Unfortunately, the best place to start with this are the
youngest members of society through the school lunch program.
In this era of government bailouts and concern over wasteful
spending, an opportunity presents itself to take a hard look at the National
School Lunch Program. When it was started in 1946 as a public safety measure it
certainly turned out to be a disaster.
Under the program, the USDA gives public schools cash for
every meal they serve – $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch
and 24 cents for a paid lunch.
In 2007, the program cost around $9 billion, a figure
acknowledged as inadequate to cover food costs.
What people don’t realize is that very little of this money
even goes toward food because the schools have to use it to pay for everything
from the custodial services to heating the cafeteria.
On top of these reimbursements, the schools are entitled to
receive commodity foods that are valued at a little over 20 cents per meal. The
list includes such highly nutritious foods such as high fat, low grade meats
and cheeses, processed foods like chicken nuggets, and pizza.
Since many schools do not have kitchens, many of these
delectable morsels are ready to be thawed, heated or simply unwrapped. Also, as
an additional treat, the schools get “bonuses” from the USDA, which essentially
throws good money after bad for leftovers from the big food producers.
When the schools allow fast-food snacks that contain the
same ingredients found in fast foods and the resulting meals routinely fail to
meet nutritional standards, maybe a handful of people in our nutritionally
illiterate society protest.
But, our government caring little about this, justifies it
by saying that they are “helping” to feed millions of American schoolchildren
with a great many of them from low-income households. And here we thought the
“weapons of mass destruction” were in Iraq.
But those that are not nutritionally illiterate are
demanding better. Parent advocacy groups like Better School Food have rejected
the National School Lunch Program and have turned instead to local farmers for
fresh alternatives. And even though they face heavy budget obstacles, these
groups are demonstrating that the schools can be in control of their own menus,
Schools, for example, in Berkley, Ca., while continuing to use USDA
commodities, cook food from scratch and add organic fruits and vegetables from
local farms.
By adopting more efficient accounting software and different
bulk options like choosing milk dispensers over individual cartons, and working
with farmers to identify crops they can grow in volume and sell for reasonable
prices, they have cut costs.
It’s just too bad that our nutritionally illiterate society
has not yet discovered that most of us are lactose intolerant and that
switching to dairy alternatives like non-GMO soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk
or various nut milks would provide a far more nutritious venue.
A lot of the so-called “nutrition experts” believe that to
fix the National School Lunch Program you have to throw more money at it. But
without healthy, nutritious food and cooks and kitchens to prepare it,
increased financing will only create a larger junk-food distribution system.
What we need to do is to scrap the current system and start
from scratch.
The bureaucrats in Washington need to give schools enough
money to cook and serve unprocessed foods that are produced without pesticides,
chemical fertilizers or any other synthetic chemicals and are GMO free. And
when possible, these foods should be locally grown.
How much would it cost to feed 30 million American school
kids a wholesome meal? It could be done for about $5.00 per child or roughly
$27 billion a year plus a one-time investment in real kitchens.
It may sound
expensive but a healthy school lunch program would bring about long-term
savings and benefits in the areas of hunger, children’s health and dietary
habits, food safety, environmental preservation and energy conservation.
But the USDA would have to do its part as well (good luck!)
by making good on its lame commitment to back environmentally sound farming
practices and by realizing that there need to be a sound program to deliver
food, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, from farm to school. It would
also need to provide support for kitchens and healthy meal planning and it
would need to get of bed with Monsanto and the GMO travesty.
Actually, Congress had an opportunity to accomplish this
when it looked at the Child Nutrition and Women, Infants, and Child
Reauthorization Act. Guess what? It expired.
What about the Department of Education? Doesn’t eating well
require education? Shouldn’t students learn what foods are good and what foods
to choose and how what foods they choose affects their health and their
environment?
That’s why this new school lunch program should be partly
financed by the DOE and Arne Duncan the Secretary of Education should oversee
it, with Joe Biden stepping up to the plate, which he can never do, by making
school lunch a priority of his White House Task Force on Middle Class Working
Families.
Every public school child in America deserves good nutrition
coming from fresh ingredients. Parents that are cash-strapped should be able to
rely on the government to contribute to their kid’s physical
well.
Let’s eliminate the American public schools from harboring
the real weapons of mass destruction!
Aloha!
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