Chef Ann Cooper, the nationally acclaimed “Renegade Lunch Lady,” spoke at Upper Dublin High School (Fort Washington, PA) last night, Monday April 25th. Ann Cooper is a celebrated author, chef, educator, and enduring advocate for better food for all children. She is making parents aware of what they can do as a community to help bring healthy school lunches to our children.
Many of us have heard the rising statistics:
- 30% of kids today are overweight or obese
- 10 year old children are getting kidney stones
- 1 in 3 kids born in the year 2000 will get diabetes
- Kids born in the year 2000 will be the first generation to die at a younger age than their parents
The sad thing is, these statistics don’t have to be true. School lunches may only be a portion of your child’s diet. But as Ann Cooper pointed out, drinking a chocolate milk once a day every day will add close to 3 pounds of weight by the end of the year from added sugar alone. Flavored milks are as bad as soda – maybe worse since you may think you’re adding something healthy to the mix.
Many school lunches are loaded with chicken nuggets, fried foods, sugary drinks and desserts and a la carte items like candy and fattening chips. People argue “kids won’t like the healthy stuff,” or “my kid won’t drink regular milk.” Well, as Chef Cooper says, this stuff didn’t exist when many of us were young. There were no flavored milks or kid food. You ate what your parents ate. There is also the danger of pesticides in all of our foods. Certified organic is the safest way to go, but even Ann knows you can’t go organic on such limited budgets.
Through Chef Cooper’s valiant efforts at tackling school lunches and raising awareness of the dangers of continuing to feed our kids the way we currently are, she has made huge strides in showing healthy lunches can be achieved.
Cooper named the challenges schools face when trying to turn a school lunch program around:
- Food – acquiring the right foods including fresh fruits & vegetables, healthy protein & whole grains
- Finance – keeping within school lunch budgets
- Facilities – having the equipment and storage to make and preserve healthy, natural food
- H.R./Staff Training – staff is needed to prepare and cook foods from scratch and be properly trained to use the right equipment
- Marketing & Education – competing with the huge marketing budgets of fast food restaurants and million-dollar snack companies, as well as making parents and students aware of the effects of healthy versus junk food
Budget, of course, is the biggest variable for many schools in taking the leap. Budgets vary by regions but Cooper’s budget as the Nutrition Services Director for Boulder, CO schools is $1.15 per lunch. Oh, have you had your $4.00 coffee today from your favorite local coffee shop? That’s almost a week’s worth of school lunches for your child. The government is obviously not spending enough to feed our children. $9.5 billion is spent on school lunches, but $260 billion is spent on diet-related illness. Cooper stresses if we could just add $1 to the lunch meal, it would make such a huge difference and bring down those diet-related illnesses and costs associated with them.
How can you help bring your school district around? Attend PTA meetings, start a local committee for better nutrition, get involved in your community and educate yourself. A salad bar in a school costs only 22 cents per child and encourages the children to make their own healthy choices. It’s worth it to be an advocate. Healthy bodies equal healthy minds. That’s why Chef Cooper’s triple bottom line is People, Planet, Prosperity.
Resources to help parents and schools:
www.thelunchbox.org– Chef Cooper’s website with loads of free information to assist with healthy school lunches
www.nutritioninschools.org– local group started by Upper Dublin mom Jill Florin to raise awareness and bring healthy lunches to our schools
www.wholefoods.com– tons of information on healthy diets, recipes and big community involvement, including raising money to put salad bars into schools
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