Small Good News: No Double-Standard Dining In School Cafeterias

It's not for nothing that companies sign up high-profile celebrities to sell their goods: the customer's drawn as much to borrowed élan as to a product. Surely, Gwyneth Paltrow's scent of choice and the timepiece that adorns Roger Federer's wrist must smell and tell time better, respectively, than any other brand.

If the product you're selling is a healthy school lunch, quick: Who are the most famous school-lunch-eaters in the land? Those of you who guessed Malia and Sasha Obama win a week's worth of tofu scramble, a wink and a nod from Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the passing frustration of the President and First Lady, who took issue with posters planted in D.C.'s Union Station, near pol-heavy Capitol Hill. Alongside a photograph of another school luncher, eight-year-old Jasmine Messiah, ran the copy, "President Obama's daughters get healthy lunches. Why don't I?" The First Parents considered that an invasion of their daughters' privacy.

The slogan and the accompanying flapette got the issue more attention than it otherwise would have received - which is, of course, what good advertising is all about. But now that Dr. Barnard has proven himself a smart ad man, what about the message?

The Obama girls go to a private school, where parents pay tens of thousands of dollars for all the things public schools can no longer afford, whether it's a computer lab, a swimming pool, elective classes in the arts, or decent grub in the cafeteria. Jasmine goes to a public school, where priorities include teaching students to read, write and dabble in math at something approaching grade level; banishing French fries is way down on the to-do list. A big reason for the menu discrepancy is simply the relative availability of dollars: As anyone who's ever cooked a dinner for four knows, you can't serve wild-caught fresh fish on a Hamburger Helper budget.

A smaller and more insidious element of the good lunch/bad lunch equation, however, is the Department of Agriculture practice of dumping surplus agricultural goods into public school lunch programs, which may be why they're tipping toward the high-fat and high-cholesterol. Forget about what the Obama girls eat for lunch; that was just a ploy to get you to listen up. Instead, visit the PCRM web site and look at its nutritional Report Cards for school districts around the country.

Talk about a two-tiered health care system. It starts in first grade, every time public-school cafeterias dish up too much fat, too many processed foods, too much dairy, and not enough vegetarian options. We put our children on the path to obesity, to diabetes and its threatened cascade of health problems down the line, to heart disease and high blood pressure. Ironically, given our current obsession with health care reform, we engineer a next generation of adults that will end up taxing the system even further.

Did I hear someone whisper the word "prevention"?

And yet, as the Report Cards show, there are alternatives if educators and parents decide to opt out of the bad-lunch curriculum. All a school needs is a little imagination, some initiative, and a determination to strike alliances with local growers and suppliers instead of corporate food suppliers.

To borrow a popular phrase, "Yes, we can." We can educate our children about food; we can make fresh fruit as ubiquitous as French fries, and we can start building habits that might finally alter what the Centers for Disease Control calls our "obesogenic" culture.

Seems to me that this is a cool cause to be associated with, even if the docs failed to ask for Malia's and Sasha's endorsement first. This is not a tasteless attempt to cash in on the First Daughters' sudden celebrity, as Ty Inc. did last January with its "Sweet Sasha" and "Marvelous Malia" dolls. It's a wake-up call, and mentioning Malia and Sasha made sure that more of us heard it in time for lawmakers' review of the Child Nutrition Act, which the PCRM wants amended to require more low-fat dishes and fresh produce in school lunches.

Michelle Obama has shown herself to be admirably serious about nutrition and about spreading opportunity to children who have not known enough of it in their young lives. Those two issues intersect at public-school lunch - so why not embrace the issue? Jasmine wrote a letter to the Obama girls asking them to sign a petition at www.HealthySchoolLunches.org. What a great way for them to leverage their unwanted celebrity.

Visit www.karenstabiner.com or write to [e-mail]

Comments

[meowmix7]

My school district has a very sad lunch program (at least at the elementary level). One morning, the breakfast they were serving was a LEMON WEDGE & PACKAGE OF SALTINES. I am NOT kidding. When I questioned it, I was told it was a fruit and carbs.

My child goes to school elsewhere now.

[mlaiuppa]

If you want schools to provide healthy lunches, you need to provide more than $1.60 per child to do it.

[llisa]

In a school in a poor neighborhood where I taught, low-income students would rush through their free lunches so they could line up to buy ice cream and Little Debbies. I asked the principal why the school even allowed junk food to be sold. He told me that he would prefer not to sell junk, but that the sale of the junk food helped finance the free lunches.

I found it incredible that these children came to school with plenty of money to buy the garbage food but couldn't buy healthy food.

I also know a little boy whose family is on public aid, but they eat every evening at McDonald's or Taco Bell.

We definitely need better nutrition education, starting with parents and parents-to-be. Besides being taught that fresh food is better for their health, they need to realize that cooking at home is much less expensive than fast food.

[BonnieJW]

Actually, it's less expensive to eat at Mickey D than to prepare a good meal at home. Price it out for a family of 4. And poor people don't have access to supermarkets, only convenience stores. Some of them don't have cars either. Try working 2 jobs and then take the bus to the closest market, walk the rest of the way and then carry the groceries home on the bus. Then start to cook dinner for 4. I'll bet you're at McDonalds most nights.

[sunnybunny]

It costs like at least $20 to feed a family of 4 at McD's, While a home cooked meal costs usually less than $10.(If you have to buy all the ingredients- most of the time you will have some food on hand) How can that be less expensive? Where in the US, do poor people not have "access to supermarkets"? I have lived all over the country and most of the time have been well below the poverty level and have never seen that situation.

[TracieO]

Not all schools serve crap. My town's school serves fruit with every meal, whole grains, fresh vegetables, lowfat salad dressings and part-skim mozzzarella.

[Alison Bright]

Testing to see if this posts on my facebook. For those of you that have kids, check this out.

[sunnybunny]

As soon as I get around to joining the PTA I am going to push for them to offer fresh fruit (at least apples and bananas) for sale in the cafeteria. And at our school they also need some better mirrors in the girls bathroom (I even have some I can donate) . School is fixing to start though, so I'll have an opportunity soon. I think this is something that could be addressed more successfully at a local level.

[IUAlumna]

Your school district may vary, but I'm a member of our PTA and we have absolutely no influence on school lunches, which are contracted to an independent company, not prepared in the schools. The company tries to convince the parents that the lunches are healthy, but I have yet to be convinced that "Italian dunkers" should even be a snack, much less an entree (stale hot dog bun dipped in meat sauce). The fact that the meals are served on styrofoam (even as students study the importance of conservation and recycling!) just makes it absurd.

[TAFL]

Everybody has always had the option to eat differently than what the school lunch system provides--bring your own lunch. We had kids in school who almost always brought their own lunches. We had others who lived nearby who would go home for lunch.

I'm all for providing healthier food in the schools. I don't support trying to provide for every dietary choice imaginable in the school lunch system.

[theholla]

Unfortunately, many children do not have the option of bringing food from home. Here in Philadelphia, where 35% of children live below the poverty level, free school lunches and breakfasts ensure that no children go hungry. However, the quality of the food is extremely poor, full of sugar, meat, and white flour with barely a vegetable or whole grain in sight. While I do not think that it is the responsibility of the school lunch system to necessarily cater to every dietary preference, it is critical that they do their part to combat the obesity epidemic by giving our kids healthy, balanced meals instead of junk.

[Lauramd]

Many families simply can't afford to pack even a basic peanut butter and jelly type bag lunch for their children. They rely on school lunches as one solid meal a day for their children. I'm not saying that there should be a smorgasbord spread out for kids everyday, but the basics provided should be solidly nutritious and not loaded with fat and sugar.

[LarryD]

My school served lunches -- none of it pandered to "fast foods," but all of it was hospital-food bland: it put me off beets for many years. How to pep it up and keep it healthy? Airlines used to boast about the celebrity chefs who worked on their menus, back when airlines routinely served food to everyone. Now that airlines serve packaged sandwiches, for a fee, perhaps some great chefs could donate their expertise to overseeing the food schools serve. My first nomination is Rick Bayless to help liven up school menus in his hometown of Chicago.

[Stephanie71]

If I recall Jamie Oliver did more or less the same thing in the UK to prove to them that they could provide healthy meals in the school cafeterias with the same budget.

[BonnieJW]

You're right! And he made it tast good so the kids would eat it. One of the most innovative things he did was to put pureed vegetables into the spaghetti sauce. The kids loved it. And you can't get cheaper than spaghetti.