Comments on: Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen: Part Four

By: Carl Rollins

Carl Rollins — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:08:38 +0000

Flavored milk is “soda in drag”–I love it. You could say the same about flavored yogurt. You are so right that with fruit juice you get the sugar but little of the fiber that fills you up compared to the real. whole fruit. Earlier in the series you noted that the kids love the real fruit. I’ve been baking bread for 4-years or so. Although I sometimes use a pinch of evaporated cane juice to energize the yeast or a dollop of honey for flavor, I never imagined using high fructose corn syrup in my homemade bread. Imagine that?

Cooking in schools with whole foods is the way to go.

By: Ed Bruske

Ed Bruske — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:35:03 +0000

Bruxelle — thanks for your thoughtful comments. It seems to be acknowledged in the school food service community that “nutrition” doesn’t necessarily translate into palatability, which raises concerns about whether the nutritious food served is actually eaten. This series was presented as a snap-shot, not an investigation of the myriad aspects of the federal school lunch and breakfast programs. But I hope some of your questions are addressed in the final post.

By: laurabeck1

laurabeck1 — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:28:38 +0000

Thanks so much for this great series of stories!

I want to point out an upcoming opportunity to help improve school lunches. Congress is revising the Child Nutrition Act, which currently makes no provision for vegetarian foods. We need to ask Congress to help schools serve more fruits, vegetables, vegetarian foods. You can get involved in a campaign that’s working to do just that: http://HealthySchoolLunches.org.

By: bruxelle

bruxelle — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:31:29 +0000

While I agree that ‘real’ foods are important and that kids in public schools should be offered more than heavily processed meals, I am also grateful to see that there is free breakfast, with nutrition for everyone. In impoverished areas, you can’t imagine how it must be for children in food insecure homes. Children that are hungry – and who don’t have anything to eat at home. The fact that they can come to school every day and have something to eat, for free, offers them a sense of security and nutrition. The fact that there are so many subsidized meals, at cheap prices for the large number of students is important too in a city with food insecurity. I don’t see a problem with frozen food, in fact, I’ve read studies that show sometimes it maintains its nutrition better than fresh because it is flash frozen on the spot. For school cooks who need to feed large numbers of people, I can’t imagine what the problem with frozen food is. Also, in cash strapped cities- the extra staff and extra costs to have all fresh produce cooked as a home cook would do, would nessecarily take away from the fund available for teachers, text books and tools for learning. I admire your efforts for scoping out what is going on, but I believe that it is important that food insecurity be dealt with in a place where children are required to be every day – and I wish that your posts dealt a little more with the issue of hunger and how to city is trying to deal with it as cheaply as possible.