- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 19
-
Sparkle (1)
“So Josh, what’s going on?”
His jade green eyes stared back as his voice faltered.
“I dunno, I didn’t do anything..”
The smile played on my lips for a second before I spoke.
“Josh, you can’t sing “Who Let the Dogs Out” in the middle of a math lesson. Let’s go over the math here where it’s quiet.”
“I don’t want toooo!” His whine was nails on a chalkboard, grating on my patience. He pushed his chair back and began kicking the table leg harder, now.
“Wait a sec. Did you have breakfast?” His blonde head shook silently.
“What have you got for lunch?”
His shoulders shrugged slightly as he shook his head again.
“No lunch.”
Then came a question I never ask, but this time the words were out before I could catch myself.
“So what did you have for dinner last night?’
Silence. His eyes, now sad and vacant, searched mine as the horrible truth washed over me. This child who had seemed so defiant, angry, and out of control moments before in the classroom was not a behavior problem. The problem was that he hadn’t eaten anything substantial for close to 24 hours. Instead, he had survived on the offerings of his well meaning friends; a pop, some fries and gravy, a bag of popcorn, and candy.
Later on that evening Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was on TV. Now -- you may say that Jamie Oliver is a bit crazy; who does this guy think he is, coming over to America and telling people how to eat? Why does he care? Why should anyone listen to him, anyway? Does it really matter that 31 million children participate in the USDA’s school lunch program and 11 million in the breakfast program? Or that many of those kids are consuming up to half of their daily calories at school?
You bet it does, especially when child obesity rates have tripled in the last thirty years. Between schools offering less time for PE, marketing for junk food aimed at children, government subsidies for corn farmers, struggling school districts with little money to train their staff, and processed food costing far less than anything healthy, it's obvious that we have a problem. It doesn't take someone like Jamie Oliver to point this out, but perhaps it takes the glaring spotlight of Food Revolution to highlight just how serious the problem actually is. Unfortunately, it appears that Los Angeles Unified School District in particular doesn't want all eyes to be on them.
Set to be the new school district that Food Revolution whips into shape, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the country and serves 69 million lunches every day. However, this district declined to be part of the Food Revolution, citing that their "direct work with nutrition experts, health advocates, the community, schools and students is the most effective strategy for continued success and improvement..." (Melissa Infusino). Which sounds all well and good -- California is, after all, number 41 on this list of states ranked by weight, until you look at the LAUSD's website.
As I perused through the menus and offerings, I began to wonder. Coffee cake for breakfast? Chicken nuggets? Sausage rolls? Corn dogs and fish nuggets? What the hell is a peanut butter and jelly pocket? Are they kidding? What nutritional expert would approve of that? As I dug further, I also noticed that while one can find the calories, carbs, and fat content on all the items served, the amounts of sugar, salt, and ingredient lists are missing. Without a list of the actual ingredients, the calories are meaningless. Think of it this way:
- Banana and 8 oz of 1% milk: approx 200 calories
- Breakfast pastry: approx 200 calories (along with things like tricalcium phosphate, high fructose corn syrup, and red dye #40)
As anyone who reads Mrs. Q at Fed Up With Lunch knows, school lunches that look good on paper rarely make the grade when one digs around to see what is really in the food. If the food is so nutritionally sound that they
