If you were following this blog in the winter or happen to have stumbled upon it just now, I want to let you know that I won’t be able to write here for a few months. I have a little too much on my plate right now (no pun intended). But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be keeping up with all the ups and downs of the food world. Don’t forget that I’ve build a nifty online dashboard so we can all stay constantly updated on this topic.
On that note, I will leave you with a photo that represents the beginnings of my love for and awareness of food. Here’s me fastidiously organizing my Tupperwares full of cereal in my first “kitchen.” Thanks, Mom.
I didn’t want to bury this in the long gripe posted below, so here’s one final illustration of what’s wrong with school lunches. “Mrs. Q,” an anonymous school teacher, has decided to join her students and eat cafeteria “food” for the entirety of this year. Thanks to her daily blog, Fed Up: School Lunch Project, we, too, can experience these meals without having to open the sweaty cellophane packages, eat tater tots five days a week, or wonder what exactly is in that meat loaf. How is this OK? Baffling.
For my entire life, I have been a lunch box kid. I never had to venture into the ominous depths of the school cafeteria because I was fortunate enough to have a mother who lovingly packed me food every day until I was old enough to do it myself. And these meals were not simply comprised of a Lunchable and a Capri Sun shoved into a paper sack. They were actual food–hummus and baby carrots, bean salads, cream cheese sandwiches on toasted raisin bread. And yes, my lunches often included fun sized bags of chips and those ridiculously small chocolate bars… but they were balanced, thoughtful meals.
I don’t need to launch into a discussion of adolescence to make my point here. If we want children to think about what they are eating, then we must think about what we are feeding them. And school lunches are often where we can encourage conscientious consumption–and where, for many years, we have gone wrong. I understand that not every parent has the time to do what my mother did so effortlessly and have no choice but to send their children to school with lunch money instead of a lunch box. And that’s perfectly fine. But what’s not acceptable is the quality of food so many of these schools are serving.
For a relatively brief and compelling overview of why we need to educate children about food and revamp school lunches, check out Jamie Oliver’s recent TED talk. If you watch the Food Network, you will recognize Jamie from his show, The Naked Chef. For the past few years, he’s surpassed his role as a network personality, chef and restaurateur to try and advocate for better eating habits in Britain and America. The video has a few slightly cheesy clips from his efforts to change the way schoolchildren are eating in the unhealthiest state in America, West Virginia–but look past the cheese and listen to the facts here. At the rate we’re going, children may be facing a lower life expectancy than their parents. And health problems related to weight issues are a huge part of that. Watch the video just to see Jamie roll out wagons full of the amount of sugar a child may be eating during a year of school meals. It’s unreal.
Better portion sizes. Better options. Better food education so that adolescents not only understand what they are eating but possess the rudimentary know-how to get into the kitchen and make themselves a meal. These changes are feasible. And necessary. Obviously this will require resources and money, but look at the expenses on the other end. It’s been reported that obesity costs the country $147 billion in medical-related bills. Fixing school lunches and making food a part of a student’s education won’t wipe those bills away. But it can certainly prevent a whole lot of them.
Jamie Oliver’s not the only one jumping on this healthy bandwagon. Have you been reading about Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative that she kicked off at the beginning of this month? The First Lady has decided to take on the same cause I mentioned above: how to change the nutritional environment of children to allow them a healthier future. Ambitious? Yes. Possible? I think so. The smoking rate in the US has been cut in half since the 1960s thanks in part to education, bans on public smoking and taxation. It’s going to take just as much effort–if not more–to convince Americans to rethink the way they eat.
To counter the number of overwhelmingly negative posts on this blog and the grossness of that Hot Pocket ingredient graphic, I give you something a bit brighter.
Click here for a slide show of creative urban gardens from GOOD. It makes me want to go buy some dirt and seeds right now.
I read about the Brooklyn Truck Farm last year, but I’m still fascinated by this movable green feast:
This seems to be a nice, typographically pleasant poster until you realize that these are all the ingredients in a Hot Pocket. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll let the unpronounceable chemicals speak for themselves.
