Who will pay for healthier school food?

School food is poised to look less like prison fodder and more like a Moosewood Restaurant buffet if new USDA guidelines are adopted. Colorful vegetables—lots of them—more whole fruit, more whole grains, less salt, less processed junk—that’s the plat du jour. The only question now is, who picks up the check?

A tight-fisted Congress would only ante up six extra cents for school lunch in its recent re-authorization of child nutrition programs. Now the USDA says that’s not even close to covering all the goodies school food advocates have been asking for. Between more expensive ingredients and the increased labor needed to turn them into meals, the USDA estimates [PDF] school lunch soon will cost an extra 15 cents, and breakfast a whopping 51 cents more.

That compares to the $2.72 the federal government currently pays schools to provide a fully-reimbursable school lunch, $1.48 for breakfast.

According to wonks in the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services branch, the money to pay for these long-awaited changes will just have to come from state and local governments that at the moment are worse than broke. In other words, schools will be switching out frozen tater tots for fresh sweet potatoes and replacing processed beef crumbles with scratch-cooked spinach lasagna at the same time law makers are sending pink slips to teachers, shuttering health clinics for the poor, and unscrewing light bulbs in street lamps to resolve the worst budget deficits since the Great Depression.

Is anyone else feeling a teeny bit of buyer’s remorse?

I count myself among those who think the food served to kids in school could be a whole lot better. But something about the notion that kids must have fresh local broccoli on their lunch trays while teachers worry about the next mortgage payment doesn’t sit right. I’m doubly conflicted, because after a year of writing about school food on a daily basis, and monitoring what goes on in the cafeteria at my daughter’s elementary school here in the District of Columbia , I know that kids routinely refuse to eat and throw in the trash vast quantities of those very same vegetables and whole grains that constitute such a large portion of the looming school meals bill.

And it’s not just me. Here’s a Chicago Tribune story exposing the same thing in cafeterias there.  The Tribune found hundreds of pounds of food being tossed in the trash in a single school, including unopened cartons of milk and juice, uneaten oranges and bananas, whole cartons of cereal. Just as they do here in D.C., Chicago school children describe the healthier food as “nasty.”

We are about to embark on a multii-billion-dollar culinary experiment with unknowable results. This is faith-based nutrition on a huge scale. Nationwide, the USDA says the proposed changes will add $6.8 billion to the cost of preparing school meals in the first five years. The federal government spends $13 billion annually on school feeding programs.

State and local governments currently contribute around nine percent of the total cost of school food service. In California alone, the new guidelines will add $75 million to the annual bill just for fruits and vegetables, according to the Environmental Working Group. Where will Sacramento, currently in utter budget meltdown, come up with such a sum? The EWG proposes diverting money currently paid to subsidize dairy, cotton and rice farmers.

In an effort to wrap my head around all this, I recently spent a few hours reviewing financial briefs for all 50 states. I could hardly have assigned myself a more dismal task. It truly is a blood bath out there. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [PDF], states are seeing the worst decline in tax revenues ever recorded.  So far, at least 46 states have reduced services and 30 have raised taxes to some degree. With billions in federal stimulus dollars drying up, local budget woes will only get worse—and stay bad for years to come. Even education spending is now fair game for deficit hawks.

Consider these factoids:

Newly-elected California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed closing a $25 billion budget gap by cutting salaries for non-union state employees, slashing funding for higher education by 20 percent and even reducing aid for K-12 schools if voters don’t approve tax increases.

Los Angeles, described as on the brink of bankruptcy, is planning to send pink slips to 4,000 teachers, just in case the city needs to let some of them go.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has called his state “functionally bankrupt,” and proposes to close most of a $10 billion budget shortfall by reducing education funding and Medicaid.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells voters he will not raise taxes, but his approach to addressing an $11 billion budget deficit would include cutting $820 million in education funding.

Arizona is so broke, lawmakers are considering mortgaging state office buildings.

And in Madison, Wis., thousands of state workers—including teachers–recently rallied to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut their benefits and bargaining rights–and his threat to call out the National Guard if things get out of hand.

Here in D.C., extra funding for school meals approved under a “Healthy Schools Act” narrowly avoided budget cuts last year. But now the city faces a huge new shortfall of some $600 million, much larger than anticipated.

How does all of this square with the idea that schools should be feeding kids fresh chicken on the bone rather than re-heated chicken nuggets? Advocates would say we need to embrace the USDA guidelines in order to head off an epidemic of childhood obesity–and the nearly $300 billion estimated annual cost of medical care and lost productivity due to weight-related illness. But do kids really need a full-blown restaurant meal covering all the food groups every day?

Already schools on average lose more than 30 cents on every lunch they serve.  They may soon be forced to start charging students higher prices. Yet Lucy Gettman, director of federal programs for the National School Boards Association, says the outlook for funding school meals may not be so dire. Some states and some school districts have already been moving toward the kind of food service the USDA is proposing.

But there’s more turbulence on the horizon. Pending standards for food sold in vending machines and in school stores—presumably requiring healthy choices rather than candy, chips and soft drinks—will likely cut into food service revenues, Gettman said. Congress has also told the USDA to examine how schools assign operational costs to food service, another potential drain.

“Over the last few years, three dozen states have either changed state laws or have considered changing state laws regarding school nutrition,” Gettman said. “Every state and every school district is probably going to be in a different place. Some may be very close to meeting some of the standards. But for those that haven’t, there may be a very wide gap.”

The School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 school cafeteria workers across the country, is looking for ways the federal government can contribute more to pay for the new meal standards. For starters, they are asking the USDA to consider giving schools credit toward commodity food purchases for serving breakfast.

The USDA currently awards schools about 20 cents toward purchasing commodity goods for every lunch meal they serve. The program does not cover breakfast, and many schools are now trying to increase breakfast service by offering it in the classroom, which serves the dual purpose of ensuring kids aren’t forced to learn on an empty stomach while also generating more federal reimbursements for the food program.

Still, I can’t help thinking there ought to be a way to make school food much less complicated. There must be a better funding mechanism that doesn’t pit kids against other worthy government programs for the needy.

Maybe it’s time for a national guilt relief act in the form of a big, fat federal tax on soda and junk food that pays for school lunch. Now that’s something I would not lose any sleep over.

Behold: Perhaps the fattiest pork chop ever

To celebrate the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans [PDF] issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday, we cooked the fattiest pork chops we could find. Actually, they were just barely streaked with meat. I found them at the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday at the Ecofriendly tent. That’s the Virginia outfit run by Bev Eggleston, who you might recognize as the purveyor celebrated by Michael Pollan in Omnivore’s Dilemma. Bev at one time was working with renegade farmer Joel Salatin and is a primary supplier to restaurants here on the East Coast focused on local, sustainable meats.

I usually check out the Ecofriendly offerings on Sunday because the meat is superb and we prize their thick pork chops above all others (although the Niman Ranch pork at Whole Foods comes in a close second). Ecofriendly doesn’t always have the chops available at the farmers market. On this particular occasion, I noticed these super-fatty chops: I’d never seen anything like them before and I was anxious to try them.

Our daughter loves fat ever more than we do.

I seasoned the chops very simply with salt and pepper, then seared them hard in an iron skillet and finished them in a 350-degree oven until the internal temperature started to close in on 140 degrees F.

Needless to say, there were no leftovers.

The new dietary guidelines are being hailed by some because they call for Americans to eat less of everything and more fruits and vegetables. But they discourage fat and specifically suggest drinking low-fat milk. My wife and I, who subscribe to whole cream-top milk and heavy cream from our local dairy, wondered where people are supposed to get their calories.

Americans have gotten absolutely wiggy about the food they eat. Nowhere do the guidelines say to stop swilling soda and stop buying potato chips. Instead, they continue to harp on fat, well past the time when we learned that fat is not the problem. We know very well what’s making Americans fat and sick: it’s all the sugar and carbs they’re eating. The guidelines would be much simpler if they just said, Stop eating processed foods entirely, and stick with natural foods like whole milk and fatty pork chops. And by all means, load up on broccoli and salad.

People who give up carbs invariably see their risk for heart disease and other health problems decine. We are also convinced that livestock–hence, meat–is a vital component of sustainable agriculture. Just read the lovely piece on the subject posted at the Ethicurean blog.

Don’t listen to the federal government. They’re more interested in propping up their industrial agriculture pals. Put your worries away and have a sustainably-raised pork chop.

A little sugar with that calcium?

A landmark study on calcium and vitamin D nutrition recently published by the Institute of Medicine poses a serious challenge to a dairy industry campaign to sell chocolate milk to the nation’s school children, finding that only girls aged 9 to 18 might need more calcium and only by an amount contained in a half-serving of calcium-fortified cereal .

In setting new dietary standards, the IOM found claims that Americans are deficient in calcium and vitamin D to be greatly exaggerated.  But the dairy industry has spent millions of dollars promoting sugary flavored milk in schools based on the idea that children are threatened with a “calcium crisis.” The industry is fighting efforts to remove flavored milk from school menus, saying kids will be in danger of not getting the calcium they need to build strong bones.

Meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence links sugar with an epidemic of childhood obesity as well as a host of related health problems: diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and even an unprecedented outbreak of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

According to the IOM, girls leading up to and during puberty typically consume around 823 milligrams of calcium daily. Because they experience a growth spurt during this period, they should aim to get about 200 milligrams more calcium, or “between 1,000 and 1,100” milligrams, said Dr. Steven A. Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine who specializes in the calcium intake of children and was one of the panelists who wrote the IOM report.

By comparison, a one-cup serving of Total cereal contains 1,000 milligrams of calcium, a cup of low-fat milk around 300, and a half-cup of cooked collard greens 200, about the same as in a single serving of string cheese.

“I’ve never been a fan of the term ‘calcium crisis.’ I’m much more in favor of policies that ensure we meet that 1,000 milligrams,” said Abrams. “What we need to do is make sure that we have a lot of different ways for kids to get to it.”

Sources of calcium besides milk, cheese and yogurt include fortified cereal and fruit juice, as well as certain green vegetables, such as bok choy, broccoli and collard greens. Dairy products contain more calcium, but the calcium in vegetables is more readily absorbed.

Abrams declined to address the question of using sugar and flavorings to entice children to drink milk at school, saying “people have different perspectives,” and noting  that he sits on a board that advises MilkPEP, the dairy group responsible for the “Got Milk?” and “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” campaigns.

But a leading medical voice on the dangers of sugar, Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco specializing in endocrinology and obesity, said schools should not be offering flavored milk to children. “But it won’t get fixed any time soon,” Lustig said. “The dairy industry is very tight with the USDA.”

The IOM report created a sensation when it was released in November because it debunked rampant promotion of vitamin D supplements as a treatment for everything from cancer to arthritis to diabetes. The IOM panel said there was no scientific basis for those claims and found that calcium supplements also are not necessary. Their report, based on a review of more than 1,000 studies and testimony from medical professionals, constitutes the most authoritative dietary recommendations on calcium and vitamin D to date.

Calcium and vitamin D working in tandem are essential to skeletal health throughout life. Vitamin D actually acts as a hormone, enabling calcium in its job of building and “remodeling” bones, as well as performing vital functions elsewhere in the body. In fact, there is very little study of how much calcium and vitamin D are needed independent of each other. Complicating the task of setting dietary requirements , the IOM panel said, is the fact that as well as being contained in some foods, such as oily fish and egg yolks, vitamin D is synthesized by the skin from sunlight.

Most Americans don’t consume enough vitamin D in theory, but measurements of the hormone in their blood consistently show they have more than enough, indicating they get at least some from sunshine, the panel reported.

Also unknown is the minimum amount of calcium needed for healthy bone growth. Abrams said some experts put the number as low as 600 milligrams in pubescent girls.  But he said the IOM panel “chose not to set a minimum number.”

The committee took a more cautious route, adopting 1,100 milligrams of calcium daily as the “estimated average requirement” for all children aged nine to 18, meaning the amount that would ensure that at least half the children in that age group get the calcium they require. But because genetic differences can affect how well some people’s bodies utilize calcium, Abrams said the committee went a step further and established 1,300 milligrams as a “recommended dietary allowance” that would cover 97 percent of all children in the group.

Well-designed studies of children’s calcium intake and its effect on bone health are scarce. One study cited by the panel found that while children who were given extra calcium did show increased bone growth, it did not last after the supplementation ended.

The IOM report makes no mention of bone impairment being suffered by children not getting enough calcium or vitamin D outside the rare cases of rickets experienced by infants, typically those with dark skin who are breastfed. Breast milk contains less vitamin D than infant formula and dark pigment inhibits the skin’s ability to synthesize sunlight.

Milk sold commercially is fortified with vitamin D. Exactly how much calcium children consume or where they get it isn’t known, although some surveys have attempted to establish a rough idea. For many children, the federally-subsidized meals program, where milk is a required element at breakfast and at lunch, is an important source of calcium and vitamin D—at least when school is in session.

The 2007 School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study published by the USDA found that the mean 24-hour calcium intake among middle-school students was 1,137 milligrams—or well within the acceptable range—for  those who participated in the meals program, but 906 milligrams—less than the amount recommended—for children who ate outside the subsidized lunch line.

The USDA reports that children who participate in the federally-subsidized lunch program are four times as likely to drink milk at school than other children.

A “study” commissioned last year by the dairy industry, and performed by a company that conducts marketing research for corporate food clients, suggested that 35 percent fewer elementary school students drank milk when flavored milk was removed from the cafeteria. But the dairy industry has refused to release the full study, and some experts have dismissed it as inherently biased.

Estimates indicate that anywhere from 60 to 70 percent of all milk consumed in schools is chocolate or another flavor with added sugar. An eight-ounce serving of chocolate milk, for instance, typically contains about 14 grams of high-fructose corn syrup, the equivalent of three and a half teaspoons.

According to Lustig and other anti-sugar activists, the dangers of sugar in the form of fructose outweigh any calcium or vitamin D benefits children might get from drinking flavored milk.

Beginning in fall 2010, schools in the District of Columbia ceased serving flavored milk, following districts such as Berkeley, Calif., and Boulder, Co. The state board of education in Florida also has been considering such a move, but recently was asked by the state’s newly appointed agriculture secretary to put that decision on hold pending further study.

Free your mind about whole grain recipes

A reader recently sent me an e-mail asking if I had internet links to portions of an article I wrote more than four years ago for The Washington Post food sectioni called “The Spreadsheet Diet.”

The article was a lesson in how to free yourself from recipes and use a multitude of whole grains, nuts, dried fruits, herbs, simple vegetables and other ingredients in combination to create any number of healthful dishes out of your own imagination. The back story to the article was amusing. It sprang for a simple telephone conversation I was having with the then-editor of the food section. She called to see what I was doing lately, fishing for story ideas. I told her about a personal chef client I had who was kind of a picky eater, and how I went about foraging in my pantry to make dishes he would actually eat.

It had not occurred to me that I had created a revolutionary way to cook with categories of ingredients. But voila: The Spreadsheet Diet.

Rebecca Whitlock, author of the Healthy, Green, & Frugal blog, reminded me of that episode when she sent an e-mail asking my permission to write about The Spreadsheet Diet. She had a link to the electronic version of the main article in the Washington Post archives. “Unfortunately,” she wrote, “I don’t think the article still contains links to the sections titled, ‘How it Works’ or ‘Spreadsheet Categories’ or any of the awesome recipes. Any thoughts on where I can find those documents online?”

I didn’t know where she could find those links, either. But she went ahead and wrote her blog post, which you can read here.

I don’t eat grains or legumes or other starchy carbs any more if I can help it. But I recognize that many people consider these foods extremely healthful, and I  agree: if you are going to eat carbohydrates, focus on whole grains and legumes with lots of fiber, Avoid sugar, refined grains and other starchy foods (french fries!) at all costs. And here, Rebecca, is the text for some of those recipes from my personal files. Enjoy!

Hulled Barley with Carrots, Raisins & Walnuts

Serves 8

Barley may be a top candidate for least appreciated of grains. And hulled barley, the least refined form of the grain, contains much more beneficial fiber and nutrients than the more readily available pearl barley, so-called because it goes through several scrubbings to completely remove the grain’s hull and give it a pearl-like appearance. Hulled barley has a mildly nutty taste and a pleasantly chewy texture. It is an easy companion for dried fruits, herbs and aromatic vegetables. For sources, check your local health food store or online, where it sells for a little more than $1 a pound. Or substitute pearl barley. 

1 1/4 cups hulled barley (or substitute pearl barley)

salt

2 medium carrots, peeled and coarsely grated

½  cup coarsely chopped walnut pieces

¼ cup black raisins

¼ golden raisins

2 large shallots, pealed and finely chopped

1 bunch scallions, white and tender green parts only, thinly sliced

1 large stalk celery, diced small

1/3 cup coarsely chopped Italian parsley

Leaves from 1 or 2 sprigs hyssop or leman balm, finely chopped (optional)

1 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste

1 ½ tablespoons white wine vinegar, or to taste

Salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste 

          Bring a kettle of water to boil, reduce heat and allow to simmer. Place barley in a medium sauce pan over high heat, cover with hot water from the kettle to a depth of 1/2 inch and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer gently, adding a splash or two of hot water as needed. Barley is done when all of the water is absorbed and the grains are plump and tender. Set aside to cool.

          In a large mixing bowl, stir together the cooked barley, carrots, walnuts, raisins, shallots, scallions, parsley and herbs. Add olive oil and vinegar. Mix well. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Can be made two or three days ahead and refrigerated in a tightly sealed container.

Brown Rice Pilaf with Roasted Cauliflower, Dried Fruits and Cashews

Serves 8

          Over the millennia, people have sought out white rice and other highly polished grains as a sign of wealth and prestige. They regarded whole grains as poverty food. Well, it turns out the poor folks were getting all the flavor and nutrition. So it is with this Indian inspired dish, in which unprocessed brown rice teams with cauliflower roasted with cumin and turmeric. The rice I prefer, Lundberg Wehani, from Lundberg Family Farms in Richvale, CA, is worth seeking out. It has a deep chestnut color, rich flavor and easy texture. A possible substitute would be red rice. Conventional brown rice comes in a distant third in my book.

          For the cauliflower:

          1 head cauliflower, cored and split into individual florets

          Extra virgin olive oil

          Salt

          1 teaspoon ground cumin

          1 teaspoon turmeric

          Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

          In a large mixing bowl, toss the cauliflower with just enough olive oil to coat. Season generously with salt. Dust the cauliflower with cumin and turmeric and toss thoroughly. Spread cauliflower on a baking sheet and place on an upper rack in the over. Roast, turning the cauliflower once or twice so it doesn’t burn, or until the florets are cooked through and deeply browned in places, about 25 minutes. Place baking sheet on a cooling rack and set aside.

          For the pilaf:

          1 ¼ unprocessed brown rice, such as Lundberg Wehani (or substitute red rice, such as Lotus Foods’ Bhutanese Red Rice)

          1 ½ cups coarsely chopped roasted cauliflower (from recipe above)

          ½ cup coarsely chopped unroasted, unsalted cashews

          1/3 cup dark raisins

          1/3 cup dried apricots, diced small

          1/3 cup coarsely chopped cilantro leaves

          1/3 cup coarsely chopped mint leaves

          Juice of ½ lemon, or to taste

          1 ½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, or to taste

          Salt to taste

          Freshly ground black pepper to taste

          Bring a kettle of water to boil, reduce heat and simmer. Meanwhile, place brown rice with a generous pinch of salt in a small saucepan over high heat. Cover with hot water from the kettle to a depth of ½ inch. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, adding a splash or two or hot water as needed. Rice is done when water is completely absorbed and grains are plump and tender. Set aside to cool.

          In a large mixing bowl, mix together cooked rice, cauliflower, cashews, raisins, apricots, cilantro and mint. Add lemon juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Can be made two or three days ahead and refrigerated in a tightly sealed container. 

Wheat Berry and Chickpea Salad with Olives and Feta Cheese

Serves 8

          This dish, with its flavors of olives, artichokes, roasted red peppers and feta cheese, transports me to a small, sun-baked taverna somewhere overlooking the Mediterranean. Give me a grilled fish and a pitcher of cold white wine and I would be set. Wheat berry is the whole grain of wheat, before it has been processed into bran, germ or flour. Some recipes call for soaking the berries before cooking. But I’ve never had any trouble cooking them in less than an hour in lightly salted water. They have a lightly nutty flavor and pleasant chew, are relatively inexpensive and are readily available in bulk at Whole Foods and health food stores.

          1 cup wheat berries

          salt

          1 cup cooked (or canned) chickpeas

          2/3 cup crumbled Feta cheese

          ½ cup well seasoned, oil-cured black olives, pits removed, then measured and coarsely chopped

          ½ cup coarsely chopped marinated artichokes

          ½ cup coarsely chopped radicchio leaves

          ½ cup coarsely chopped arugula

          1/3 cup roasted red peppers, diced small

          10 cherry tomatoes, halved

          Juice from ½ lemon, or to taste

          1 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste

          Salt to taste

          Freshly ground black pepper to taste

          Bring a kettle of water to boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer. Meanwhile, place wheat berries in a small sauce pan with a generous pinch of salt over high heat. Cover with hot water from the kettle to a depth of ½ inch. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, adding a splash or two of hot water as needed. Berries are done when all the water is absorbed and the grains are plump and tender. Set aside to cool.

          In a large mixing bowl, mix together cooked wheat berries, chickpeas, Feta cheese, olives, artichokes, radicchio, arugula, roasted peppers and tomatoes. Add lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Can be made two or three days ahead without the Feta cheese and refrigerated in a tightly sealed container. If making ahead, add Feta cheese just before serving.

Bulgur and Lentil Pilaf with Fava Beans

Serves 8

          The combination of bulgur—a pre-cooked version of cracked whole wheat kernels—and lentils make this a satisfying dish on its own. Cherry tomatoes, fava beans, mint and fennel inject some lighter accents. I use the dark green, French Puy lentils because they maintain a firm texture even after they’re cooked. The easiest fava beans to work with are frozen, usually available in Middle Eastern and Latin markets. They’re already shelled, but enclosed in a membrane. To get at the beans, first cook them in their membranes in boiling water for about 30 seconds. Remove the beans with a slotted spoon and chill them in a bowl of cold water. (The beans should be just cooked through, not mushy.) Using the tip of a paring knife, slice the membrane open and squeeze out the bean. If this seems like too much bother, or if you can’t find favas, substitute edamame, or soy beans.

          2/3 cup bulgur

          2/3 cup lentils

          Salt

          ½ cup fava beans, cooked and membranes removed (or substitute cooked edamame beans)

          12 cherry tomatoes, halved

          1/3 cup red onion, diced small

          1/3 cup fennel bulb, diced small

          1/3 cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

          1/3 cup coarsely chopped mint leaves

          1/4 cup coarsely chopped dill leaves (optional)

          1 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or to taste

          1 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar, or to taste

          Salt to taste

          Freshly ground black pepper to taste

          Bring a kettle of water to boil. Meanwhile, place bulgur with a generous pinch of salt in a mixing bowl and add boiling water to barely cover. Place a pot lid inside the bowl to cover the grains and prevent steam from escaping. Check bulgur after 10 minutes for doneness. Add a splash or two of hot water from the kettle as needed, stirring the grains. Bulgur is done when the water is absorbed and grains are plump and tender, about 20 minutes.

          Separately, place lentils with a generous pinch of salt in a small sauce pan over high heat. Cover with hot water from the kettle to a depth of ½ inch and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer gently, adding water as needed until water is absorbed and the lentils are plump and tender, but not mushy, about 40 minutes. Set aside to cool.

          In a large mixing bowl, stir together the bulgur, lentils, favas, tomatoes, onion, fennel, parsley and mint. Add olive oil and rice vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Can be made two or three days ahead and refrigerated in a tightly sealed container.

Wild Rice-Quinoa Pilaf with Toasted Pecans and Dried Cranberries

Serves 8

          I have a particular fondness for this dish because the ingredients are so New World. The combination of wild rice, quinoa, pecans and dried cranberries works perfectly alongside a Thanksgiving roast turkey or a Christmas goose. It would also sit proudly with a glazed ham, or on any kind of festive buffet. 

2/3 cup wild rice

2/3 cup quinoa

Salt

½ cup pecan halves, toasted then coarsely chopped

½ cup dried cranberries, re-hydrated as needed (see note)

1 bunch scallions, white and tender green parts only, thinly sliced

1/3 cup coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley

1 ½ tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 ½ tablespoons cider vinegar

Salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste 

          Bring a kettle of water to boil. Reduce heat and allow to simmer.

          Place wild rice with a generous pinch of salt in a small sauce pan over high heat. Cover with hot water from kettle to a depth of ½ inch and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer gently, adding an occasional splash of hot water from the kettle as needed. Rice is done when water is fully absorbed and grains are cracked and tender, about 40 minutes. Set aside to cool.

          Meanwhile, to cook the quinoa, toast the grains first for additional depth of flavor as follows: Place quinoa in a small saucepan over high heat. Being careful not to burn the quinoa, shake and toss the grains frequently until they begin to pop and crackle rapidly, about 3 minutes. Remove pan from heat and allow to cool for a minute or two. With the pot lid in one hand, pour about ½ cup hot water from the kettle over the quinoa and cover the pot quickly, as the hot quinoa will erupt into a burst of spitting and splattering. When the bubbling action has subsided, pour additional hot water over the quinoa to a depth of ½ inch and return pan to heat over a very low setting. Allow to cook gently, adding a splash or two of hot water from the kettle as needed. Quinoa is done when water is completely absorbed and grains are tender and fluffy, about 30 minutes. Set aside to cool.

          To toast pecans, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Lay pecan halves flat in an oven-proof skillet or on a baking sheet. Place in oven and bake, tossing the nuts occasionally so they do not burn. Pecans are done when they turn a shade darker and become crispy to the bite, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool, then chop coarsely.

          To finish the pilaf, toss the rice, quinoa, pecans, cranberries, scallions and parsley in a large mixing bowl. Stir in olive oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper.

          Serve at room temperature or lightly warmed. Can be made two or three days ahead and refrigerated in a tightly sealed container.

          Note: Some dried cranberries are dryer than others. Occasionally you will find them very fresh and soft. They can be eaten as is. Other times the berries are hard as a rock. To re-hydrate them, place them in a small bowl with a couple of tablespoons of water and heat them in the microwave for a minute or two on a high setting, or until they are plump and juicy. Allow to cool, then drain.

Kids are not fungible. Or maybe they are?

A proposed tax on soft drinks to fund “Healthy Schools” legislation appears to be on shaky ground at best and may be dead on arrival. Meanwhile, social service advocates are engaged in a mad scramble to stave off cuts to services for the poor. While some members of the D.C. Council are talking about increasing taxes on the city’s wealthy to bridge the budget gap, Council Chairman Vincent Gray (D) is accused of hiding out in his office, muttering something about the need for a “365-day discussion” on taxes.

So where does that leave all the improvements in school food that Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) worked so many months to include in her “Healthy Schools” bill? The Council approved the bill unimously. But where are they when it comes time to actually pay the estimated $6.5 million annual cost for all those new wellnes initiatives?

Asked if there is a Plan B, an aide to Cheh says, ”We’re still pushing the (soda) tax in some form and think we can make it work. Everything is very fluid at this point,” meaning no one is willing to say what will happen today when the Council votes on the city’s budget package. 

This might be a good time to stop and reflect on what’s in danger of not being funded in the “Healthy Schools” program:

* An additional 10 cents for every breakfast served to children in D.C. public schools. Breakfast is universally free to all students who attend D.C. Public Schools, but currently not free in charter schools. The additional money could help improve food quality. Under Chartwells-Thompson, the giant food service company hired to provide D.C. Public Schools meals, children are served industrially processed convenience foods.  Charter schools contract with individual catering companies, or cook their own food on site.

* To provide free breakfasts in charter schools, the city would pay an additional 30 cents for each breakfast served to students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on income.

* An additional 10 cents for lunch. This would supplement federal subsidies schools receive through national school meals programs. The federal government currently provides $2.68, for instance, for every fully-subsidized school lunch.

* Forty cents for all students who currently qualify for reduced-price lunch. The federal meals program recognizes three classes of students based on family income: those who qualify for free meals, those who pay a reduced price, and those who pay full price. This provision of “Healthy Schools” essentially would eliminate the “reduced price” category. Those students would receive meals free.

* Encourage breakfast by offering a morning meal in classrooms. To cover the cost of this initiative, public schools and charter schools would receive $7 for each student in schools where at least 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

* Five cents for every lunch that contains at least one component made from locally grown and unprocessed foods. “Healthy Schools” would, for the first time in D.C., promote sustainable local agriculture by paying schools to incorporate local products in school meals.

* Grants for schools that take steps to engage students in more physical exercise.

* Grants to encourage construction of gardens on school grounds.

* Construction of a central facility in the District to process and store local produce, and provide culinary job training.

Many provisions in “Healthy Schools” do not require extra funding, such as reducing sodium and eliminating trans fats from school food, or making food sold in vending machines healthier. Schools will be required to post the ingredients used in meals. Vendors will be required to identify the source of all produce served. Schools will also be required to provide at least 30 minutes for students to eat lunch. Over a five-year period, schools will be called upon to dramatically increase the amount of physical education they provide for students.

It’s a shame that “Healthy Schools” had to be linked with a tax on soft drinks at the last minute. Cheh had promised to find the money for “Healthy Schools” somewhere, but no one anticipated she would link her legislation with such a controversial tax measure just weeks before the Council took up the city’s budget. Is this Cheh’s version of a Hail Mary pass?

Although Cheh’s proposal to levy a tax of one cent per ounce on soft drinks is well-intentioned–providing an instant source of funds for “Healthy Schools” and to increase food access in underserved neighborhood, plus reducing consumption of sugary beverages among folks who least need the extra calories–they really are two separate animals and should be considered separately. The main objectives–better school food, increased access to good nutrition, more physical exercise, supporting local agriculture and school gardens–deserve to be funded in their own right, without becoming collateral damage in a brawl over taxing soda.

Anyone with a radio has heard the campaign the beverage industry is waging to deep-six the soda tax. This was entirely forseeable, and not the kind of battle that should be fought at the last minute with children’s well-being hanging in the balance. Local lawmakers hardly need additional political incentive to leave the city’s children in the lurch. Hopefully the soda tax will not poison the water for “Healthy Schools” permanently, and perhaps some sort of compromise will emerge. If not, the Council should find a way to fund “Healthy Schools” without a soda tax, and save the debate over sodas for another time.

Kids get doused with sugar at school

Guest Post
By Susan Rubin, DMD 

As a dentist  fresh out of school in the late 1980’s, I was idealistic and passionate about my new profession.  I gave lots of “tooth talks” at schools and childcare centers every February, during Children’s Dental Health month. It wasn’t until I started having kids of my own that I learned the truth about sugar: it damages more than just your teeth. 

My wake up call came when my first daughter was 7. She arrived home bouncing off the walls, happy and proud to have earned four Skittles in a spelling bee. I also found fruit roll-up wrappers in her back pack. Apparently in addition to the teachers rewarding kids with candy, this sticky string was being sold in the cafeteria. 

The more I looked into what was happening in the cafeteria and the classroom, the more shocked I was. Our school was swimming in sugar. While most teachers and parents could tell themselves that this was okay in moderation, somehow it never really sat right with me. I saw the damage with my own eyes every day as I drilled, filled and billed. 

I wondered why anyone would let their kid have a series of sugar hits throughout the day.  Despite anesthesia and laughing gas, having a cavity drilled and filled is no fun if you’re a child or an adult. The irony is that tooth decay is completely preventable. 

At the end of 1999, I put down my dental drill and went back to school to study integrative nutrition and Chinese herbal medicine. I became a full time school food advocate and holistic nutritionist. In my new line of work, just like in dentistry, I deal with the damage done by refined sugar every day. 

My education taught me that sugar doesn’t just rot your teeth and widen your waistline.  Contrary to what the food industry likes to tell us, sugar is not just an empty calorie. Sugar is a serious anti-nutrient that creates a host of problems that extend beyond obesity and tooth decay. Let me just name a few: 

Cardio-vascular disease:  refined sugar consumption raises triglyceride levels, creates an inflammatory situation that promotes heart disease. 

Refined sugar depletes minerals and vitamins B and C, resulting in lowered immunity, weaker bones. 

Sugar impacts behavior

C. Keith Conners, author of Feeding the Brain, showed that children given a sugar rich breakfast became restless and hyperactive.  All you really need to do is ask any teacher or parent, they have lots of first hand experience with this fact.

 Sugar can be addictive. Serge Ahmed, PhD, a scientist who specializes in addiction research, clearly demonstrates that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward. His cocaine-addicted laboratory rats consistently chose sugar over cocaine (Lenoir, M., Serre, F., Cantin L. & Ahmed, S.H., 2007). 

Cathleen DesMaisons,PhD, author of Potatoes Not Prozac and Little Sugar Addicts makes the case that up to 50% of  the population is “sugar sensitive”, a nice way of saying addicted.  According to Dr. DesMaisons, people who are sugar sensitive respond to sugar, white flour products and alcohol in a completely different way than regular or non-sugar sensitive folks. The biochemistry of a sugar sensitive person is unbalanced, leading to a whole host of problems and setting them up for sugar addiction, alcoholism, depression, obesity and more.  I’ve seen this scenario myself in 10 years of private practice. 

Juice is another sugar hit that impacts children’s health in a negative way. In my past life as a dentist, I worked to convince my local pediatricians not to start toddlers on juice. I saw loads of damaged teeth due to sippy cups and juice boxes.  More recently, pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustic MD gave a presentation on the health impacts of fructose found in HFCS and in fruit juice ( Sugar:  The Bitter Truth. ) 

Juice has been part of WIC and the National School Lunch Program since the Nixon Administration. I would like to see the USDA reconsider the inclusion of juice in these programs when they re-evaluate the Food Pyramid. Perhaps they should invite Dr. Lustig to testify. Unfortunately major juice manufacturers  such as Tropicana (owned by Pepsi) and Minute Maid (Coca-Cola) have lots of clout and will work hard to make sure that it won’t happen. 

Despite all the attention on school food reform in the past years, our kids continue to ingest hazardous amounts of sugar in schools. Some school districts pat themselves on the back because they sell Vitamin Water instead of Coca-Cola.  Welch’s Fruit Chews may have replaced Fruit Roll Ups in some schools. These are, in my opinion, examples of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. 

No doubt, your local dentist is busier than ever, drilling, filling and billing.  Sports drinks are even more cariogenic than soda. “Healthy” granola bars are another great indirect revenue source for your dentist.  In some areas of the country, Mountain Dew remains in school fairs and fundraisers.  Mountain Dew is notorious to us dentists. Physicians in Maine are being trained how to extract teeth because there are not enough dentists to deal with the growing cases of “Mountain Dew mouth.”

Chocolate milk and “flavored” milks are another source of refined sugar in schools. I was happy to see Jamie Oliver blast the flavored milks in his last episode of “Food Revolution.” Sadly, it will take more than his outrage on TV to get those sugar sweetened beverages out of schools. 

After more than a decade of school food advocacy, I’m well aware of how entrenched sugar is in schools. Perhaps it’s time to take another approach. After all, schools are supposed to be teaching our kids.  How about we raise the Food IQ about sugar?  Not just in health class where most schools teach the Food Pyramid. Let’s put sugar education into the basic four: Math, English, Social Studies and Science. 

Math: Here’s an elementary level math problem: 

Calculate the number of teaspoons in  20 oz. bottles of Nestle’s Qwik , Coca-Cola and Minute Maid Lemonade . 

First you’ve got to consider serving size: 20 oz. is 2.5 servings.

Next you’ve got to turn grams into teaspoons: 4 gm = 1 teaspoon.

Once you’re done with the math calculations, take some white sugar, count out those spoonfuls and fill up empty 20 oz. bottles. 

Bonus: Calculate the number of teaspooons of sugar in a school year’s worth of chocolate milk. 

English: Chew on This,by Eric Schlosser, and Omnivore’s Dilemma (Young Reader’s Edition),by Michael Pollan, are two great books for  young readers.

Older readers could check out a classic book, Sugar Blues by Willian Dufty. 

Social Studies:  Sugar has a colorful history. Studying sugar and the slave trade would be a good place to start.

Older students could read  Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind, which has a great segment on sugar. 

Science:  Learn about how sugar is made from sugarcane It takes 17 feet of sugarcane to make 1 cup of sugar. What happens to the nutrients in the process?  

Learn about tooth decay. Do some experiments using soda, sports drinks and other liquids. Watch how fast baby teeth dissolve! 

Once teachers and students start to learn more about refined sugar, this will help to pave the way for its reduction in school food. 

Dr. Susan Rubin is a school food advocate, holistic nutritionist, and retired dentist. She is the founder of Better School Food. Her work was featured in the movie, Two Angry Moms. 

www.betterschoolfood.org

www.drsusanrubin.com

How much sugar is too much?

“Healthy Schools” legislation written by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh comes up for its first committee vote today after months of deliberations and with one very conspicuous missing element: no regulation of sugar in school meals. 

Removing the astonishing amount of sugar served to D.C. school children every day is probably the quickest and cheapest way to make school meals healthier. But you won’t see any of that in the “Healthy Schools” legislation. How can that be, you might ask, when kids are being served 15 or more teaspoons of sugar every day for breakfast at school: strawberry milk the equivalent of Mountain Dew, candied cereals containing three or more teaspoons of sugar per serving, Pop-Tarts, juices that might as well be sodas. 

A teaspoon of sugar contains 16 calories, meaning the breakfast described above contains 240 calories worth of sugar, or 44 percent of the 550 calories the “Healthy Schools” bill sets as the maximum total breakfast calories D.C. school children through eighth grade should be consuming. 

Truth is, federal regulations that govern school food programs contain no limits on sugar in subsidized meals. Consequently, according to a top legislative aide involved in writing the “Healthy Schools” bill, there were no standards on which to base a limit on sugar for meals served in the Distict of Coumbia. 

“We certainly have heard the concerns that you and others have expressed about sugar in school meals, but we haven’t seen any guidance about how to regulate it,” the aide said. “Neither the HealthierUS [School Challenge] nor the IOM [Institute of Medicine] standards have recommendations for limiting sugar in school meals.  (The IOM notes, on page 52, that “By far the largest contributors to the intakes of added sugars (45 percent of the total amount) were regular soda and noncarbonated sweetened drinks,” which are heavily restricted under the HSA.)  Therefore, there does not seem to be any guidance about how to do it.” 

The American Heart Association last year issued specific guidelines on consumption of added sugars for adults, but not for children. For instance, the AHA recommended that “moderately active” women consume no more than five teaspoons–or 80 calories–of added sugar per day. That would rule out much of the food children are served daily in D.C. schools.

And what about flavored milk served at breakfast and lunch in D.C. schools? Chocolate milk contains the same amount of sugar as Classic Coke, and strawberry milk nearly as much as Mountain Dew.  The strawberry milk contains 28 grams of sugar–about seven teaspoons, three of which occur naturally as lactose–or 112 calories. That represents 66 percent of the 170 total calories in the one-cup containers routinely handed out in D.C. schools for breakfast and lunch. 

“Regarding flavored milk, we do understand your concerns, but we have also heard concerns from other nutritionists who say that milk is important for child development and that even if the milk is flavored it is better for children to drink flavored milk than to drink no milk at all,” the aide said. “We are not nutritionists and have no way to resolve this debate.  Therefore, we are choosing to use this bill to set the floor for school nutrition and then to empower OSSE [Office of the State Superintendent of Education] and schools to set higher standards — to ban flavored milk and other things if they so choose.” 

In fact, there is no scientific body of evidence indicating that children who are not offered a flavored milk option either drink less milk or are deprived of important nutrients. That seems to be more of an assumption encouraged by the dairy industry, which counts on flavored milk for a large portion of its sales.  

Still, how can it be that the federal meals program, in existence since 1946, has no standard to govern the use of sugar in school meals, especially at a time when child obesity and attendant diseases such as diabetes are such a concern? I asked Marion Nestle, a prominent nutritionist and author of  Food Politics.  

“Here’s the short answer: Sugar industry lobbying,” Nestle said.   

“And here’s a bit more: 

“Sugars were never a problem when schools were reasonably well supported in part because competitive foods were reasonably well regulated and in part because snacks were too.  All that changed when schools ran out of money and had to start pushing snacks and sodas in order to fill the budget gap.  Nobody paid much attention to what kids were eating—until recently.   

“No federal agency has ever set a maximum for sugar intake although dietary advice for years all over the world has been to limit sugars to 10% or less of daily calories.  That percentage was embedded in the recommendations of the 1992 USDA Pyramid which said, “Use sugars only in moderation.”  USDA defined “moderation” as 6 teaspoons a day of total added sugars for a diet containing 1600 calories, 12 tsp for 2200, and 18 tsp for 2800.  If you do the math (assume that a tsp is 4 grams and 16 calories), this comes to less than 10% of daily calories.  But the Pyramid did not say so explicitly.  That’s just how it works out.  

“Some years later, in developing the new Dietary Reference Intakes, the Institute of Medicine recommended 25% of calories from added sugars as an upper limit.   

“In the early 2000s, the World Health Organization attempted to set an upper limit of 10% of calories from added sugars to its global strategy for health.  U.S. sugar lobbying groups went berserk and got the attorney for the Department of Health and Human Services to write a letter to WHO threatening to withdraw U.S. funding if that recommendation was not eliminated.  The controversial figure disappeared.   

“The bottom line: no standard of intake exists so anything goes.  My understanding is that sugars not only pervade the meals, but also treats given out by teachers and brought in by parents for birthdays.   

“The one bright side is that the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act contains provisions to revisit the standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines that will be coming out later this year. These, hopefully, will refer to a recent IOM report developing new school meals standards for the USDA.”

The IOM found that children’s consumption of “discretionary” calories from solid fat–as from hamburgers and pizza–and sugar “were much higher than the amounts specified” by the federal food pyramid. For children aged nine to 13, for instance, the excess averaged 543 calories, or about a third of the total daily calories recommended for children in that age group.

But rather than address sugar directly, the IOM panel took a back-door approach: increasing the amount of “healthy” foods in school meals and setting a maximum on calories served in school meals would drive down the amount of calories from sugar, the panel reasoned. “The committee notes that its approach to developing the standards for menu planning leaves relatively few discretionary calores for added sugars and saturated fat,” the report reads. 

But with “careful menu planning,” the panel suggests, schools would still have enough of those discretionary calories to make room for flavored milk and sugary cereals. “The ommission of those sweetened foods might result in decreased student participation as well as in reduced nutrient intakes.” 

Nestle calls this last statement by the IOM committee “a sellout. I’ve been in plenty of schools where the kids eat unsweetened foods and are doing just fine.  Those schools are run by adults who care what kids eat.  Kids will eat foods prepared by adults who care, as witnessed by Jamie Oliver.” 

Although Cheh’s original “Healthy Schools” bill embraced the proposed IOM standards, she abandonned them after school officials said they could not guarantee schools would be able to serve additional vegetables that kids would actually eat and not throw in the trash. The bill now adopts less stringent standards under the “HealthierUS Schools Challenge” sponsored by the USDA. Those standards likewise do not address the issue of sugar in school meals. 

Nestle said the best hope may be if Congress, in its pending re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, requires that schools adhere to the government’s own Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Those call for no more than two to eight teaspoons of sugar per day for discretionary calories, according to Nestle. 

“The USDA [food] Pyramid allows 200-300 discretionary calories a day for fats and sugars.  That’s less than 10% of calories, and still not bad,” Nestle said.

By Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl

With all of the coverage of Michelle Obama in the news lately, you would be a fool not to think that gardens are the answer to all of our public health problems. In addition to the “White House” garden, you’ve got the new “People’s Garden” at the USDA building in D.C., you’ve got Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack and his wife cheering the establishment of gardens at local Washington D.C. elementary schools. The public and the food movement should laud these efforts and they are not without merit. I similarly applaud states like California that began the “Garden in every school,” initiative. Many others are following suit and I’m glad they have supported that initiative with some funding. However, it’s like the old proverb, “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Those wonderful intentions without substantial follow through are “paper tigers” against the environmental and health issues that face our public with regards to the food system, most notably: food insecurity, obesity, loss of bio-diversity and environmental degradation. Gardens that exist as exhibitions to only be looked and talked about will not move us anywhere close to where we need to go. We need this garden movement to move far beyond what Michelle Obama has heroically brought to the nation’s attention. 

I want to push beyond the awareness building of the White House garden and I see this garden movement at the crossroads of two paths. One path makes us all feel better, but yields very little in the way of reduced obesity, urban food deserts and local control of food. The other requires more effort, but actually can affect, not only our local food shed, but more importantly, our children’s nutritional path, future health and prosperity. Right now, we are on path number 1. Throughout the United States, if students learn about food in school it is through “museum” gardens. I call them “museums” because they exemplify our look but don’t touch mentality towards food production. If your child is lucky, their school may grow herbs, some vegetables and receive a lesson or two about nutrition, plants and the growth cycle. The students may even be able to take home a carrot or munch on it happily. Then they walk into the corner store, the vegetables disappear and there’s no significant follow up to those isolated nutrition lessons. This could explain why the Associated Press reported that out of 57 federally funded programs of over 1 billion dollars spent to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among children, only 4 succeeded in their task. We need to shed this museum mentality. Students can no longer stare at our food system from behind protective glass, wearing blindfolds and waiting for the teacher to take them to the food court. Follow the proverb; we need to hand them that trowel and teach them how to grow.

Our children face an unrelenting obesity epidemic the world has never seen. A recent study out of the Bloomberg School at Johns Hopkins estimates that 75% of adult Americans will be overweight by 2015. These numbers have consequences, not only for our health as a nation, but our economy and future prosperity. One in three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime and for minorities that number is one in two. A recent study by Kenneth Thorpe, the chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University finds that at current trends, by 2018, annual obesity related health care costs will total more than 20 percent of total health care spending. That means that in less than a decade, health care costs attributable to obesity will have more than doubled.

Obesity is an extremely complex, multi-faceted health problem. Countries can have under nourished and over nourished individuals in the same community and even the same household. Obesity cannot be unraveled from poverty or corporate greed. There are causal elements in personal responsibility and government policy. Yes, we need taxes on sugary beverages, a new farm bill and campaign finance reform, but we need something more fundamental. The next generation of kids needs the chance to connect with food. With every generation since urbanization our connection with food, our understanding of where it comes from and how it is grown has become more distant. I’ve worked with students in urban areas where the connection is so lost, that whole fruits and vegetables are unrecognizable to their senses.

Path number 2 takes down the glass partition and places the kids in the museum, locks them in overnight, and makes the broccoli and squash come alive. Every school in the United States should have a garden/school farm engaged in real food production that is working towards adding fresh, healthy produce to the food shed of that community. It’s even more local than local.

Take for example a school district with 30 schools. In order to supply every school with a salad bar worth of lettuce greens once a week, you would need about 3 pounds of lettuce per school. That works out to approximately 100 pounds of lettuce per week. A school site could easily produce this much with just 4,000 square feet of space, a small chunk of land that the majority of schools have to spare! With a handful of schools participating, schools could have a healthy salad bar every day of the week. While those students are feeding their classmates they are engaged in an authentic education about food and nutrition that cannot be replicated in a classroom. This is not a pipe dream. The numbers are there. That is the vision of a food production program as opposed to a museum garden.

Students will no longer enter a school garden, be handed a carrot like it is some foreign object from mars and told, “look, this stuff actually comes from the ground!” No! Students will grow food from seed and along the way, learn to cook with it, take significant amounts home with them, and see it in their cafeterias. High schoolers can learn trades, career and leadership skills, business and marketing skills, through established school farms. They can pass that knowledge to younger kids through mentoring programs further bonding communities together. The food system is so integrated into everything we as a society do, that it can be a holistic approach to so many issues. Will we make communities more food secure? Yes. Will be reduce the separation between urban and rural communities? Yes. Will we get childhood obesity under control? Yes. Will future consumers look more closely at locality, organic food, pesticides and pollution that exist in our current food system? Yes.

Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl is a Masters in Public Health candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This article originally appeared in Edible East Bay and is reposted here with permission of the author.

School food hero, or health-crazed vigilante?

The story of Colorado middle school teacher Mendy Heaps and her crusade for better school food at risk of her job has reverberated around the internet. Some readers have called her a modern folk hero (a Facebook group–Support MENDY HEAPS, and teacher like her! has 358 members), while others say she recklessly pursues an unsavory agenda. After her husband fell ill with cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure,  Heaps began selling fruit and healthy snacks to the students from a “fruit cart.” She bombarded colleagues and school administrators with e-mails, urging an overhaul of the school’s food service. Finally, Heaps was forced to sign a personnel memo written by the school’s principal in which she agreed to cease and desist.  There have been so many comments about the story here and at other internet sites that I thought a follow-up interview with Ms. Heaps was warranted.

Question: Judging from the comments on this blog and elsewhere on the internet, the story about your food campaign at Elizabeth Middle School has stirred up a lot of feelings, good and bad. Any regrets?

Heaps: It certainly has stirred up a lot of feelings!  It’s hard to read some of the negative things folks have to say, but I feel very strongly I’m doing the right thing.  No regrets.

Question: Many readers fault your approach to the food issues at school, saying you seem to have acted as a kind of vigilante and very much outside the system. Do you see yourself that way? Did you ever try talking to the school principle, the officials responsible for food service, the local school board, before launching some of your activities?

Heaps: Vigilante?  Hardly!  The two main reasons I started the fruit cart were – to make a point that kids would buy healthy food if it was offered, and to fill what I saw as a need in our building.

At the very FIRST meeting I had with the principal and the food services director (there were 2 science teachers there too), the food services director insisted the kids wouldn’t buy healthy food.  I knew better because I (the 2 other teachers also) had been offering water and selling apples, peanuts, bananas and other healthy foods in my classroom for a couple of years – simply because kids were thirsty and hungry. (Why would I have offered to sell them anything that wasn’t healthy?) We have many kids who don’t eat breakfast or get hungry mid-morning, and I wanted them to be able to get something nutritious to eat, and it’s very dry in Colorado so I wanted them to have plenty of water to drink too.  Kids become distracted when they are hungry or thirsty.

AND…I can’t emphasize this enough…EVERYONE knew about the fruit cart.  At one point, I even had announcements made over the intercom before school each day telling kids to save their quarters for the fruit cart during Discover time [see below].  Parents, kids, teachers, administrators, food service people – EVERYONE knew about the fruit cart.  When they started delivering the fruit, they carried all the boxes right by the school office.  The delivery truck stopped right in front of the school every Wednesday.  

No one told me to stop until I got the memo from the principal.     

Question: One reader suggested that you might have tried organizing a parent petition for better food at the school. Did you ever consider anything like that—approaching the parents–and do you think it would work?

Heaps: I tried.  I talked to parents who I thought would be supportive but I didn’t get much support.  At parent/teacher conferences I handed out info on nutrition that had some health statistics and some stories about what other schools were doing.  I did get a lot of positive feedback from several parents.  Some of them told me they appreciated the fruit cart and others said the whole family was trying to eat better because of what their kids were learning in science and language arts, but no one stepped up to take this idea further.   

Question: Some parents claim you were shorting their children on language arts by focusing too much on food and health lessons in your classes. Could you explain in more detail how you taught food issues in your classes and how this was not in conflict with your assignment to teach language arts?

Heaps: Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t only one way to teach language arts. 

I graduated from Illinois State University in 1996.  In my college classes I learned to teach language arts within the context of another subject or topic.  I try to immerse the kids in whatever I’m teaching.  If we read a story about a homeless kid, then we research and write about homelessness.  If we read a story or novel about the Vietnam War, then we research and write about the Vietnam War.  A couple of years ago (the anniversary) my students learned all about the Little Rock Nine (and the Civil Rights Movement) when we read Warriors Don’t Cry – a memoir written by one of them (Melba Pattillo Beals). We wrote about it, watched some DVDs, did some research and writing, and completed a big project – a Black History Month Museum for the whole school.  That’s how I teach language arts.  Students learn reading skills, new vocabulary, how to write different kinds of essays, how to research…

When we do the research and writing, we work on grammar.  Kids don’t have to learn grammar from worksheets or grammar books. I do mini-lessons on grammar and parts of speech. I believe they learn grammar best when they write!  Some teachers like worksheets and grammar books.  Good for them – I don’t.  I didn’t learn to teach that way.  I’ve never received negative feedback about my teaching methods until now.  No one has ever come to me directly to complain.  If there were complaints to teachers or the principal or the school board or the superintendent, those issues were never brought to my attention.

I think students need topics to write about.  INTERESTING – RELEVANT – TIMELY – topics.  If other teachers don’t like to teach that way, that’s OK.  I don’t insist anyone teach just like me.  Students are going to have many different kinds of teachers.  We can’t all be alike!

The middle school philosophy encourages integration of subjects.  I was always looking for ways to integrate with other teachers, so when the seventh-grade science teachers approached me about teaching nutrition and body systems with them, I thought it would be great.  The principal even hired subs for us so we could plan this unit on health and nutrition together at school.  I found a teachers book called Planet Health that was full of lessons developed by the Harvard University School of Public Health. I used the lessons created for language arts.  The lessons included reading news articles, creating graphic organizers, vocabulary, keeping a food journal, writing a fable, and reading charts and graphs.  The kids seemed interested and it was a very timely topic.  I found some great DVDs to use, shared some newspaper articles I found and if I saw something on the evening news or TV I shared that too. 

To me, that’s how you teach language arts.  You read, you think, you write.  And while you are doing all that…you see grammar, you use grammar, you learn grammar.  I don’t criticize teachers who use worksheets.  But I don’t like worksheets!  If the principal or district curriculum director comes to me and tells me to use more worksheets when you teach, teach more grammar, or stop teaching language arts with other subjects, then I will.  

May I also point out that at no time during any of this has anyone ever requested to see the lesson plans I used for the unit on health and nutrition I was teaching.  I made sure all my lessons were aligned with the Colorado Reading and Writing Standards, but no one ever bothered to check with me. No parents ever came and sat in on my classes. No administrator ever came to sit in my class and watch what was going on or look at my plans. 

Also, if I was “scaring” your child, “calling them out in class,” wouldn’t you come to see me and find out what was actually going on? Isn’t this something you would at least approach the principal about until you felt it was taken care of?  If you really thought your child wasn’t learning anything, wouldn’t you come to school and see for yourself?  

There is also another seventh-grade language arts teacher.  Parents have choices.  You can request another teacher for your child if you’re not happy. Wouldn’t someone have done that if my teaching methods were so awful?  

Question: Please explain how the “fruit cart” started. Did you ever ask permission from the principal to sell fruits and snacks in the school? Are you required to have a food vendor’s license for this?

Heaps: No one ever mentioned to me that I might need a vendor’s license.  

I felt part of the reason I was so successful selling good food was because I had ONLY good choices.  I didn’t have chips or cookies or ice cream.  The kids could only buy healthy items. I wanted to show that kids WILL buy what’s good for them if that’s all that is offered.  If they are hungry and have to choose between a choco-taco and an apple they are probably going to choose the choco-taco.  BUT…if they are hungry and have to choose between an apple or a pear or a banana, then they’ll choose something good.  That’s what I wanted to show people.  I kept thinking someone would notice, but no one other than the kids and teachers seemed to care about the fruit cart.  I always felt that the principal and assistant principal thought it was a joke. They never took it seriously like I’d hoped they would.  

 Another reason I started the fruit cart was because I had so many kids from other classrooms (with their teacher’s permission) coming to my room to buy food – especially during the last class of the day which is called Discover.  Discover class is an “explore” time.  Different types of classes are offered – orchestra and jazz band and classes like Ancient Egypt, Tai Bo or some type of remediation or enrichment class.  It is a very informal class, it’s not graded, and teachers determine what they want to teach.  That’s when the fruit cart went about its business – during Discover time.  I had student volunteers take it from classroom to classroom and it also stopped in the office.

I was not secretly doing anything! Some people seem to think I was cloaked in black, running around the building, secretly going from room to room with fruit…all the while hiding from the boss.  

I suggested the cafeteria keep a window open during the day to sell fruit so I could stop doing it. But no one that had the power made that happen.  So I just kept buying fruit and putting it on the cart.

I don’t think I ever asked or got permission.  I saw what I was doing as something good.  Everyone knew kids were coming to my room for food, so I decided to take the food to them.

Question: What made you think you might be fired if you did not sign the personnel memo presented to you by the school’s principal and that the local teachers union would not protect you? Had you ever been cited for performance issues in your job prior to this?

Heaps: I have never been cited for performance issues.  My teacher observations reports have always been great.  I’m not a trouble maker.  Am I perfect?  Heck, no.  I make mistakes but I am always trying to become a better teacher.  Do all the kids adore me?  No way!  But I have never done anything to intentionally hurt a student.  I don’t think I’d still be teaching (it’s been 12 years now) if I was doing anything that harmed students. 

The last directive on the memo says something to the effect of…If you don’t sign this, you will face further disciplinary actions.  What would YOU think?   What sort of disciplinary actions do teachers face besides being fired?  Should I have asked…could you be more specific on that last directive so I can decide whether or not to sign this right now?  I thought if I didn’t sign the memo, I would be fired. 

The teachers in Elizabeth C-1 do not have a master contract with the school board.  There is no union bargaining unit (that I am aware of).  Colorado is an “employment at will” state and no one in our district seems to know exactly what might cause a teacher to be terminated.  We get tenure after three years, but I’ve never seen anything in writing to explain how much that protects us. 

Question: It’s been pointed out that the cafeteria offers a robust salad bar. At one point, you said that only students who purchase the subsidized lunch are entitled to eat from the salad bar, and that this actually is a small number of students. Is this still the case, and has the food offered at Elizabeth Middle School changed much, in your view, from what it was when you started your campaign?

Heaps: Students who opt for the deli line now get the salad bar and that’s great.  I see the kids eating some new items that don’t look too bad.  The salad bar has its good days and bad – that’s what the teachers who eat it tell me. So I don’t know if “robust” is always the best adjective.  I also don’t know how many kids actually eat a salad every day with their meal.  But it’s a salad bar and it’s there. I still see lots of mashed potatoes, corn, chicken “products,” nachos and “healthy” fries.    

I don’t know what the numbers are this year, but I still have the numbers that I collected last year when I observed in the cafeteria. My numbers showed that very few kids were eating the USDA hot lunch. Many more kids were eating from the Deli and the Grab and Go, and quite a few were bringing lunch from home. 

There is also some kind of fruit offered every day in the cafeteria this year, but I don’t think many kids eat it because they want to buy the junk food instead. We still have the Grab and Go window where they offer things like baked Cheetos, Clodhoppers, Fruit Roll-ups, packaged muffins, ice cream cups, etc.  Everything is portion and calorie controlled and that’s good, but there are better choices they could be offereing.  If you’re a kid and you get to CHOOSE between some baked Cheetos, or an Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Muffin, or an ice cream sandwich or an apple, what are you probably going to choose? 

What’s wrong with only having fruit and veggies and nuts and healthy food? When I sold snacks in my room, kids never complained that there weren’t any Cheetos or ice cream.  They bought what I had because they were hungry. 

I try to get my students to think about eating a 90% – 10% diet.  If you eat the best you can 90% of the time, then maybe once in a while, 10% of the time, you can goof off.  Why is it so radical to only offer good, nutritional choices at school?  We have a very good opportunity to help kids develop a taste for healthy food.  I guess because I know what’s going on in some other schools, I have high expectations for what we should be able to do.

After I received the memo, I requested an executive session with the school board because I felt like the memo was unfair (late May 2009).  At that meeting, the principal and I both explained our interpretation of the memo to the board.  As far as I was concerned, there was no real resolution except for another meeting…

In June of 2009 I met again with one of the school board members (whose term has since expired), the food services director, the principal, the district financial director, and another teacher (for support) to discuss lunches.  As a result of that meeting, it was decided that I would get to “pick” three things from the grab and go window that would not be served in 2010, and I was supposed to have a place on the next Wellness Committee that was formed.  One of the items I picked to be taken from the grab and go window reappeared  right away – Fruit Roll-ups – and I was NOT asked to be on the Wellness Committee formed just a couple of months ago. 

When the school year began in 2009, I was hopeful something would change. We had a new superintendent and I met with him to discuss the memo and voice my concerns about the lunches and the Grab and Go window.  The message I received was that the parents and kids are really our consumers and they dictate what is sold in the cafeteria. I was extremely disappointed.  After my final meeting with the superintendent, I wrote the principal a letter conceding defeat.  I was beginning to think maybe I was expecting too much.

But when the Fruit roll-ups reappeared and I was not asked to be on the Wellness Committee, I felt all my efforts were again being ignored.  I was still seeing an extraordinary amount of junk food and when I saw one of my overweight students with a lunch that was chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, goldfish crackers and corn, I was reinvigorated to bring this situation to the forefront again. 

It seems everyday we are becoming more aware of the deficiencies in our school lunch programs.  The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization by Congress.  Now is the time to make positive changes. 

Question: Is there anything else you would like to say to readers?

Heaps: If I don’t do something who will?  “Mrs. Q.” [an Illinois teacher who anonymously writes the Fed Up Wit School Lunch blog] is one smart cookie (pardon the pun) to remain anonymous, but my situation doesn’t allow that.  I realize I’m opening myself up to all kinds of criticism.  A lot of people won’t understand, but maybe I’ll inspire many others to do something to help.  We will all suffer if this problem isn’t solved.  Actually we’ve been suffering!  We’ve all heard the rising statistics on health-related illnesses and obesity.  We know the problem. We know some solutions.  

I realize changing school lunches isn’t the only solution to all of our health-related problems in the United States, but as an institution of learning we should be doing what we can to educate children about making good choices that will affect them the rest of their life.   

I can’t tell you how many letters I’ve written to every person and organization I could think of.  Ed, I appreciate you telling my story when no one else seemed to care.  To you I am very grateful.  I’ve gotten emails from all over the country showing support.  That’s wonderful too. My family and friends have been awesome. All of this has made me realize how much is going on out there to change things.

NBC Nightly News had a segment one evening about a urologist who found that kids are getting kidney stones at a rate two to three times what it used to be.  He believed it was because of drinks like soda and Gatorade.  Gatorade was created for athletes who sweat under extraordinary physical exercise.  The doctor in the story said kids should only drink Gatorade if they are sweating and even then, only if they sweat for hours at a time.  Water was his choice for kids because their kidneys can’t handle all the extra additives they put in the Gatorade – that’s why it causes the kidney stones.

I had been noticing that my students were drinking a lot of Gatorade   They could buy it at lunch and many of them were drinking it all day.  I shared with them the news segment – it was probably three or four minutes at the most.  I remember saying to them – just think about this.  Do you really think Gatorade is something people who aren’t sweating should be drinking? 

I told them about Mr. Bob Heaps who had a very excruciatingly painful, middle-of-the-night kidney stone and I didn’t want any of them to have to go through THAT!

I also found out that day three of my students had already had kidney stones and two of them already had gallbladder problems!!!  THAT WAS SCARY. 

As much as I try to make my lessons unbiased, a student may misinterpret the message.  When kids take that misinterpreted message home, their parents usually call me and we talk and get it straightened out.  I doubt there is a teacher who has never had this experience.  No one ever called me to talk about the kidney stone story.

Something else I told kids was that just because you’re thin, doesn’t mean you’re healthy.  Lots of adults and parents assume because they or their kids aren’t fat…they are healthy.  I know lots of thin people with Type II Diabetes, and who have had heart attacks, and who have high blood pressure.  I think we concentrate too much on obesity – on what people and kids look like. 

Obesity is a serious problem, but just because you or your kids are thin, that doesn’t mean you are healthy or you will stay healthy if you never learn to eat right.  Many of my kids tell me…I can eat all the junk food I want and I never get fat, so it must be OK.  It’s not.  My husband…the cancer survivor and diabetic with high blood pressure…was never overweight, but obviously he was sick.  

I believe we should be concerned for the health of all children.  To those who say…My kids are healthy and well fed and get plenty of exercise at home, so I don’t think they should have to learn about health and nutrition at school…what about the kids who aren’t so lucky?  Our health teachers informed me that they have only three or four days to teach nutrition in depth in their health classes.  They were happy I was doing the unit!

Better food, more exercise

Re-tooled language in “Healthy Schools” legislation scheduled for a public hearing before the D.C. Council this week would require city schools to provide parents each year with a measurement of the body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio of every child, as well as an estimate of the amount of exercise each child engages in. It also calls on city schools to consider extending the school day in order for children to have more time for physical activity, and would offer grants to schools that commit to making students more active.

Schools would also be required to send parents information in English and Spanish explaining how to interpret unhealthy body mass and waist-to-hip information and what steps can be taken to address weight problems.

Drafters of the legislation last week backed away from strict nutrition standards recommended by the Institute of Medicine that would require increased portion sizes of vegetables served in school meals, saying schools cannot guarantee the quality of vegetables offered  in cafeterias or that students won’t throw them in the trash.

Instead, the legislation embraces requirements set forth in the U.S. Department of Agriculture “HealthierUS School Challenge,” which establishes several different levels of stringency in school food nutrition.

 The “Healthy Schools” bill would require all D.C. public schools to adopt the “gold” level of the USDA program, meaning school cafeterias would need to offer 1/4-cup servings of  dark green or orange vegetables three or more days per week, and cooked dry beans or peas once per week.  Schools would also be required to offer a different fruit, either fresh, frozen, canned, dried or 100 percent juice, every day of the week, but 100 percent fruit juice could be counted as fruit only once per week. At least one serving of whole-grain food would be offered each day.

The new bill also drops an attempt to create detailed nutrition standards for foods served outside the reqular food line in school cafeterias–so-called “competitive” foods–as well as those sold in vending machines and in school stores. Again, the “HealthierUS School Challenge” standards would apply. Total fat in those foods could be no more than 35 percent of calories, trans fat must be less than .5 grams per serving, saturated fat less than 10 percent and sugar no more than 35 percent by weight.

The only beverages allowed would be low-fat or skim milk, 100 percent fruit juice with no sweeteners and water, meaning no sugary sodas, sports drinks or ice teas. The standards would not apply to foods and beverages offered at official after-school events.

Among the other major features of the new “Healthy Schools” draft:

* Minimum and maximum limits for calories in school breakfast and lunch at all grade levels.

* Zero trans fats is school meals

* Random testing of school food to ensure that nutrition standards are being met.

* An additional 10 cents in funding for each breakfast and 10 cents for each lunch.

*Full funding for students who qualify for reduced-price meals.

* Offer breakfast in the classroom in all elementary schools where at least 40 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, and other alternative methods of serving breakfast in qualifying middle and high schools.

* Phasing in minimum levels of exercise over a five-year period for elementary and middle-school students, from 30 minutes per week to 150 minutes per week for children in Kindergarten through grade five, and from 45 minutes per week to 225 minutes per week for children in grades six through eight. Sources say the demand for more physical activity is one area where the legislation is meeting some resitance, because it might cut into class time. The most recent draft calls on schools to ”seek to increase physical activity by considering extending the school day.”

As part of better nutrition, the bill requires schools to incorporate local farm products in school meals “whenever possible” and would fund a five-cent bonus for lunches that include local produce. It also calls for a school food gardening program.