School Lunch on the Front Burner

School lunch reform advocates are raising the topic loudly and frequently in the news lately. Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" is beaming into American homes and creating urgency about the need to serve healthier meals to schoolchildren. It's evidently hit a nerve with the public. The ratings have been huge. Then there is FLOTUS Michelle Obama and her efforts to secure greater funding for the National School Lunch Program, a program which hasn't seen any apportionement increase for the past twenty years. She asked for a $1 dollar per student increase (from $2.67/day to $3.67/day) and got.... six cents. We are also hearing about school districts stepping up and demanding a change in their current lunch programs even in these times of budget cuts and stretched public education resources.

Here is some news from Parent Marialyce Pedersen about what the Washington D.C. school district is facing:

"A bill in the D.C. Council that would urge District public schools to improve the diets of students and support healthy lifestyles has been praised as being the right legislation during a time when childhood obesity has reached an all time high. D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D) have co-sponsored the "Healthy School Act of 2009." The bill would require that school meals, and in the case of children who are enrolled in after-school programs, consist of foods high in nutrients to help fight diseases that could possibly carry over into adulthood.

"We have made an enormous effort to reform education in D.C.," Cheh said.
"We need to improve the nutritional, health and wellness of the students. We are feeding students breakfast, lunch and those in after-school programs, dinner."
Cheh said that it’s important that children receive nutritional meals because they spend the majority of their days in school."The children are in our care," she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention polling indicates that 18 percent of D.C. students are obese and 35 percent are overweight. A U.S. Surgeon General's study that stated that children who are obese tend to grow up and suffer from medical conditions that include diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and cancer.

Economic status also contributes to childhood obesity. Thirty two percent of District children live in poverty and of that number, 19.2 percent live in abject poverty which includes homelessness or children who have no family support. Asthma afflicts 1 in 6 children in the District.

In an effort to promote the bill, Cheh has visited schools throughout the city, but said she experienced an epiphany at Kimball Elementary School in Southeast."We had a chef from the D.C. Kitchen to come by and cook squash soup," she said."Before he did, he asked the kids had any of them ever had squash soup and they said no. He [made the soup] and they kept coming for seconds and thirds."Cheh learned a thing or two about children’s palates that day, she said, "if you cook it, they will eat it."

Kimball Elementary students Deazon Gardner and Tamara Robinson joined dozens of individuals who rallied in favor of the bill. The youngsters participate in a program that encourages healthy eating and promotes school gardens.

Tamara, 8, said that there was far too much salt in the school cafeteria food and that the vegetables were not properly cooked while Deazon, 9, said that it was fun to learn how to grow their own food.

“Our food in the cafeteria is so bad,” Tamara, a third grader, said “that I do not eat at all and sometimes I go hungry.”

Basically, the bill would make school meals healthier and more nutritious; increase the amount of local and fresh fruits and vegetables served in schools; increase exercise and physical activity in the schools; promote school gardens, recycling, energy reduction and other green initiatives.