Fit Fare

Despite all the bad news about school lunches, there is actually a great deal of good news throughout the country. Programs have been springing up intent upon improving the state of our children’s lunches and making sure that proper nutrition is available to everyone.

Some programs have begun with smaller gestures, such as banning soft drinks and vending machines. While this does not directly address the lunches themselves, it has become quite evident that having sugary and high-fat snacks and drinks available at all times undercuts the value of the lunches served.

(For a list of state legislature involving vending machines in schools, click here.)

Other programs address the lunches directly. For instance, Central Alternative High School in Appleton, Wisconsin is one such program that has documented proof of its success. In 1997, a bakery called Natural Ovens of Manitowoc, Wisconson initiated a five-year project to bring healthy food into area schools. The goal was to show that fresh, nutritious food can make a real difference in the student’s behavior, learning and health. The results were impressive. At the time, the school had so many problems with discipline and weapons violations that a police officer was recruited to be on the staff. The school was described as being “out of control.” Now, after years of improved nutrition, the school’s situation is vastly different: grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching. By eliminating junk foods and artificial ingredients, offering plenty of fresh whole foods, and a plant-based option each day, they saw dramatic improvements in attendance, grades and behavior, experts say.

Students who previously had been headed for trouble have turned their lives around, according to Dr. Thomas Scullen, Superintendent of the Appleton Area School District. He told the interviewer, “We have kids who have had a lot of problems and got through the whole last year without an expulsion. Drop-outs dropped to non-existent. Kids came to school. They have learned that with healthier foods it’s going to make them a better person. It keeps them more focused and makes them happier.”

Dr. Scullen had expected that the healthy diet would improve behavior, but he was pleasantly surprised that it has had such an impact on academic performance.

In Hawai’i today, childhood obesity rates are twice the national average. In Kipahulu, Hawai’i, a group of farmers is addressing that problem by reconnecting food, farming, education, and health and revisiting the more traditional diet of the region. They are growing kalo (taro) and involving the youth in the process, teaching them about the traditional Hawai’ian food and culture, and hoping to educate them about growing their food first hand and offer an alternative to processed foods.

In Berkeley, California, schools are mounting a full assault against the problems. The Berkeley School Lunch Initative, passed by the school board in 2004, mandates an organic, seasonal and locally harvested lunch throughout the school district and the integration of lunch into the formal school curriculum. In these schools, students are learning a lesson in sustainability that could save their health as well as that of local family farms.

The initiative is based on the model of the Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre garden where middle school students at a Berkeley public school have been learning how to grow, prepare, serve and eat fresh food since the mid-nineties. By integrating the gardening into the school’s curriculum and lunch program, it not only aims at providing them with nutritious fresh lunches, it also teaches them the values of nourishment, community, and stewardship of the land.

The goal of the initiative is to set up similar gardens at each of the Berkeley Unified School District’s 16 schools and to make school lunch part of the curriculum - a project initiated by the school board. The goal is to weave lunch into lesson plans for current subjects so that students understand what connects food, nature and real life.

These three are just a small number of the many programs throughout the nation: In Boston, City Fresh provides schools, day care centers, and after-school programs with a cost-effective way to meet their food service needs. They offer tasty and nutritious breakfast, snack, and lunch menus based on seasonal, fresh ingredients purchased from local organic farmers. In New York, the New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches combines farm to school programs with nutrition education to encourage healthier choices.

The list goes on and on, and the approaches are quite varied. The one thing they all have in common, however, is that someone - be it a parent, an educator or a concerned citizen - decided to do something. Even the students themselves can bring about change: all they need is the belief that things can be improved.