Parents, kids and advocates are staking out sides in the great chocolate milk debate. The crux of the controversy is whether kids who refuse unflavored milk will drink chocolate – especially kids whose impoverished families may not be able to afford milk of any kind at home. Or is the availability of chocolate milk creating kids who will refuse plain milk after they’ve tried flavored?
“Renegade Lunch Lady” and school food activist/blogger Chef Ann Cooper has staked out the strong anti-chocolate-milk turf, even likening it to napalm. The dairy industry is fighting back with a campaign. I hope we’ll see some quality testing in lunchrooms soon, providing conclusive data about now many kids (and not kids who are knowingly engaged in a rebellion after their chocolate milk was pulled from the lunch line) really will drink their milk if it’s chocolate and refuse it if it’s plain.
Chef Ann must not have a total anti-sugar policy, because I recently dined on barbecued chicken that used her excellent sauce recipe, and found that it's deliciously tangy-sweet. When students and parent volunteer filmmakers created the video sensation “We Need Better School Food” a couple of months ago, Rosie Ghiotto, cafeteria manager at SFUSD’s Aptos Middle School, used Chef Ann’s sauce to create a barbecued chicken entrée as part of the fantasy ideal school lunch, the one we’d serve all kids if only there were enough funding. Since I helped with the filming, I got to try the meal.
Chef Ann’s recipe, which makes approximately 100 servings, uses 1/2 cup plus 1.5 tablespoons packed light brown sugar and 1 ¾ cup plus half a tablespoon molasses. I’m sure this is a small amount per serving. But in the big picture this is the same concept as sweetened milk – add something less healthy to entice more kids to eat the healthy item.
(I happen to be writing this the day after I dined on a giant barbecue dinner at Oakland’s legendary Everett and Jones – at least my husband and I split a dinner. Now that’s sweetened sauce – then there’s the sweet coleslaw, with a hint of nutmeg, and the greens with what I think was salt pork, and cornbread as sweet as cake– yum. OK, back to the blog post about healthy school food.)
In other school food news, I’ve occasionally covered Revolution Foods – a vendor of prepared school meals that markets its foods as fresher and healthier. Parents ask all the time why SFUSD can’t contract with Revolution Foods, and the answer is that Revolution Foods is too expensive. Now two San Francisco charter high schools that were using Revolution have cancelled the service and started serving SFUSD Student Nutrition Services’ (SNS) meals again. City Arts & Tech and Metro Arts & Tech high schools made the decision for financial reasons, SNS Director Ed Wilkins tells me.
I am of course an advocate for fresher and healthier school foods. I sometimes take issue with Revolution Foods’ marketing because it often indicates that Revolution meals do not cost more than the current school meals, which is not true. And it sometimes goes hand-in-hand with a claim that “it doesn’t take more money to improve school foods – all it takes is the will.” Wrong – it takes more money.
Comments
Nice article.
And ProCon.org presents arguments on both sides, while schoolnutrition.org only takes responsibility for suggesting more than one "flavor" gets kids to choose milk to drink.
Hi Caroline,
I actually just wanted to give you a tip: Contact the Douglas County School District in Colorado and ask about their lunch program. If I understand correctly, they have a self-sustainable lunch program which was designed with help of Ann Cooper. Don't have all the details, but for what it's worth, I know you are very involved in working on this puzzle for SFUSD.
About the milk...well, I'm vegetarian (nearly vegan), so I vote for rice milk. (:
It is problematic to compare what one school district can do with what another district can do. For example, starting salaries for cafeteria workers in Douglas County range from just under $10/hr for "helper" up to just over $14/hr for high school cafeteria managers; similar positions in SF range from starting salaries of over $16/hr for "helpers" to over $25/hr for caf managers. To put it another way, $100 buys 10 hours of "helper" labor in Colorado but only about 6 hours in SF; $100 buys about 7 hours of cafeteria manager labor in Colorado but only about 4 hours in SF. Less money spent on labor frees up more money to be spent on food.
What's more, the Douglas County school district has less than 5% of their students qualified for free meals, while San Francisco has over 50%.
An inquisitive reader looked up lunch menus for the Douglas County School District and e-mailed me. It doesn't sound all that unusual:
The elementary school menu features popcorn chicken, french toast with sausage, ham and cheese sandwich.
The high school a la carte items include high-fat items like chicken wings, egg rolls and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. The regular cafeteria list includes corn dogs, chili dogs and chicken nuggets -- all run-of-the-mill cafeteria fare -- along with a few better-sounding items such as tuna stuffed into a tomato.
It is problematic to compare what one school district can do with what another district can do. For example, starting salaries for cafeteria workers in Douglas County range from just under $10/hr for "helper" up to just over $14/hr for high school cafeteria managers; similar positions in SF range from starting salaries of over $16/hr for "helpers" to over $25/hr for caf managers. To put it another way, $100 buys 10 hours of "helper" labor in Colorado but only about 6 hours in SF; $100 buys about 7 hours of cafeteria manager labor in Colorado but only about 4 hours in SF. Less money spent on labor frees up more money to be spent on food.
What's more, the Douglas County school district has less than 5% of their students qualified for free meals, while San Francisco has over 50%.
Dyslexia and reading problems can be prevented if kids in kindergaren and first-grade learn to write the alphabet at a minimum rate of 40 letters per minute. This would completely revolutionize education and, incredibly, no one has ever studied it scientically except me. For evidence, email me at rovarose@aol.com
Ann Cooper is uneducated about children. Sugar is an ABSOLUTE necessity for kids, The brain runs only on sugar and cutting back on it impairs efficiency unless the kid is overweight.
Cut the starches which get stored and only later get converted into sugar. Sugar is burned rapidly and immediately, unless of course, the kids have no recess because the school board cut that out too--along with art, music and gym, all of which contribute to brain growth,. This is institutionalized stupidity and perhaps why she didn't learn what she should have been taught.
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