Yes, But Will Kids Eat It?
May 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Posted in kids, school food
What does "healthy" school food mean?
The Washington Post had a reporter parachute in on the “Healthy Schools” legislation headed for final approval in the D.C. Council Tuesday and write up a glossy and utterly superficial report on what the legislation will do. Too bad. Because as currently configured, D.C. schools are not equipped to deliver a “gold standard” level of food that kids will actually eat. Nor should parents expect Chartwells-Thompson, the corporate entity contracted to deliver food to D.C. Public Schools, to abandon its menus of cheap, industrially-processed convenience foods any time soon in favor of freshly prepared meals using real ingredients.
So what’s going to happen to all those vegetables the “Healthy Schools” bill calls for? Will they just end up in the trash, like the vegetables currently served in D.C. schools?
Worst of all, the legislation does nothing about the enormous levels of sugar D.C. schoolchildren consume each day courtesy of the financial ties Chartwells-Thompson has with giant corporate food purveyors. As we’ve said here before, the easiest and cheapest way to improve food in D.C. schools would be to cut back on the sugar, simply by replacing the candied cereals and cookies that are served every day for breakfast, the non-stop fruit juices, the flavored milk that rivals Mountain Dew.
As for leading the nation, the District has a long way to go before it catches up to school districts that actually are serving fresh food made from scratch and have managed to drop chocolate and strawberry milk in favor of good ol’ regular, with no apparent ill health effects.
It’s true that months of work went into this legislation and many voices were heard. Unfortunately, not enough parents showed up. It’s a funny thing about regulations governing school food: there are so many of them already, and schools still manage to serve junk with the full approval of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As Ann Cooper, the famous “renegade lunch lady,” is fond of saying (but perhaps not repeating too often), “We need to blow up the USDA!”
Well, as Shakespeare might have said, that would be a start.
So don’t sprain your arms patting yourselves on the back, everybody. There’s a still a long ways to go before D.C. schools are truly “healthy.” This is only a beginning.
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