Yesterday I went to the farmer’s market, the pre-Thanksgiving Farmer’s Market in Berkeley and I was overjoyed by all of the delicious food — but it made me think about the food that most schools are feeding our children. Most school districts in America spend less than $150.00 on food to feed a child for the entire 180 day school year. Less than $1.00 per day to feed our children food that is supposed to nourish and care for them and this in the setting of “education.”

I think all living/breathing human beings understand that we’re not only in the throes of an obesity crisis, but that all manner of diet related illness is on the rise. The CDC has stated that of the children born in the year 2000, those 7-year old babies in first grade this year; that 1 out of every 3 Caucasians and 1 out of every 2 African American and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime – most before they graduate High School. This means that within a short decade as many as 40-45% of all school age school may be insulin dependent – the CDC goes further to say that these young children will be the first generation in our nation’s history to die at a younger age than their parents.

All because of what we feed them!

And what do we feed children in most schools, certainly not the beautiful food of the farmer’s markets. In most schools the fare is a mix to chicken nuggets, tater tots, canned fruits and vegetables, chocolate milk (with more sugar than soda), corn dogs, pizza pockets and more depressing “stuff” (not really food) than I care mention. Cheap, cheap food which costs less than $1 dollar a day.

But this cheap food has a cost and that cost is our children’s health. Michael Pollan reported in the New York Times Magazine that diet related illness costs our country over $200 billion dollars a year – almost 30 times more than we spend on school lunches. As a country we spend $110 billon a year on fast food, $50 billion on diet aids and then of course the war, estimates are topping $200 billion a year for that as well.

Yet as parents and caregivers, we buy our kids the best. The best sneakers, certainly the best car seats and jeans can often cost $50 – $100 a pair. We buy our kids swimming lessons, skiing lessons, music lessons, language lessons – I could go on and on and on.

But for some reason, as a nation we seem unwilling to invest more money into the National School Lunch program.

We must change this. We must demand that our national, state and city governments begin to raise the bar on our children’s health by raising nutritional guidelines and increasing the amount of money we spend on our children’s lunches.

We can and must make our children’s health a priority – the alternative is unthinkable.

So as we all sit down with family and friends, giving thanks and sharing gratitude for all that we have, perhaps we should also consider the changes that we could make to guarantee nutritious/delicious food for breakfast and lunch everyday for every child in our country.

Perhaps next year, we’ll all be giving thanks for healthy kids eating healthy food in all of our schools.