him eat it. Well, at least when he has the option of eating pizza and fries instead.

I’m on the road this week visiting cafeterias in Ohio and Massachusetts, and I’ve been continually struck by the difference between what’s offered to students and what actually ends up on their trays. All the high school cafeterias I’ve seen on this trip have offered dozens of choices, including healthy items like fresh sandwiches and salads. Yet probably 75 percent of students buy the same two or three items: pizza, chicken patty sandwiches and fries. ”It’s great that they have all that healthy stuff,” one high school student told me. “But nobody eats it. It’s a shelf-filler.”

At a high school in Massachusetts today, students could choose from sandwiches, salads, home-made shepherd’s pie, a hot sausage and pepper sub, turkey a la king with brown rice or pizza and tater tots. The adults buy the shepherd’s pie and the turkey, the director told me. About 80 percent of the students would opt for pizza and tater tots, she said.

At the high school I visited in Ohio, the cafeteria dishes out about 1,100 servings of french fries each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It sells about 60 salads.

Cafeteria directors always show me all the healthy options available to students, telling me how hard they work to give students the opportunity to eat a healthy meal. But that’s just what it is: an opportunity. The healthy choices are there, but they’re sitting right next to those oh-so-tempting junk foods. And when you lead a student to pizza and fries, he’s almost certain to choose that over a salad or turkey a la king with brown rice.

If we’re serious about student wellness, we’re going to have to stop approaching nutrition as an opportunity. Schools have a responsibility to make healthy eating the norm, not just an option for a few students who are already health-conscious.

photo courtesy of Adam Kuban, via flickr creative commons.

Cooking for Dummies

Interesting NY Times Op-Ed from Amanda Hesser last Sunday about Michelle Obama missing an opportunity to talk up cooking. 

Our first lady has been an outstanding champion of fresh fruits and vegetables, of teaching our kids healthy eating habits that last through life by connecting them to food and where it comes from.  Surpassing any and all hopes and expectations, she has planted an organic garden on the White House lawn.  She has knelt in the dirt with her kids, and others’ and helped to grow her own food.  She has visited soup kitchens, and elementary schools.  Last week, she visited her young friends at Bancroft Elementary School. 

As reported on School Lunch Talk Michelle O. said that: “‘kids can lead the way for us.’ And school lunch can help them do that. We need to make sure that “the food that our kids are getting in school each and every day is as healthy as it can be, so that we’re bringing some of these lessons home and we’re also expanding them in the classrooms and in the schools.”

What more could we ask for?!  Well, Hesser points out that Obama still hasn’t stood up and supported home cooking, thereby supporting common public perception that cooking is too time consuming, too complicated, and—that old chestnut—too expensive to be worth anyone’s time.  As Hesser says, “Because terrific local ingredients aren’t much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.”

[For more about how cooking from scratch is right for your pocketbook, read Chef Kurt Friese’s article “How I beat KFC’s Family Meal Challenge” on Grist, that also appears in this month’s Snail magazine].

Inside the Jonesboro Cafeteria: Bringing in the Money with Familiar Foods

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

A few months ago, Hester Dye received boxes of beautiful, plump blackberries from the USDA. She was delighted — the berries were as big as her thumb — and she hoped her students would enjoy eating them for lunch.

But the kids in Jonesboro Public Schools, where Dye directs the school lunch program, didn’t touch the berries. Determined not to let the fruit go to waste, Dye and her staff made a blackberry cobbler. Still, half of it ended up in the trash. “They didn’t know what it was,” Dye said. “They weren’t familiar with it.”

Students’ familiarity with certain foods has always driven Dye’s menu. When she started working in the Jonesboro cafeteria 37 years ago, students ate home-cooked meals with their families, and that’s what they expected for lunch at school. Dye served soup, lasagna and meatloaf, because that’s what students were used to. Today, Dye serves students who have grown up with heat-and-serve entrees and fast food, and her lunch offerings have changed to accommodate their tastes.

“We’ve taken all the lasagna and meatloaf off the menu because the kids don’t know what that stuff is anymore,” Dye said. “They won’t eat it.”

Instead, Dye offers the items they will eat. Her menu runs heavy on mini corndogs, chicken nuggets and stuffed-crust pizza — the foods students are familiar with from restaurants and TV commercials.

More after the jump

High School Students Carve out a Future through the Culinary Arts

The first time I saw “Pressure Cooker” was at Slow Food Nation last Labor Day. It left me—and as far as I could tell every single other viewer in the theatre—in tears.  It follows three seniors at a Philadelphia public high school, charting their journey through a culinary arts curriculum under the wing of the hilariously blunt, tough-loving Mrs. Stephenson. The film has been making the film festival circuit for the past 9 months and will now be enjoying a theatrical release in several cities (scroll all the way down for schedule).  Here we sit down for an interview with Co-Directors Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman:

SFUSA: What do kids get from culinary education that they can’t find elsewhere in their schools/lives?

Jennifer: Culinary education provides hands on training that can engage all of the senses – smell, taste, touch, sight, and sound. It combines creativity with practicality, and is a skill students can use in their lives now and in the future.  Culinary Arts also encompasses many other disciplines: reading, math, science, but presents them in a practical rather than theoretical way that appeals to many students.  In addition, the discipline of the kitchen adds structure to lives that may not have much structure, and teaches teamwork.

Mark: As for the students from Frankford, in Culinary Arts with Mrs. Stephenson, they are gaining access to a classroom unlike any other at their public school. They know that if they can perfect their crepes and tourne potatoes for Mrs. Stephenson, they can get scholarships and get out of Frankford. Mrs. Stephenson, through her irreverent and uncompromising manner, teaches the value of practice and discipline. There are seven sides on a correctly crafted tourne potato: Wilma helps the kids see that there is a serious upside to perfecting that shape. The patience, repetition, and focus necessary to tourne a potato are skills predictive of success inside and outside the kitchen. Wilma makes that abundantly clear.

SFUSA: What do kids gain by developing a relationship with food?

Jennifer: Some students develop a passion for food and cooking, some gain respect and understanding for the products used in the kitchen, and many learn about nutrition as they broaden their palate and modify their eating habits.

Mark: I felt like I witnessed a developing respect for process. The students at Frankford were learning to put time and care into an endeavor. In preparing even something as seemingly straightforward as an omelet there were several variables that could lead to success or disaster. They developed a rigor in their mentality about how to achieve results.

SFUSA: In the movie we see the kids eat home cooked meals and the food they cook in school—do they, like most teenagers, eat fast food?  Or has their culinary training made them less susceptible to the big draw of fast food? Did you learn anything about kids and their relationship to fast food?

Jennifer and Mark: Although Mrs. Stephenson’s students cook gourmet meals at school and often cook at home, they also consume a lot of fast food because of its low price and easy availability.  Also, several students work in fast food chains and often eat there for free.  Money and time are big factors when students are at school, doing sports, taking care of siblings, and working part and full-time jobs.  Mrs. Stephenson does try to broaden her students’ palates. In one of the scenes in the film, Erica (a 17-year-old) even chastises her family for not having a discerning palate: “You haven’t acquired the taste for anything but Fritos and Chitos.” And Erica believes in what she is saying, even though the food economy and culture around her can prove an overwhelming foe.

More after the jump

Agribusiness vs. University Dining Services

by Slow Food USA Intern Melissa Rosenberg

In 2007, Virginia Tech Dining Services (VTDS) was ranked #1 for Best Campus Foods by the Princeton Review, getting high marks for student satisfaction. Recognized for its outstanding work by food industry peers, VTDS received the prestigious 2009 Ivy Award, bestowed each year upon exceptional food service operations.

Hired as the VTDS Sustainability Coordinator in October of 2008, Andy Sarjahani jumpstarted an effort to support sustainable food systems by monitoring every aspect of its food services. In a short time, Andy and his team have implemented a vast array of initiatives: removing trays to decrease food waste, composting, and working with distributors, non-profits and local farmers in a variety of Farm-to-College programs.

In addition, VTDS began growing its own herbs in a garden operated by the Horticulture Department and switched from Pennsylvania-raised factory farm eggs to Virginia-raised organic cage-free eggs. While somewhat more expensive, the food does more than taste delicious: VTDS’ $8 million budget enables the university to significantly impact the state food and agriculture economy as it feeds 34,000 hungry stomachs each day.

In March, statewide attention was drawn to the changes in VTDS buying practices after the Humane Society of the United States issued a press release celebrating the changes. Since then, staff members have come under pressure from such agribusiness groups as the Virginia Farm Bureau and the Virginia Poultry Federation, among several others. The lobbyists are asking the university to scale back or cease its work on promoting awareness and access to sustainable food.

More after the jump

Sam Kass Serving School Lunch to Congress Today

by Gordon Jenkins

White House chef Sam Kass and a team of Chicago high school students are serving Congressional leaders a delicious, healthy meal on Capitol Hill today in order to brief Congress on the need to invest in the National School Lunch Program. The meal—which features carrot quesadillas, stuffed peppers and salad—was designed by high school students participating in the Healthy Schools Campaign’s “Cooking Up Change” contest. The students were asked to make a delicious, nourishing meal using ingredients typically available to food service directors. Over 40,000 school children in cities across the U.S. will be served the same meal today in their school cafeterias.

Many organizations are focusing their attention on this year’s reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that funds and sets standards for the National School Lunch Program. Over 30 million children eat school lunch everyday. If we’re going to build a nation where everyone is able to enjoy food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the planet, then there’s no better place to start than in schools. here, on CNN]

Food Service Provider Boycotts Florida Tomatoes

As reported yesterday in the Washington Post, a BIG victory for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their Dine With Dignity Campaign:

  Bon Appétit Management Company, a socially responsible food service provider operating on 400 university campuses and in corporate cafés throughout 29 states, has forged a new agreement that frames acceptable working conditions and enforces those conditions with a strict code of conduct. Appalled by what federal prosecutors describe as slavery, one of the largest food service companies in the country has promised to boycott Florida tomatoes unless conditions improve. Bon Appétit’s chief executive called on growers to “do the right thing and our five million pounds of business can go to them. Or they can let the tomatoes rot in the fields.”

The new frontier in sustainable food is social justice and pressure from labor organizations is part of that new wave, but defending ‘green’ credentials is at the heart of it.

More after the jump

Wisconsin Fourth-Graders Boycott School Lunch

by Gordon Jenkins

Patricia Mulvey reports on the blog F is for French Fry that last Friday, a group of fourth-graders at Nuestro Mundo Elementary School in Madison, WI had planned to protest the unhealthy food served in their cafeteria by staying behind in class during recess and enjoying a home-cooked meal with fresh fruits and vegetables. Their “Real Food Picnic” – you might call it an Eat-In– was canceled, however, when the school district’s assistant superintendent alerted parents and administrators and asked them to discourage the event, citing concerns about food allergies, lack of supervision and the presence of news media.

The students are members of a group called “Boycott School Lunch (BCSL)” that they founded last fall after conducting some “gross experiments” like measuring how much grease they could squeeze out of a hamburger. This year, they’ve been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in history class. When teacher Joshua Forehand showed them a film about the Children’s Crusade that took place in Birmingham, AL in 1963, the students were inspired to organize a peaceful protest in support of improving school lunch.

More after the jump

Getting Vocal about School Lunch

The School Lunch conversation is heating up on the Hill and off.  The New York Times ran an editorial on Monday saying “The schools should not be trading their students’ health to buy office supplies,” and lauding Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, and Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, for introducing (and promising to introduce) bills that would “update nutritional standards and give the Department of Agriculture broader authority to promulgate new regulations for food sold in schools that accept federal food subsidies.” 

For more information about those bills, as well as for excellent daily coverage of school food policy—as covered by the Child Nutrition Act, up for reauthorization this September—check out schoolfoodpolicy.com.

Slow Food Emory on CNN

Allison Archer, an Emory student, did her thesis project on sustainability initiatives at her school—CNN saw it, liked it and condensed it into a 4.5 minute piece, all about how integrating sustainable food into the equation is an essential component of greening a campus.   This is just one example of how Slow Food on Campus chapters are beginning to take the nation by storm.  There are currently 20 Slow Food on Campus chapters, around the country, all working to address the need for a good, clean and fair food system in the United States and abroad.  Students who participate in Slow Food on Campus are passionately organizing their peers, faculty and greater campus community to organize around a fairer food system. 

Slow Food Emory is one of the newest Slow Food on Campus chapters, which makes it all the more impressive that they already gaining national attention for their initiatives.  As they explain, “Slow Food Emory hopes to heal ties severed by industrial fare and the campus meal plan.Ԡ The chapter has held potluck picnics, developed an edible school garden for the Captain Planet Foundation, and hosted a restaurant raffle that has introduced students to local, sustainable restaurants in the community. 

For more information about what other Slow Food on Campus chapters are doing around the country and how to start a chapter at your college or university, check out the Slow Food on Campus page on our website.