Glorious Food? English Schoolchildren Think Not

Glorious Food? English Schoolchildren Think Not

ROTHERHAM, England — Five months after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver succeeded in cajoling, threatening and shaming the British government into banning junk food from its school cafeterias, many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat.

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The government’s regulations, which took effect in September, have banished from school cafeterias the cheap, instantly gratifying meals that children love by default: the hamburgers, the French fries, the breaded, deep-fried processed meat, the sugary drinks.

Now schools have to provide at least two portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day for each child, serve fish at least once a week, remove salt from lunchroom tables, limit fried foods to two servings a week and cut out candy, soda and potato chips altogether.

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Schools that have tried to win students over appear to have fared better than those that impose bans, Professor Morgan said.

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Removing salt from lunchrooms? That's whack.

Though it's better than the District 65 plan which states "kids recieve no nutrition from foods they don't eat" and proceeds to offer french toast sticks and syrup with a side of Goldfish cookies (by the way, those are whole-grain, don't you know), fried cheese sticks, and nachos with nothing but cheese as 3 of their 5 meals in rotation.

Not that I never feed Sparky the above foods - but that's a far cry from keeping nutritious foods out of the rotation because he might not eat them.

Salt off the tables is, however, going a little far...

The school lunch issue is a tough one, and I’ve been researching and working on this for a while, and I too have kids in Evanston’s District 65. In fact, as a member of the League of Women Voters, I recently put together a panel in Evanston discussing the school lunch issue; turnout was pretty dismal but the panelists were really interesting, especially UIC historian Susan Levine, whose book Fixing Lunch: Food and Politics in Twentieth Century America will be published soon; look for it when it appears. The problem is not evil lunch ladies who want to do our children in with bad food; I’ve met with food service administrators and they are trying to do what they can under difficult circumstances. Schools participating in the National School Lunch Program (which includes 95% of our public schools, serving 29 million children each year) must provide free lunches to low-income students and these lunches must meet nutritional standards set by the federal government; no more than 30% of the calories in these meals must come from fat, and no more than 10% from saturated fat (that’s balanced over the course of a week, by the way.) Schools participating in the NSLP operate under significant restrictions, the first being their limited budget: schools in Evanston and elsewhere are reimbursed $2.42 from the federal government for each free lunch served (districts also receive commodity foods, which are valued at about 16 cents per lunch served). While there has been a lot of attention paid lately to celebrity chefs endeavoring to turn school lunchrooms into havens for healthy, tasty eating, those chefs (like Oliver and Ann Cooper in California) have their salaries and much of their costs underwritten by private foundations, not an option for most school districts. This limited budget requires that schools, where they can offer ala carte items, like at most middle schools, endeavor to entice paying students to buy items (often those sugary treats we’d prefer kids didn’t eat) to help underwrite the costs to provide better meals for the majority of kids. And even if the costs for the actual lunches were increased somewhat, you have other problems that limit possibilities: many grade schools, like those in Evanston, don’t have kitchens or actual cafeterias, so food must be prepared off site. To truly revamp the lunch programs would require significant investment in the physical plant of most school districts.

There are political reasons for all these limitations, the most important being that the NSLP has been regarded as a poverty program for much of its history (though not, significantly, for all of its lifetime, but you’ll have to read Susan Levine’s book to find out why). Children from more affluent families can opt out of the program, of course, and generally do where the lunches are unappealing, and thus until recently there has been little political pressure to change much about the NSLP. I will note that in my discussions with food service administrators they told me that they rarely, if ever, receive complaints from parents whose kids receive free lunch about the nutritional quality of the meals; they hear from those parents if their kids miss lunch or are hassled about payments, etc. For many poor families, in other words, school lunches (and breakfasts) are vitally important and may represent the most nutritious meal the kids get all day – unappealing though they may seem to us. But all kids deserve better, and it would be nice to see a movement develop that would make nutritionally balanced and enticing food a priority within our schools for all kids. This will take time, though – the effort can’t be abandoned after a few months because kids complain want their French fry sandwiches back – but more importantly it will take a big commitment and big bucks from the government for such a movement to affect more than a handful of kids.

I have seen this whole school lunch battle from about six points of view.

First, attending a rich suburban public school where they actually served very nutritious, high quality food ... and where about 60% of the food was dumped in the can. My first bout with obesity came at age 12 when I actually went to a school with a cafeteria and kids would give me what they refused to eat. And the food - lasagna, chicken livers, etc. was great.

Second, watching my aunt go head to head with the nuns at the Catholic school because they signed up my cousins for FREE school lunches. My aunt was furious as they were well ABOVE the income limits and did not believe in that government program.

Third, attending an innercity Catholic school without a cafeteria where every child, even the poor ones, managed to bring in an adequate lunch.

Fourth, as a food service manager working in a hospital serving a low-income clientele, seeing the absolute GARBAGE provided by the USDA Food Programs (and state purchasing programs) and having to develop decent tasting nutritious meals out of it. I give my cooks some credit for being able to make silk purses out of sow's ears. I could write a BOOK on the year that I spent at that hospital and the literally HUNDREDS of "exception reports" on the quality of the raw materials. (Don't worry, the place was NOT in Chicago.)

Fifth, as a taxpayer, seeing the local public schools serving what is essentially a fast food menu of the same old crap to kids.

I must say that the NSLP program definitely didn't uphold those nutritional requirements back in the early nineties. After my father was hit with his second long-term spell of unemployment my sister and I were placed on the free lunch program in Naperville. Basically, we were given a pass to show the lunch lady, and were able to select anything we wanted. Even at that time my options included Connie's pizza, freshly made burgers, and Fries.

I would have to say that I have never eaten a poorly as I did during that first year in high school.

Flip

I did see the info for the forum in Evanston, and greatly appreciate that there are attentive individuals working on the issue - I had a schedule conflict that evening and couldn't attend.

I also agree that the cost for lunches is a little ridiculous; I can't make my son lunch from home for $2.50. I'm all for upping the price of school lunches for both the free lunch and paid lunch kids.

However, I still find the inclusion of artificial maple syrup, cheese sauce and fried cheese as main-course parts of the lunch a little overwhelming, when the stated function of school lunch has always been to provide nutrition and nutrition education to less fortunate kids. Pizza would be an improvement.