In 2008, the National School Lunch Program served more than 30.5 million children low-cost or free lunches each day. But according to the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, about 42 percent of schools don't offer fresh fruits or vegetables, and only 7 percent meet all nutritional standards.
Chef Ann Cooper, the self-described Renegade Lunch Lady, aims to change all that. Hardly the hairnetted drone filling your five-compartment plastic tray, Cooper has spent the past 10 years railing against district spending policies, commodity-based food service organizations and political platforms with no mention of school food or child health. Overhauling districts' lunch programs in New York, Berkeley, Calif. (with the help of Chez Panisse's Alice Waters) and now in Boulder, Colo., she has taken her message national.
Working with Whole Foods Market's executive Walter Robb, Cooper has spent the past two weeks in Washington lobbying elected officials to consider more rigorous nutrition guidelines during National School Lunch Program reauthorization. To raise awareness about the urgency of school lunch reform, she has founded thelunchbox.org. Tampa Whole Foods Market has raised funds for the organization, broadcasting a video message in-store from Cooper to parents and holding a series of tastings focused on kids heading back to school. We caught up with Cooper by phone from her office in Boulder to talk about school lunch.
What recourse do parents have in making inroads in the school lunch program?
The only real influence a parent has in a school district is through the district itself. I always recommend people see the district's wellness policy. Individual schools don't make changes. It's at the district level. School board members are elected officials. Petition the school board. That's where the change happens. There is power in numbers.
What should a school district's top priorities be?
I would say the No. 1 priority is getting rid of processed foods. No fried or prefried foods, no high-fructose corn syrup, no trans fats. It's amazing, New York City has banned trans fats in restaurants but not in schools.
Are commodity foods the problem?
I don't know a school district in the nation that isn't taking federal school lunch money and isn't using commodity foods. In Boulder I threw out the lunch program and started from scratch. We still use commodity foods but what we do is get the least processed foods. Bulk cheese as opposed to mozzarella sticks. We make our own cheese sauce, as opposed to frozen mac-and-cheese sauce. We do bulk milk instead of the individual cartons. It tastes bad out of the little cartons and they're usually not very cold, so kids don't drink it.
It is possible to get big companies to do better food. Depending on how big the district is, you can do regional procurement, and that doesn't mean you buy from a million small farmers.
For parents who opt out of school lunches entirely, what are the best foods to pack?
If you're packing a lunch, it should include fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains. A "laptop lunch box" or bento-style system is good, to give kids lots of little tastes: a small wrap sandwich, carrot sticks, fruits and yogurt to dip. Lunchables are the scourge of the Earth, right there with Uncrustables, which have almost no nutritional value and contain trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup.
In the face of so much processed food in this country, is a school lunch revolution possible?
Start by putting a salad bar in every school. Schools have to have all good choices. If we want to change kids' relationships with food, we should offer cooking and gardening classes, with tastings in classrooms and menus kids can look at online. And parents have to walk the walk and talk the talk. If the food they eat at home is good, healthy food, kids learn.
Laura Reiley can be reached at lreiley@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2293. Her blog, the Mouth of Tampa Bay, is at www.blogs.tampabay.com/dining.
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The Renegade Lunch Lady
To read more about Ann Cooper's philosophy about healthy school lunches, go to thelunchbox.org or chefann.com.
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