The President has proclaimed this week as National School Lunch Week, the White House press release on this event leads us to believe that there is tremendous progress being made toward healthier school lunches and in some ways we have made progress.  It’s difficult to read a paper, watch TV, listen to NPR or peruse the internet without coming across stories of positive change in school food.

From Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Campaign to Chefs Move to Schools, From Farm to School to Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and the work of Foundations like Orfalea and Colorado Health who fund Culinary Boot Camps, Kellogg’s School Food Focus, and the Food Family Farming Foundation’s Lunchbox.org and Great American Salad Bar Project – so many seem to be working so tirelessly.  So with so much energy, so many movies like Two Angry Mom’s, What’s On Your Plate and Lunch Line and so many advocates like Kate Adamick, Jan Poppendick, Alice Waters; and so many Nutrition Services Directors in places like St Paul, Chicago and NYC; and so many websites like Ecoliteracy.org, Healthyschoolscampaign.org and Schoolnutrition.org; and so many bloggers like Mrs Q, Ed Bruske and Dr Susan Rubin all trying so hard.  And not only advocates, we see companies like Whole Foods Markets, Chipotle Grill, Barbara’s Bakery, Fullblooom Baking Company and Stonyfield all trying to figure out how to help get better food on our kid’s plates.  Why then are we truly making so little progress?

To my mind it’s all politics and money.  Congress has failed to pass Child Nutrition Reauthorization that is now over a year past due and even if it had passed, would only have allocated 4 ½ to 6 cents additional funds per student, so even for the mere pennies per lunch that we could have added to the current $2.72 that we spend on school meals, our elected officials couldn’t come together for the health of our children.  And it’s not just Congress on the hook for the lack of healthy food in schools; we also have the USDA’s Commodity Food System, Big Business and lobbyists convincing our kids that Chicken Nuggets are a food group, Hot Cheetos are breakfast and Chocolate Milk will save our country from an epidemic of Rickets.

The issues just go on and on.

We are told over and over that there’s not enough money to fix school lunch, yet we live in a country where we consistently spend 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times more for our daily coffee than we do on food for our children’s school lunch, which in most school districts amounts to less than a dollar.  From the National perspective it looks even worse.  We spend $9.5 billion dollars per year on school lunch feeding 31 million children a day.  I believe it will cost an extra dollar per day to feed kids “real” unprocessed made from scratch food; fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, whole grains and healthy protein.  So where do we get an extra $5.5 billion per year – well the war is costing $3 billion per week and just two diseases; diabetes and obesity cost $5 billion per week – it’s clearly not that we don’t have the money; it’s the will and passion we’re lacking.

So what to do?

In celebration of National School Lunch Week, I suggest the following:

At Home:

• Make food, eating and dining an integral part of your family.
• Cook with your kids.
• Garden/grow with your kids.
• Shop with your kids, at least sometimes.
• Sit down at the table and eat with your entire family
• Turn off the TV!

In School:

• Go eat lunch at your child’s school or any local school and see what the food looks and tastes like.
• Get all of your families and friends to do the same.
• Petition the school board for better food for all of the district’s children.
• Get a salad bar for your school from the Great American Salad Bar Project.
• Work with your school food service staff with information from The Lunchbox.org.
• Write your elected officials and tell them to pass Child Nutrition Reauthorization and implement the Institute of   Medicine guidelines immediately.

But please, for the health of our kids and our Nation’s future, we really must all step up to the plate and do something, at least one thing to make school food better!

- Chef Ann Cooper

For all the good first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative will do motivating the private sector, there is hard work ahead as Congress takes up reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act this year.

The administration has proposed an additional $1 billion per year for child nutrition in its fiscal 2011 budget. At first blush, given the state of the economy and the president’s call for a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, this might seem like a win. The School Nutrition Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have applauded the proposal and are asking parents and school administrators to get behind this investment.

But the truth is that $1 billion is a far cry from what’s needed to get good food into schools. In fact, $1 billion for child nutrition per year translates to mere pennies for every school lunch. That’s not even what it costs me to put a fresh apple on each lunch tray. (more…)