From Farm to School

Remember the days when you could (and did!) eat anything you wanted and not give a hoot about nutrition, your carbon footprint, your pant size? I remember those days well. I'll confess...I was never one for healthful eating. Thankfully I was always active in sports so my weight was never a problem. But I think about the way I ate as a child and teenager and I cringe.

Once or twice a month my school had "hot lunch" days. We didn't have a cafeteria so we all brought our lunch routinely except on those days. Those days you could bring your money in a sealed envelope with your name on it and get a nutritious choice of Burger King or Pizza Hut. Wow. I guess they thought since we brown bagged our lunch most of the time we could afford a little artery clogging fat lest we forget the joys of empty calories and processed, overpriced, low quality food. In high school, my friends and I routinely ate fries, chicken nuggets, and this mysterious deep fried bean and meat burrito thing. From the school cafeteria. Am I the only one disturbed by the idea that our schools are promoting eating this way??

Millions of children everyday eat lunch and sometimes breakfast at school. The government invests only $2.68 per day for each school lunch. Some of us remember the "four food groups" model of nutrition: meat, milk, fruits and vegetables and breads and cereals. Meat had it's own quarter of the pie!! Thank goodness we've graduated from that 1958 embarrassment to the "food pyramid" of today. But we're still a long ways off from impacting the eating habits of children in this country. Although I cringe at the crimes i've waged against my body with my poor noshing past, I am committed to lead my children to another way of living and eating. That is why I am very much behind the goal of Chef Ann Cooper and The Lunch Box initiative to lobby Congress to invest one more dollar in every child. Without a change in the obesity epidemic affecting our children, they will have a shorter life span than you and I. Shameful.