Cooking With Kids: School Lunch Revolution
My daughter is still in preschool, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the school lunch–reform movement. This week on KCRW’s Good Food, producer Thea Chaloner visited CALS High, a charter school in downtown Los Angeles, and talked to a number of students about the new healthy school lunches they’re getting through a company called Revolution Foods. (If you want to listen, the segment runs from 8:22 to 13:50.)
“I am not a big fan of salad,” one student said. “I don’t really like them. But the Chinese chicken salad they had here, it had good dressing, it had crunchy noodles, it had good chicken in it and carrots, and it was just an overall pleasant experience.”
This sounds better than my average lunch.
The emphasis of the lunch program, I was pleased to hear, is on taste. Menus are developed with student and parent participation. “We do not serve fried, processed, or reheated food” is part of Revolution’s food standards. And the program has been a hit: hot lunch sales have doubled, and one student who used to go to Carl’s Jr five days a week now eats at school four days. (Four days without fried food is about as many as I can handle too, dude.)
However, the segment sidestepped the issue of cost. Some of the ingredients are sourced through Whole Foods, which should give you an idea that these lunches are out of reach of the typical urban school district. In Seattle, for example, schools have about $1 a day per student to spend on ingredients.
Still, it was fun to hear from actual high school students rather than just parents, advocates, and other media surrogates, and I’ll file this story away for when I become an annoying public school parent in a couple years.
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. He also maintains the blog Roots and Grubs. His favorite food is pad Thai.
View other entries from Cooking With Kids.
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7 Comments:
i was thinking about donating my time to my kids' daycare - and working with their on-staff cook to come up with some recipes...but i think she got offended when I offered!
Steamy Kitchen at 3:34PM on 05/26/08
I can't be the only one who glanced at the title of the article and wondered when Lunch Lunch Revolution was coming out for Wii...
mschlock at 6:05PM on 05/26/08
So many kids depend on school-provided lunches two, sometimes 3x/day. There has GOT to be a way to make an economical and healthful lunch (and/or breakfast) for all school kids in a fully equipped school kitchen. Yes, people can pack lunches but that's not always a solution. The school lunchroom is one of the first places kids learn about food and foster a relationship with food. I hope the powers that be find a way to stop feeding them crap.
chiff0nade at 10:05AM on 05/27/08
I don't think that kids should necessarily be fed an organic CNG diet. Cost is a factor here. However, the simple fact of using whole ingredients and cooking food instead of reheating it is imperative.
forvrin at 10:58AM on 05/27/08
This certainly beats fish sticks! If it tastes good, kids will eat it!!
RichardCrystal at 1:33PM on 05/27/08
I, too, have been watching this issue with just a couple years away from school lunch days for public schools. Thing is, I've already gone a few rounds with our day care over meal quality. It's ended with me just packing lunches every day. The lunches are a bit of a curiosity, you know, even the teachers are wishing I would pack THEIR lunches, too.
I did a survey (unofficial) and had other parents send me a post link to their child's preschool/school menu. Here are the results (or, why I want to go to preschool in France).
ExpatChef at 4:52PM on 05/27/08
http://www.austin360.com/food_drink/content/food_drink/stories/2008/05/0521discovery.html
Follow the link to read about a charter school in Austin that has rewritten an entire curriculum around gardening and eating local.
bingsy at 1:27AM on 06/06/08