I recently watched “Food, Inc.”, which really has changed the way I look at food. I thought it was going to be a gross-out, look- how-horrible-these-conditions-are kind of documentary, but it was actually more focused on food legislation, pricing, and how manufacturers and the FDA are in cahoots to keep where your food really comes from and exactly what happens to it before it hits your plate a secret to keep you buying.
It got me thinking: what is the only place where food is served directly to consumers, where they have no control over where it comes from, what ingredients are in it, how it is prepared, and even what the actual meal is?
Schools.
Well, I suppose prison, too, but I’m not worried about them.
There has been a lot of talk recently of school lunch revamps to save our children. First Lady Michelle Obama has made it her mission to overhaul the children of our nation’s diet, and thus, their health, and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has pledged to get more funding for the U.S. school lunch program to provide healthier options, just as he has done in the UK.
By law, school meals are required to meet the federal dietary guidelines, but decisions about what specific foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by local school food authorities. The federal guidelines recommend that no more than 30 percent of an individual’s calories come from fat, and less than 10 percent from saturated fat per meal. Regulations also establish a standard for school meals to provide one-third of the Recommended Daily Allowances of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and calories.
This sounds all well and good until you see what is actually going on.
Students eat about a third of their meals at school, and should therefore get about a third of their daily allowance of fat. Instead, research shows that school cafeteria lunches supply half of the recommended levels of fat (about 31 grams of fat, compared to 21 grams of fat in the average bagged lunch from home.)
The mandated school lunches often feature french fries as vegetables and fruit cocktail soaked in sugar and preservatives as a fruit. A typical lunch is a hamburger, frozen and shipped from a plant, on a refined bun that offers no nutritional value, a side of french fries and a milk, or as few breaded chicken nuggets, an ice cream scoop of green beans that usually get tossed, and some mashed potatoes.
The quality of these meals in terms of safety is also a concern. According to a 2009 USA TODAY investigation, “The government has provided the nation’s schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn’t meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants.” The government has said the meat is not suitable to serve at McDonald’s or KFC, but we can ship it to schools and feed it to our children.
The big, over riding issue here, as always, is money. Most schools don’t have enough funding to provide children with books, so providing them with fresh, quality and healthy ingredients sounds nearly impossible. In addition, if they can actually make money off of students and offer food choices they are more likely to purchase with their own money, like cookies and pizza, in student run stores, they can actually fund extracurriculars with the profit.
These are the offerings children actually buy and eat. I did it when I was in school. Pizza brought in from the local joint and sold at $1.50 was sold out with in minutes. That money went to fund prom. Cookies, sold 3 to a bag for $2.00, funded the wrestling team’s bus to go to state. It’s a business- because schools don’t get enough money on their own, they have to find a way to make it: by giving the students what they want.
However, healthy school lunches aren’t as pie-in-the-sky as school officials would have you believe. Kids eat when they are hungry and they will eat what is available. The first thing that needs to be done is eliminate unhealthy vending machine snacks, like candy, cookies, chips and soda, and fill them with more nutritious choices.
The vending machines are starting to be yanked from schools and soda companies are starting to offer ‘healthier’ sodas, but it’s not enough. The trouble is finding fresh, healthy ingredients that kids will eat, but stay in budget, and the truth is, the budget needs to be expanded.
Jamie Oliver, TV personality and chef, is trying to bring his food revolution to the U.S. After airing a four-hour television series in his native UK aimed at improving school lunches, he got the British government to allocate one billion dollars to make over the British school lunch system to include more fresh and local foods, better food standards, and cut out the junk. Guess what? It worked. Test scores soared and attendance improved by 15%. The U.S. Department of Agriculture invests only $2.68 on average per day for each student’s school lunch. Oliver, through his new program The Lunch Box, is asking Congress to invest just $1 more per child toward school lunches to boost their nutrition which will in turn boost their health, their attention, their test scores and their mood.
Until schools truly get an overhaul on their lunches, your best bet as a parent is to send your kid to school with a well-balanced, nutritious lunch to fuel them through their day, rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. You can also write to your local officials and ask them to pass legislation to better fund our school lunch programs.
