On Air with Kojo Nnamdi
September 1st, 2010 · 1 Comment · Posted in school food
Here I am with Chef Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve on today’s Kojo Nnamdi show discussing school food. It was great to have an hour for this topic, and we had lots of thoughtful questions from listeners.
Meanwhile, my wife says I must buy new shirts next year. My entire Hawaiian wardrobe has faded. She also hates these glasses. Chef Armstrong, on the other hand, not only looked great in his impeccably white chef’s jacket, but was incredibly articulate.
We both agreed: Schools need to get rid of sugar from their menus, and they serve far too many starchy carbohydrates. But that’s also the fault of the goofy “Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” which result in the equally goofy standards established for the school meals program by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We also agree that Americans need to think a lot harder about the food we feed kids at school, and why it is we have hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on wars on the other side of the world, but only pennies to nourish our children.
As readers know, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reporting on school food here, and on a daily basis at the Better D.C. School Food blog. Chef Armstrong has set up a charitable foundation directed at improving school food, and has proposed using a non-profit model with parent volunteers to take over the food service at Tyler Elementary School on Capitol Hill.
You can listen to the archived show at Kojo’s website.
(Photo by producer Michael Martinez.)
You know I don’t get the station here in “Little” Washington (I mean “First” Washington”) but was able to listen off the web site.
Great discussion touching on the more relevant needs for reform. Thank you Ed for your continued tenacity!
(buy new shirts now when summer shirts are on sale….)