Nutrition Outlook

with Annette Maggi, Registered Dietitian

My Soapbox about School Lunch

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution kicked off last Friday with a focus on school lunch in Huntington, West Virginia.  I have been surprised by how little fan fare there has been about the show since its launch.  I’ve been fighting with whether to write about it or not.  Actually, several people have asked me to address school lunch in this blog, but I have been avoiding it as I’m a bit conflicted on the issue.  Why am I conflicted?  Many reasons, including. . .

  • Schools are required by law to meet nutrition standards that comply with the Dietary Guidelines, and they have to do it on a shoestring budget.  The federal rate for reimbursement for school lunches is currently $2.68.  I don’t know that everyone understands this.  Schools have to buy the food, hire staff to prep the food and clean-up, pay for the plates and silverware all at this rate.
  • Offer vs. serve.  Most schools offer a variety of foods that comply with these nutrition standards, and then kids are allowed to choose what they will take.  The reason for this is that if you “serve” the kids, giving them no choice, a lot of food gets wasted.  The last time I was at my son’s school for lunch, kids had a choice of seven different fruits and vegetables – steamed broccoli, cut up apples, grapes, salad, oranges, celery, cucumbers.  Yet there were kids that took no fruits or vegetables.  Is this the school’s fault?
  • No one ever talks about the lunches that kids bring from home.  Are they more nutritious than school lunch?  When I visit my son’s school at lunch, I see donuts and chips and sandwiches on white bread coming from home in lunch boxes.
  • If a child eats three meals a day for 365 days a year, there are a total of 1095 meals eating by a kid in a year.  Many kids eat 5 meals a week at school for roughly nine months out of the year, totaling 195 meals eaten at school in a year.  That’s 18% of a kid’s meals.  What about the other 82%?  It seems so easy to put all the pressure on schools instead of on home, doesn’t it?
  • My sense is that we as parents expect our schools to do an awful lot.   Is it fair to expect them to get our kids the perfectly balanced meal at school with all the right foods and nutrients if we aren’t teaching our kids what this means at home?  School lunch has to be perfect so we can hit the McDonald’s drive thru before soccer practice?
  • Where does personal responsibility fall into all of this?  There are books and articles written every day about the current generation of “helicopter” parents who want to be their kids’ friend not the parent.  Are we doing our absolute best at home to get our kids to eat the most nutritious foods?

I’m beginning to feel like I’m on a bit of a soap box here, and I probably am.  It’s just that this is a complex topic, intertwined with family eating habits more comprehensively, yet it feels like the finger keeps getting pointed at schools.

I’m not saying I have an answer or know all the complex details of all the facets of this issue.  That’s why I’m conflicted.

I’m curious. .. where do you stand on these issues?

Visit www.nuval.com to see a program that will be implemented in schools in Independence, MO in the Fall of 2010.

March 30, 2010 | Categories Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

12 Comments »

  1. Comment by Jenny | March 30, 2010 @ 10:36 am

    I believe it’s up to the parents to teach their children nutrition, and make sure exercise is a componnt of their lives as well as healthy dinners for the best possible outcome. I used to eat junk food all through school bur always came home to healthy meals, love to eat right now and have never been overweight.


  2. Comment by Marianna | March 30, 2010 @ 10:48 am

    I agree 100%! Hello! Look at all the kids that whine and beg for “Lunchables” and all the uber-processed lunch box cakes and snacks! Check out the average grocery shopping cart.
    Kids don’t always want to eat what’s good for them. What do they eat before and after school? Why is the pressure on school to provide the best meal of the day? How about a home cooked dinner and a bowl of oatmeal with milk and juice for breakfast? It’s not that difficult! The school is contending with a budget, numerous allergies, picky kids, time constraints, and now a bunch of riled up parents with a million complaints. Will they be happier when school lunch costs them 5$ per day so it can include tilapia with steamed spinach as the vegetable? :( The kids will just come home and eat Hot Pockets anyway…


  3. Comment by Kelly (@ A Local Foodie's Fight) | March 30, 2010 @ 10:56 am

    Ideally, I would say, we (parents/care-takers) should give children only healthy choices. Before school, during, and after. I don’t think it’s all the school’s or government regulation of school’s responsibility. However, they are not without responsibility either. If all a child knows is healthy food, they will come to be contented and satisfied by that healthy food.

    Further, if a child has only ever had healthy snacks to look forward to, and if that is what is made available, they are not going to starve themselves and not eat anything. If a child knows his options are an apple, grapes or oranges–and when they get home their options are still fruits and vegetables for an afternoon snack (I don’t have kids but I babysit and i know this battle well)–they are not going to forgo eating their snack at school. It won’t be “inferior” to what they can eat elsewhere.

    Also, schools need to do research and monitoring of what children are ordering and eating in the lunchroom. We shouldn’t be spending money on steamed broccoli if children aren’t eating it, or we need to prepare it in a way that they will but which is still healthy. This will help us figure out where it is appropriate to allocate funds and where food is just going to waste. Healthy food CAN taste good–and I know you know this. It’s just that children aren’t being brought up with naturally great tasting food because the veggies they know come from the freezer or a can.

    No apologies necessary for the soapbox talk. I think more of us need to stand up on our soapbox. We are slowly killing the next generation and it’s time to stop being so polite about the problem.


  4. Comment by Marianna | March 30, 2010 @ 11:05 am

    I agree, Kelly, but as soon as the kid gets a dollar of their own and a bicycle to ride to the market…they’ll be buying some junk food! :D


  5. Comment by Amy | March 30, 2010 @ 12:09 pm

    I too watched Jamie Oliver’s show and was terrified by what the kids are eating (and not eating). As he mentioned, in his country he’d just tell the kids they needed to eat their food before being dismissed. Here that doesn’t seem to fly, and lunch is a place where kids are completely on their own – to eat as much or little as they’d like. Even if we put healthy food on their plates (which we don’t often do) at school, it is another battle to have them put it in their mouths. And, you are right about the lunches from home. Sometimes they are so terrible you think the kids are actually better off with the school food. And … then there are the parents trying to send healthy stuff and their kids are throwing away the good stuff and buying junk.

    Our kids are sent with a healthy lunch from home and we even started a website about lunch http://www.lunchtaker.com
    We model good eating, involve the kids in selecting and talk about nutrition and how it is sometimes hard to make good decisions, even for adults. We stress how important it is to make these good decisions though and do not shun the occasional treats.

    If you prepare lunches at home and are looking for ideas, check out our site. Also, share your own – we’ll calculate nutrition for you!

    I hope that Jamie’s show reaches people on whatever level they are ready to be reached at and influences positive changes in schools (and homes) all over our country.


  6. Comment by Melissa | March 30, 2010 @ 1:34 pm

    Very good points, indeed. I agree – it is the parent’s responsibility to begin teaching children about good nutrition at home – from a very young age. And it is not easy to do. It takes a lot of time and planning to do it right. That being said, I have been unimpressed by the School Lunch menu that comes home with my first grader. I am lucky in that he is happy bringing his lunch to school and it always includes milk, a fruit, a vegetable and a sandwich on whole grain bread or pita.

    I am looking forward to checking out Jaime Oliver’s show!


  7. Comment by Laura | March 30, 2010 @ 11:19 pm

    I used to take my lunch to school, but always traded stuff with other kids. So, you have to hope that if your kids are trading food, they are trading for equally nutritious foods . . . and if you are packing nutritious foods for your kid, and he trades it, at least you are helping some kid eat better!


  8. Comment by Marianna | March 31, 2010 @ 6:47 am

    @Laura…I never thought of it that way…:)


  9. Comment by Lisa | March 31, 2010 @ 8:42 am

    My daughter is two. I’m doing my best to expose her to a variety of foods; some days she loves the vegetables I serve, some days she hands them back to me one by one.

    At daycare they serve all the children a variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables, and the daycare workers give me a sheet every day showing what she was served. A few weeks ago I asked them to highlight what she was actually eating – big difference. Most of the fruits and vegetables are going uneaten.

    Our pediatrician says it is normal for toddlers to reject fruits and vegetables (especially vegetables) at this age, I still hope that by continuing to offer them at home she will develop a taste for them and willingly eat them when they show up in her school lunches.


  10. Comment by Mary Haley | March 31, 2010 @ 7:37 pm

    I certainly do not have all the answers, but one factor that I didn’t see mentioned was the large population of children receiving free or reduced-cost lunches. I know a few years ago, the district where I live had 72% in this category. It is a large enough consideration that student categories are white, black, and free/reduced lunches when testing scores are evaluated. Students often eat both breakfast and lunch at school and those meals might be all the child eats in some situations. My friends who are teachers report alarming increases in the number of homeless students they have.

    I do not dismiss the importance of healthy habits being established and practiced first and foremost in the home, but such large populations cannot be dismissed either. If the children in Huntington WV were eating pizza for breakfast, it’s because the family income is low enough for the children to be fed breakfast at school in the first place.

    By the way, my city was ranked 12th in per capita personal income in the nation, and ranked first in per capita personal income in the state. The amount? $70,632. Per person.


  11. Comment by whyzz | April 1, 2010 @ 2:48 pm

    At whyzz.com, the source for kid-friendly answers on how the world works, we partner with qualified experts for tips and advice for talking to kids about nutrition and healthy habits – check out our talking points here:
    http://whyzz.com/talking-about-nutrition


  12. Comment by Dynamics | April 4, 2010 @ 7:50 pm

    It is up to the parents but a lot of parent do not teach their kids how to eat properly. So many parents go for the easy out. Most do not know you can fix a nutritious meal faster than going through the drive thru. Our schools need to feed our kids healthy foods. This works. My daughter was in a headstart program and they were fed breakfast and lunch. They had to “TASTE” everything. At four years old my daughter could not understand how some of the kids did NOT know what a pea was. If our schools feed nutritious foods, the kids will at least learn about them, try tasting them and maybe take some of this information home with them. At the very least we need to educate them. This is a tough subject for a lot of people. It is sad, very sad. Here is a question for you. Is it better to feed the kids crap or to feed them good healthy food and for them not to eat it? Maybe they will end up hungry and start eating the healthy food and even liking it.


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