The School Lunch Problem

I just read an article in Time magazine about school lunches in France. Apparently, even in preschool, children are served a mandatory multi-course meal every day, which consists of an appetizer, main course protein (often with some lovely sauce, if the menu examples are any indication of the norm) with vegetables, a salad, cheese course, and dessert which is usually fresh fruit. Apparently, the school menu varies every day for six weeks. And it comes printed to parents, with menu suggests for dinners that will complement the nutritional intake of lunch. It's no wonder the French eat a balanced diet, the article concludes: their children learn that food is important, worth savoring, and deliciously varied, even before they can cut their own chicken cordon bleu.

Flash to my own childhood. Remember back in the day, when ketchup counted as a vegetable in our school lunches? There was only one choice: you either had the hot lunch or didn't, and its contents consisted primarily of soggy pizza and tater tots.

Flash to my children's childhoods: the school lunch plan includes a daily fruit and vegetable bar, there are three lunch choices (one vegetarian) available on every single day, and the choices consist primarily of...Domino's pizza and tater tots.

My son begs to be allowed to buy lunch, largely because kids get to use a pre-paid card which seems cool, and so we spent some time perusing the choices to pick a day. After staring at a one-month menu on which the choices were macaroni and cheese plus a bread stick; pancakes with a side of potato; chicken nuggets with smiley fries; hot dog; or Domino's pizza, we finally settled on a compromise: he can buy lunch once a month, anything he likes. The rest of the time, we'll continue packing his lunch.

He has remembered this deal only twice since we made it three months ago -- and when I quizzed him about it recently, he told me that he didn't know anything about the fruit and vegetable bar and had never seen it. Clearly, he is so fixated on his slice of pizza heaven that the notion of fruits (and he's a kid who loves fruit) slips right past him.

It is a sad commentary, I think, on the state of school lunches that we relegate the fruit and vegetables to the sidelines on the optional bar (at least in our district), rather than making them a required part of every tray, and that the menu items are all starch and simple carbs and processed protein. And even though I know that there are limited funds available and millions of kids who rely on school lunches (and breakfasts) each day, it seems like it really ought to be possible to cook healthy, good-tasting foods that aren't simply dumped out of a package and onto a tray.

I want my kids eating healthy foods and a variety of foods, not just high-salt, processed, "heat and serve" foods. I want them to learn how to make healthy choices about what to eat and how to balance their own meals. I want them to think, really think, about what they put into their mouths and how it will affect their bodies, so that they understand why I tell them they can't have candy for breakfast or sugary goodies in their lunch every day. I want them to know that when they eat foods that are good for their bodies, they are also feeding their minds.

And, I want all that healthy eating to taste good and be fun. I do realize that there is no point in drumming into them the value of vegetables, if all I serve them is mushy cooked carrots or over-cooked spinach. That just teaches them that healthy food tastes gross, which I think is pretty likely to reinforce the desire for the junk that tastes good.

The situation reminds me a little of the boyfriend of a friend of mine in high school. We were all over at my friend's house one night for dinner, and the boy asked how he could help with the cooking. She handed him some potatoes. "You can peel these," she said. He looked confused. "But I thought we were having mashed potatoes," he replied. "Yeees," she said slowly. "Where do you think mashed potatoes come from?" He looked a little sheepish. "I've only ever had them from a box," he replied.

To my mind, this is the main problem with school lunches these days. We aren't willing (able?) to invest enough money or creative energy into them to come up with really healthy options that actually taste good for kids, and so our well-intentioned attempts at healthy end up missing the mark. Either we serve them overcooked canned vegetables (as at our preschool), or we make the fresh stuff optional so that they can skip it. And in the process, we are teaching them precisely nothing (in school at least) about what real food looks and tastes like.

I'm no Jamie Oliver, capable of bringing this problem to national attention and proving that healthier, tastier options could be available for the very same money, if only a more creative system were in place for ordering the ingredients and getting them cooked up. Oh, how I wish I could do such a thing. But I think that already being a famous chef might have given him a leg-up on that school lunch project he undertook in England.

So, I'm left instead with the one-family solution: teach this stuff to my kids, and wish that I were French, with great recipes for creative vegetable preparation at the tips of my well-groomed fingers.

I don't have any problem being the one who does this for my kids. I enjoy talking with them about food, helping my son plan what he will pack in his lunch, and grocery shopping with them so that we can learn about healthy choices.

But that doesn't change the fact that my job would be easier if school lunches weren't so alluringly devoid of nutrition and full of fat and processed sugars. And it doesn't change the fact that the epidemic of obesity in this country (I just heard that Philadelphia's motive for considering a tax on soda is that 54% of the children and 64% of the adults in that city are overweight or obese!) could certainly be better addressed if we were more French about our school meals. If our students had an hour, a sit down meal, and fresh produce every day at lunch, just think how much they would learn, without even trying, about the value of slow tasteful eating.