Have you ever wondered why more schools don’t jump on the local food bandwagon? I’ve always kind of had a Utopian view of school–like it is where we teach our kids to become the kind of humans we WANT them to be, not necessarily the kind we currently ARE. When I was younger, the schools were totally pushing recycling–a concept that my parents’ generation thought liberal and ridiculous–but now, here we all are, most of us with recycling bins right next to our garbage cans. So why haven’t we taken the same principle with local whole foods in the school cafeterias? We could stimulate our local economies and fuel our babies with vitamin packed options–to me it sounds like a no-brainer.
Turns out, though, there are lots of reasons schools haven’t fully committed to local options–none of them very good, but all of them very understandable. According to an article I read, several schools across the nation have tried diligently to offer local foods. Still, roughly 64% of schools in the United States are not offering any local food choices. Probably because, wouldn’t you know it, there is a lot of red tape. There’s paperwork, contracts, supply and demand, proof of insurance, lack of availability of “approved” items, lack of federal backing, etc. All of which lead school district officials to take the simplified route and order all of their supplies from one large conglomerate, rather than vetting several individual farmers on a school by school basis.
I know change is slow, and there are a lot of really great programs out there trying to change the way we buy, prepare and consume foods–some of them are probably schools. So, I want to know, do your kids’ school lunch program offer local selections? Or does Sysco pull up in a semi and drop off boxes of chicken nuggets and baby carrots from Mexico? Do you care either way?
~Mavis
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Shannon says
My daughter and I were just having this same discussion this morning. She’s only 7 and wanted to know why the lunch I pack for her is healthier than what they get at school. She knows that just because it says “whole grain” in front of the choices on the menu, that does not mean it’s healthier. We are planning on building a large garden in our backyard this year and we try to buy local as much as we can. We are trying to teach ourselves and our children to be more self-dependent and not just buy everything at a store. So much of it can’t be trusted anymore!
Barbara S says
Sysco is a proud supplier of my children’s school. They drop the most economical garbage the county can purchase 2-3 times per week. I would honestly be surprised if the county could purchase anything that look less appealing for the children. The new dietary restrictions put in place by our current administration leave a number of children going home hungry each day. Let’s get real. Who wants to eat a Cheese pizza stick, green bean, spinach and orange slices for lunch at 5-10 years old. The cheese pizza stick looks and tastes bad, the green beans are the leftovers from some other manufacturing area (even my 8 YO said they don’t look like they do at home) and cooked spinach?
Funny part is….the school is in the middle of farms, cow field and corn, to be specific. You would think they could purchase something healthy to serve from a farm next door! I send lunch to school. My children may not always have 100% healthy options (get real, they need a cookie or brownie treat just like we do) but at least they can recognize the items. School lunch programs have taken a downward spiral. Someone needs to help the system!
Becky says
I too pack a lunch for my daughter. I have volunteered and I should not have to sniff pineapple to identify it. Peas should not be grey.
they don’t even cook the food at the school. Its prepackaged, like a hungry man TV dinner, and is just warmed before the kids arrive.
My daughter wouldn’t eat any of it, even if I tried, and 90% of the food they DO serve gets tossed out, leaving hungry kids.
When she was in K4, I picked cherry tomatoes and green beans from our garden and packed them in her lunch, and the teacher was amazed that she had a real veggie in her lunch– and voluntarily ate them,.. even before anything else in her lunch box.
When I picked them, they still had dew on them (insert Super Mom music here) I may not get it right every day, but every once in a while I have a flash of pure genius.
Mavis Butterfield says
Rock on Supermom. 🙂
Becky says
I should also have noted, that lunch at my daughters school is FREE, and I’m a cheapskate, but I won’t force that on her. I’d much rather pay and have her EAT it!! lol
Mrs. Mac says
My youngest (special needs son) gets a packed lunch every day. Each item is in reusable containers, cloth napkin, ice packs, stainless steel water bottle. Food is organic and made from scratch. Hot lunch options include stews, etc. in a hot pack thermos. His teacher says his lunch is the talk of the table each day.
Last year there was a tv story about Spokane area schools having the option for farm to table .. so maybe it’s starting to make inroads into the schools. I’ve seen the lunches served in our N. Idaho schools .. pathetic .. so we pack. BTW .. his health a few years ago was in decline .. now he’s thriving .. just from a change in diet.
http://www.krem.com/story/news/local/good-news/2014/10/10/jackson-farms-offer-fresh-school-lunches/17058517/
Cassandra says
At one point some of the schools in our school district (Snohomish) were locally sourcing fruits and vegetables for school lunches. Our elementary school had an all you can eat veggie bar also. Not sure if they still so as we homeschooled our youngest after 2nd grade. I do know that the Home Ec (or whatever they call it now) classes at our high school source their ingredients locally.
Melissa says
I have four kids in two differnt schools. I couldn’t tell you who delivers their food that is served, but I can tell you Sodexo is who “cooks” and “serves” the stuff they try to pass off as food. I have two picky eaters and two who will eat ANYTHING. Even my kids who’ll eat ANYTHING won’t touch the food in the cafeterias.
The neighboring school district’s food service contract went out to bid last year and another company won…by one cent. That school’s cafeteria now has a full time chef…only serves organic…and everything is prepared and cooked fresh every day!
All four of my kids (ages 14-11) pack their own lunches. They pack fresh fruit, veggies, salads, sandwiches, wraps, etc. but it’s all real food!
I realize that there are politics involved, but I honestly think most adults, school administrators and parents have no idea what they try to pass off to our kids as food. I would be willing to pay a little more in taxes if my kids were able to actually be able to identify and eat the “food” in the schools.
In the meantime, we’ll continue to teach our kids what a serving size is as well as what real food is and tastes like. We try to keep them enganged by participating in meal planning and prepping as well as the gardening. After all…having a produce market outside your kitchen window is the best and most convenient source of organic food!
Kristina says
In my opinion, a lot of public school districts are underfunded, which is why they cut costs in any non-instructional place they can. Real, non-packaged, non-made-elsewhere-and-reheated food requires skilled personnel to plan, prep, and cook meals, let alone clean up afterward, and that is where much of the cost comes from, not just the food itself. Every one of those people requires a real grown-up wage and benefits, as opposed to the minimum wage and no benefits our district now pays some of the yard duty monitors to hand out the garbage they serve as “food” since our district’s last cook retired. Even if it came down to only using food-service style ingredients, an experienced school cook could still come up with tasty, healthy meals. (One of the teachers in our award-winning HS Ag department runs an organic veggie business on the side, but I assume it would be asking too much for the district to patronize her business, as well. Sigh, baby steps….)
Beks says
I was reading an article on the Blog Acculturated awhile back about actor John Ratzenberger pushing for Home Ec and Shop to be mandatory in schools. I think to add to that, have gardening classes, find a big sunny lot where students can learn about how foods grow, and take part in growing their own lunches. It’s a bit more difficult in the winter, obviously, but unless you learn gardening from a person or a book, like a lot of customs, it might just die out. And this is how people survive. Kids should learn to be connected to their food.
Jennifer Toller says
I just want to chime in from the perspective of someone who works in the school meal field. I am assistant supervisor for a k-8 elementary district in CA, we serve approximately 4,000 meals daily between our breakfast, lunch and supper programs. I completely agree that school foodservice has a long way to come, and am not here to defend the food in any children’s school. All I can offer is a view from someone who does this everyday (and has a BS in Nutrition and worked as a vegetarian chef for many years).
When the Healthy Hunger Free Kids act of 2010 went into effect the changes it demanded in school food service were all encompassing and were expected to be put in place either immediately or within 1 to 2 years. Some of the positive changes were requiring schools to serve vegetables from different subgroups, make all grains whole grain, limit sodium and limit dessert type items. Sounds easy enough? Not so much, manufacturer’s struggled to change their products to meet they new requirements. The first wave of whole grain low sodium bread products that met the very specific specifications were awful, I agree, but they were not given enough time to formulate better products. And we are hampered by what our manufacturer’s offer, as I am sure everyone can agree no school could be expected to make items like pasta from scratch daily. It was also a big learning curve for our employees on how to properly prepare these new food items.
Another major issue was that students are now required to take either a half cup of either fruits or vegetables daily, meaning even if they do not want it we have to force them to take it. Unfortunately much of this produce ends up in the trash. Our school district works in conjunction with local hospitals to promote healthy eating, we have followed the smarter lunchroom guidelines, and all of our schools have gardens. This requirement along with the others have increased our food costs by about 20%. And our participation has decreased because the new lunches are not as appealing to students, they no longer receive any treats and many of the favorite items had to be removed from the menu. We are reimbursed for every free meal we give $3.27, this amount must cover all the food, labor and overhead.
Every three years each entity that runs the National School Lunch Program gets audited by the state that they are in. We must provide product formulation sheets for every ingredient of every meal that we serve. The auditors strongly encourage us to use products that are CN (Child Nutrition) certified and again these products are the more processed ones. When you do not use a CN label product you must get a product formulation statement that shows the exact weight of all ingredients. Let me tell you Annie’s organics is not going to give you there trade secret recipe for their mac and cheese, so we are not allowed to serve it. Or if we do, we will not receive reimbursement for that meal. So for that reason we are forced to go with companies that specialize in school foods, again a lot of times sacrificing quality. And don’t get me started with commodity foods. Through the USDA we are allocated a certain dollar amount of commodity foods, of these foods the quality varies, but because of budgets we must incorporate those items into our menus.
Obviously there is a lot more I could go on about (in my county the Health Department will not allow us to use foods grown in our own school gardens!) but school foodservice operators are as frustrated as parents. Trust me we want to serve foods that the students will eat, and enjoy that is the whole point!! The National School Lunch Program has the second most amount of paperwork in the whole government, second only to the IRS. I spend a lot of my days doing paperwork instead out at the schools working with my staff and talking to students. This is the reason a lot of school districts are bringing in big companies like Sodexho to run their school food programs. Self operated foodservice programs are becoming fewer and farther between. I actually do source all my produce that the kids get to be from California, a fact I am very proud about, but this is not realistic for a lot of districts. Sorry for the long comment, obviously I am very passionate about this topic!
Leslie says
Thank you for sharing!
Jenn says
I know exactly what you are talking about with the CN labels. I used to work in a daycare where we provided breakfast, lunch and snack. We were on the food program so that we could be reimbursed for the kids that qualified for free or reduced meals (which were a lot of our kids). The food program wanted us to use nothing but food that came with the CN labels and it was ALL processed food. We couldn’t add anything to the veggies to make them taste better. All we could do was dump the can of veggies into a pot and heat them up. We were not allowed to add salt or God forbid, some seasoning meat to the pot. We had to quit serving all of the favorites that the kids loved as well. Because they needed all the additional paperwork and time, that no one had time for, we couldn’t serve spaghetti or chicken and rice.
Ashley says
First off, please know that I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I really do think the school lunch system is very sad. However, isn’t there a rule where they need to serve a certain amount of calories? If it’s healthy/local food, you need a lot more of it to add those calories in, which in turn raises the price. I know one of our local school made a small attempt to serve healthier food (not local….that would be impossible in the winter for us). Picky kids wouldn’t eat it, and a lot of kids come for families who can’t afford a table full of food at supper time. Kids would go home hungry and scarf down a couple little debbies or other cheap snacks. Now, I’m not saying that kids should all eat crap because of the the misfortunes of others, but a lot of parents ended up deciding that the ‘serve healthier food thing’ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It really is too bad that everyone doesn’t have the time/money to send their kids a healthy packed lunch instead of having to depend on the garbage a lot of schools service, or worry that their kids won’t eat enough and then come home hungry.
Sue says
In Oregon our kids brought/preferred their own lunches in elementary for same reasons.
No better in Tampa now with high school teens. Our oldest is lazy and just waits to eat at home after school given his last period lunch. The younger vegan kid takes lunch given anyone buying lunch is required to buy meat (ie pre-packaged caeser salad). No options except chips alone at school.
Sabrina says
There is an article today at http://www.iserotope.com about the Port Townsend, Washington School district and how they are changing the school lunch program in their district. Just amazing!
David says
While I’m all for healthy food, especially for growing kids, I would not be in support of choosing the menu purely based on the location that the food was produced. Taken to the logical extreme, what would the kids eat during the winter in northern areas? Potatoes and other stored/canned foods? Even when many items are in season, there will always be ingredients that are better off purchased non-local. Part of the advantage of having a global economy is that we have figured out how to move food quickly, safely, and economically from the locations that it’s best produced in. Sure an orange picked a few miles away will probably be better than one shipped 5000 miles, but when they’re out of season I’ll take the shipped one over none at all. I think that rather than schools setting “buy local” goals, they should get rid of vending machines selling soda, candy, potato chips, etc and only offer healthy (but not necessarily local) options. The salisbury steak and grey green beans straight off the sysco truck and reheated should definitely go.
Carol says
My two cents: I don’t believe the federal regulations re school lunches are the problem. The regulations were created to address a long standing problem of nutritionally substandard school lunches. I just checked the USDA’s site re school lunches at http://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/nutrition-standards-school-meals and if you nose around in it a bit, it shows the feds are already encouraging local purchase. I have to believe the schools are resistant because it takes more time and skill to procure and prepare onsite than it does to purchase manufactured units. Not pointing any fingers at anyone, but don’t think it’s right to blame the federal government for this, either.
Barbara says
Our school is in New Mexico and we do have the old fashioned lunch ladies. Items are prepared on premise not come in a plastic tray and just warmed like my niece’s school in TX. With that said lunch is $2.20 I don’t know where they get there meat from but each meal is served with a salad and all salad is locally grown in our city. Our farmer’s market has a partnership with the school to serve local veggies. With that said the kids wouldn’t eat year round as locally we don’t have all the veggies but salads are able to be done locally year round. The school also has an outside garden run by parents, funded by grants, and helped out by classrooms that produce a lot of squash, salad greens, peas and carrots that our school uses in their lunches. Now for some reason the cooks can’t use it in their cooking. The parents prepare it and serve it right next to the lunch ladies and the kids think it is just a part of their lunch but for some legal issue it is separate and served/prepared separately.
Rita says
My children’s PK-5 public school has a greenhouse and garden. The students grow cabbage, broccoli, kale, onions, spinach, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, and many herbs that are served on the lunch line in addition to the standard school lunch offerings. We’re very fortunate that we have teachers and parent/grandparent volunteers who see the importance in teaching the students gardening skills. Many students often choose to spend their recess working in the garden.
Mona says
Hey Mavis….check it out! Port Townsend has done exactly what you were writing about! And they are a district with almost 50% of their students eligible for free/reduced price meals.
http://iserotope.com/teacher-voices-benjamin-dow-2school-lunch-revolution-in-port-townsend/
Sara T says
Our school has a farm to school program, but it is just whatever produce ifs grown on a small plot of land near the high school, farmed by our ag classes & special ed classes. It is a wonderful program, but doesn’t bring in enough food to actually sustain lunch programs where we have thousands of students eating. We also have the Michelle Obama food program at a couple of our schools where kids get to try different types of fruit & vegetables as a snack. They have a broad spectrum from really yummy things like raspberries & blackberries & cantaloupe, to things I wish were prepared a different way, like raw Portobello mushrooms. There is also a grant program from WSU that congress in to some schools and shows kids fun ways to eat healthy. 🙂 They do a great job of preparing the food in ways kids will eat it. There are a lot of great programs our schools have tried… While we are obviously not completely farm to school,I really like that efforts are made. one other thing I think about is that this would be easier to do with a year round school program, or warmer climate. School is not in session here when most things are to be freshly picked, and there is no one to can them to preserve them for the next year. 🙂