School lunch (and breakfast) as an opportunity for learning

 The Washington Post has an opinion piece, "The unjust shaming of a little girl highlights the broad issue of institutional food waste," about an incident in Lorain, Ohio where a child threw out her uneaten lunch and was forced to take it out of the trash and attempts were made to force her to eat it. The cafeteria worker and the principal eventually lost their jobs. 

The op-ed positions the event in terms of food waste.  And that's reasonable given how many of us were taught to clean our plates -- "there are children in China who go hungry."  

We didn't think about it in terms of waste, but that was an element.

But while the waste element is true, it misses the basic point, that schools don't treat mealtime as an opportunity for learning. 

The child tossed pop up waffles.  I eat waffles (and pancakes) with yogurt, sometimes adding fruit. Yes there was a teaching moment there. But the cafeteria worker wasn't trained in such an approach. And plenty of principals don't think that way either, despite their position.

Kids need to be given opportunities to try different foods and modify what they eat so that they want to eat it.   

I think I've written about this in terms of DC.  My first DC job was for a nutrition organization, and I dealt with this issue back then, 30+ years ago. One of the things we did was produce an educational film on fast food, and I showed it in some DC schools, talked with some home ec teachers about the issue, etc.

These days it's even worse.  Schools see food as a cost center, something to manage and reduce.

Basically, schools don't get much money per meal, mostly have outsourced meal production, and many schools no longer have kitchen equipment.

1.  There is a charter school, I think in Columbia Heights that treats school lunch as a community family meal. The home economics teacher I talked with many years ago from Eastern High School made the point that many of her students hadn't had a meal around a table with others until her class.  

2.  The Post has written about Capital City Public Charter School and its creation of a "food forest" and other food-related programs ("For D.C. students, lessons in growth, of the garden variety").  Relatedly is the Edible Schoolyard program created by Alice Waters.  There's a similar program in DC.

A third-grader serves milk at the Umejima Elementary School lunchroom. Ko Sasaki/For The Washington Post.

3.  In Japan, school kids clean the schools as a form of learning and they also serve school lunches. School meals are treated as a learning opportunity ("Everyone's Favorite, a Mouth-Watering Lunch Menu Every Day!," Kids Web Japan, "Japanese School Lunch: Why it’s Awesome and One Reason it’s Not," Japanese Food Guide). 

It turns out the Post wrote about this many years ago ("On Japan’s school lunch menu: A healthy meal, made from scratch").

Other interesting programs are a kid food community center in Toyko ("Open house: A Tokyo community centre with food at its heart is helping to nourish the whole neighbourhood.," Monocle Magazine) and in response to the pandemic, community cafeterias for hungry children and families ("Fast-Growing ‘Children’s Cafeteria’ Provides Kids With Food And A Coveted Community In The Pandemic," Forbes).

4.  Toronto has a number of interesting food security groups that do amazing things.  

One is The Stop, and there is a book about it. ("Food activist Nick Saul on why we’re ripe for a revolution," "Nick Saul: The man who built the foodie bank," and "Rethinking the food bank: It’s no longer just about handing out food to the hungry," Toronto Star).

Nick Saul has since left The Stop to start an organization, Community Food Centres Canada, working with other communities on creating or repositioning their food bank programs.

Another is FoodShare, which among its programs has a better food program for schools, including salad bars ("Farm-to-School program boosts health of students and food economy," Toronto Globe and Mail, " Toronto chef Jesus Gomez makes vegetable-focused school cafeteria food kids will actually eat," Toronto Star).

5. ChopChop Family is a print magazine and online program supporting better nutrition for kids and families.  They also run stories on innovative programs ("COOKING CLASSES IN MICHIGAN ARE CHANGING KIDS LIVES").

6. Just watched a PBS Independent Lens documentary on the original Rainbow Coalition in Chicago repeated on the PBS World Channel (sadly not available in the DC area, but is in Utah).

It's amazing to think that the innovation of school breakfast programs come from the Black Panthers in Oakland ("How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government," History Channel). The Young Lords did the same in Chicago. 

Young Chefs Winter Break Cooking Camp, Fairway Market, NYC

7.  A number of supermarkets have cooking classes, and many have sessions for kids. And there are various programs, usually for profit, as part of community cooking schools.  

Farmers and Public Markets too.  

This photo shows a class of children in the Teaching Kitchen at the River Market in Little Rock.

-- Boqueria Kitchen School, Barcelona