And Now for Some Good News About School Food: Breakfast in the Classroom

Berkeley's breakfast in a bin

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

When I worked in Berkeley's central school kitchen a year ago one of the things that impressed me most was something I'd never heard of before: breakfast served in the classroom.

Every morning at the crack of dawn we'd start loading plastic bins. The meals were so simple: a loaf of banana bread, a bag of kid-size apples, cartons of plain milk. Sometimes there might be yogurt, or packets of Nature's Path organic cereal. At Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, the bins were rolled out on shelves to the front of the "dining commons" where students soon arrived in pairs to carry them to their classrooms.

It couldn't have been easier. Yet participation was nearly 100 percent, and because of a quirky California real estate tax law, breakfast in Berkeley generated "meals for the needy" funds on top of federal subsidy dollars, helping to pay for a scratch-cooked lunch.

When I left Berkeley, I wondered why every school district hadn't thought of breakfast in the classroom. But now many of them are. In fact, this may be the hottest new trend in school food.

"Breakfast is such a winner on so many levels. But it’s a federal program that’s underutilized," said Madeleine Levin, a senior policy analyst with the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which advocates on food access issues in schools. Most schools offer breakfast, but fewer than half of all children eligible for a free or reduced-price breakfast actually eat one. Last year 1.97 billion breakfasts were served in the federally-subsidized meal program nationwide, fewer than half the number of lunches--5.28 billion.

FRAC last year was one of several groups--including the National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation, the National Education Association Health Information Network, and the School Nutrition Foundation--that partnered to help start classroom breakfast programs in five school districts: Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, Prince George's County, Md., and Orange County, Fla. They received $3 million from the Walmart Foundation, about $2 million of which went to the schools, mostly to pay for equipment, such as refrigerators and coolers.

"Some principals felt uncomfortable changing their routines, as did some teachers and food service directors. We were able to address those groups at the school level to show them how this can work, how there can be a constructive process to plan and implement a program that benefits everyone," said Levin. "The power of the funding was to meld the partnership together."

According to Levin, it doesn't take much to start a classroom breakfast program. Yet research demonstrates that when children gather around breakfast in a familiar classroom setting, readiness to learn increases while tardiness and discipline problems decline. Eating breakfast also fights obesity. "It will benefit them for the rest of their life," says Levin. "It's proven in research to have a real impact."

Nothing beats breakfast at your desk

Here in the District of Columbia, there's been a marked increase in the number of children eating breakfast since breakfast in the classroom was implemented a year ago. Breakfast is served free to any D.C. Public Schools student who wants it. In 37 elementary schools where breakfast is served in all classrooms, participation stands at 78 percent, an increase of 26 percent from the year before. Meanwhile, in elementary schools that serve breakfast only in the cafeteria participation is just 10 percent.

D.C. Hunger Solutions has been working closely with local schools to make the new breakfast program a success.

Levin doesn't advocate breakfast in the classroom as a money maker, but school food consultant Kate Adamick does. Especially in districts with large numbers of needy students, federal subsidy dollars can more than pay for breakfast, meaning extra cash to help support the entire meal program. In "severe need" schools, the federal reimbursement rate is $1.76, compared to the usual $1.48.

Adamick says the break-even point for schools typically occurs when at least 50 percent of the student body qualifies for a free or reduced-price meal. "For districts that exceed 60 percent free and reduced, breakfast in the classroom programs generally result in significantly increased net revenue for school districts," Adamick said. "The higher the level of free and reduced kids, the higher the net revenue generated."

Schools can increase the profitability of breakfast by cooking more from scratch, Adamick says. "The good news is that simple scratch-cooked breakfast meals are often much less expensive than the highly processed products that are currently served in most schools, which helps keep the costs in line and lowers the free and reduced levels necessary for a financially viable breakfast in the classroom program. "

The USDA's proposed new meal guidelines could upend that math, however. By requiring more whole fruit, whole grains and adding a 1-ounce serving of meat (or meat alternate), the guidelines would add a whopping 51 cents to the cost of serving breakfast. Some school administrators say they may have to drop breakfast altogether.

Parents often express concerns that eating breakfast in the classroom will eat into the time children have available to learn. But teachers and school administrators say children are more focused when breakfast is served in the classroom, and eating a meal together creates a family atmosphere. At a school I visited in Boulder--Columbine Elementary--the beginning of the school day was moved up--from 8:30 to 8:15--to make room for breakfast in the classroom.

Breakfast delivery, Boulder style

I watched the kitchen manager, Margaret Traverton, load bins with apples, breakfast bars, and milk, then wheel the bins around the school on a cart, dropping them outside classroom doors. I went back a few minutes later to watch the children unload the bins and arrange breakfast at their desks. Assigning kids tasks--like unloading bins, or collecting trash--gives them a sense of responsibility, and takes some of the load off the teachers.

Chicago instituted breakfast in the classroom in all of its schools this year, sparking loud complaints. But Levin attributes the discontent there to requiring that breakfast be served in classrooms in even the most affluent schools, where many children may not need it. "The concerns are coming from a small group of parents," said Levin. "In other districts where they’ve gone district-wide it’s worked really well—Houston and Newark, for instance.

Here in D.C., schools where less than 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price meals can opt not to serve breakfast in classrooms. It's offered in the cafeteria instead.

Levin says many other school districts are exploring the breakfast-in-the-classroom option. FRAC has received more than 100 inquiries just from its website. But the next frontier is getting older kids interested in eating breakfast. At one high school here in D.C., I met with students who would rather grab a bag of chips at a corner convenience store than eat a breakfast for free at school.

"If you talk to marketing people they’ll tell you that making something free doesn't necessarily make it attractive," said Levin. "It’s not cool. Or to use a more modern term, it’s not 'fresh.' They’d rather hang out in the hallway with friends."

In D.C. last year, middle school participation in breakfast was just 21 percent. It was even less among kids in high school: only 11 percent.

So how do we make breakfast "fresh?"

This article originally appeared at the Beyond Breakfast blog.

What's for Lunch: Local Beef

By Andrea Northup and Anna Chute

Lisa Dobbs, Chef and Nutrition director at E.W. Stokes, will stop at nothing to make sure that the 350 students she serves each day have healthy, delicious meals. Cooking from-scratch and using no processed foods, she and her staff prepare breakfast, lunch and supper in their antiquated kitchen for the school’s population of mostly low-income students. Lisa incorporates fresh, locally-grown foods whenever possible, especially on the school’s salad bar. And she works with the rest of the school staff to ensure that the school’s garden, nutrition and wellness programs are coordinated with her healthy menus.

As the Director of the D.C. Farm to School Network, I heard about Joy Evans from a friend who works in a local farm-to-table restaurant. Joy and her husband operate a business called Shenandoah Foods, which delivers meat, cheese and eggs from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley to Washington, DC-area restaurants. Joy takes a delivery fee from her clients to run her business, and then farmers deal directly with customers to handle food costs. I reached out to see if she might be interested to work with Washington, DC schools.

Getting local meats into school meals is difficult. Most schools buy pre-cooked commodity meat from large distributors. It’s cheap (less than $1 per lb) and can be ordered in the evening and delivered the next morning – a system that’s hard to beat. But we’re not quite sure where it comes from, and it’s not always the highest quality product. But with about $1 per meal to spend on food, school food service directors have to make difficult choices about what they can afford.

I invited Joy and her husband to Washington, DC to meet with a few schools interested in buying local meat. We had a lively discussion about what products schools want, how much they need, what prices they can afford, and how to handle invoicing and delivery. We tried some delicious cheeses, Virginia-grown ground beef hamburgers, and fresh yogurt with local berries. If your mouth isn’t watering, it should be - the school food service providers could taste difference.

Joy and Lisa connected, and decided on a trial-run of 200 pounds of lean ground beef for $2.60 per pound. Joy picked up the meat from D&M Meats in Harrisonburg, VA in her refrigerated van, and delivered it to E.W. Stokes in conjunction with her regular restaurant deliveries. Lisa and her team expertly sautéed and seasoned the ground beef, and served it with pico-de-gallo, tortilla chips, and fresh guacamole. The result? A delicious and healthy meal for hungry students, which put money into our local economy, supported a sustainable small producer and made clean-beef fans out of Stokes’ young scholars.

Lisa Dobbs, Food Service Director at E.W. Stokes says the quality of the Virginia-grown beef is unparalleled. There isn’t murky liquid left over after cooking – something she’s used to with the lower-quality products. “We would never go back to the beef we were cooking before! We would drop beef from our menu entirely if we had to go back,” says Lisa.

Lisa can’t serve local meat every day, but it’s on the menu about once or twice a week, and they are looking to incorporate other items like chicken and eggs. We’re working to get more schools on board, and we’re excited for the potential to grow this partnership.

Andrea Northup is manager of the D.C. Farm to School Network. Anna Chute is the network's intern. This article originally appeared on the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture blog.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Defends Decision to Ditch Chocolate Milk

Not coming back to D.C. schools

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

D.C. Public Schools officials apparently have no intention of reinstating chocolate milk in local cafeterias despite a recent grilling by D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown and the pleadings of a first-grader who polled his fellow students.

In an e-mail to Brown dated June 22, newly-confirmed schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson says the decision to remove chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk from schools was part of an ongoing effort to make school food healthier, that the sugar in flavored milk puts many students at risk of obesity and heart disease, and that not serving more expensive flavored milk frees money that can be used to improve the the quality of meals served.

During recent confirmation hearings before the council, Brown tried to get Henderson to commit to bringing flavored milk back to city lunch lines based on findings of a 7-year-old student at Lafayette Elementary School that 58 percent of his school mates do not drink milk. "Kids won't drink milk unless it's chocolate," Brown said. The boy questioned why chocolate milk had been removed when schools continue to serve fruit juice that contains as much sugar as flavored milk, but not the protein.

In her e-mail to Brown, Henderson noted that Los Angeles schools, the second-largest school district in the country, recently opted to remove chocolate milk and that other school districts appear poised to do so as well. As for juice, Henderson said the sugar in fruit juice occurs naturally, unlike that added to flavored milk, and that juice is only served once per week in D.C. schools as a replacement for whole fruit.

A debate over the chocolate milk issue played out recently in Washington Post reporter Mike DeBonis' column after I broke the news in this blog about Kwame Brown's interrogation of Henderson. The father of the Lafayette Elementary student, Chris Murphy, wrote DeBonis insisting that his son "is not a dairy lobbyist." But a copy of the boy's testimony has since been widely circulated by the National Dairy Council as evidence that kids prefer chocolate milk to plain milk and risk not getting enough calcium to build healthy bones without it.

Chocolate milk has become a flash-point issue in the battle to improve the quality of food served in the nation's schools. The dairy industry spends tens of millions of dollars promoting chocolate milk as an alternative to soda and other soft drinks. While sales of plain milk have plummeted in recent decades , sales of flavored milk have tripled. But some health experts have become concerned about chocolate milk's roll in promoting children's consumption of sugar and say that kids can get the calcium they need from a range of other foods.

My reporting of D.C. school food indicated that as recently as a year ago, children were being offered the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar with breakfasts in which chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk were served alongside Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins and fruit juice. Under the aggressive approach taken by food services Director Jeffrey Mills, schools have removed not only flavored milk, but also sugary cereals and processed foods.

Henderson says the response to D.C. schools removing flavored milk "has been positive."

Here is the full text of Henderson's e-mail to Brown:

Chairman Brown--

In response to the discussion that arose during my confirmation hearing, I would like to share information with you about our decision to eliminate flavored milk from our menus.

The decision to stop serving flavored milk in DC Public Schools (DCPS) was made in support of our goal to serve healthy, natural foods to our students that are additive, artificial flavoring and coloring-free. This change was implemented, beginning last summer, in conjunction with new DCPS nutrition standards. Our new standards require that all menu items and competitive foods comply with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) standards, the federal HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold Standard, and with our own district-specific standards which regulate/restrict sugar content in our meals.

Flavored milk contains significantly higher amounts of sugar and sodium than plain milk. An 8-ounce carton of flavored milk contains 14 grams (approximately 3 ½ teaspoons and 64 calories) of added sugar per serving. The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of an individual’s discretionary calories come from added sugar. For young girls ages 9-13, for example, 8 ounces of flavored milk would constitute nearly a whole day’s added sugar allowance. Considering the fact that DCPS offers three meals a day, it is feasible that some students would choose to consume three cartons of flavored milk, thereby exceeding their recommended daily sugar intake by 128 calories. Other American Heart Association research cautions that the average child consume over 20 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, a habit that undoubtedly contributes to heart disease and obesity-related illnesses.

To the point that some have made about the amount of sugar in fruit juices, we mention that the sugar in juice occurs naturally, that all of the juice we serve is 100% juice, and we only serve it once per week as a replacement for fruit. Additionally, the amount of protein in milk does not vary between flavored and unflavored; some milk products have added milk solids (protein), but this additive is not unique to flavored milk.

DCPS currently serves only skim or 1% plain milk. Despite removing flavored milk and making significant menu changes, we are on track to serve nearly 2.5 million more meals this school year than last, meaning 2.5 million more milks have been purchased. Flavored milk also costs approximately $.05 more per carton than plain milk; and so, the additional volume comes at a cost savings to the District, allowing us to funnel more resources into buying more high-quality, healthy foods for our children.

Our Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) has been tracking district policies around flavored milk across the country. Just last week, Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, stopped serving flavored milk, and according to indications within the school food service community, many other districts are planning to pull it in the coming school year.

While we do not take lightly the advocacy of our students, we also know that the District ranks 9th among all states with high overweight and obesity rates among adolescents ages 10-17 (DC DOH 2010 Obesity Report). It is also important to note that the majority of feedback we have received from the DCPS community regarding the decision to eliminate flavored milk has been positive. Spurred in part by the Council’s own nationally-recognized Healthy Schools Act legislation, we at DCPS have been working aggressively to develop nutritional health and fitness initiatives and approaches to help combat this challenge. Through this and other changes, DCPS hopes to give students the gift of a healthy palate and an active mind.

Sincerely,

Kaya Henderson

Big Dairy Loves 7-Year-Old's Take on Chocolate Milk, But He Needs a Fact Check

Some facts with that chocolate milk?

The National Dairy Council is circulating the testimony of a first-grader at Lafayette Elementary School who told the D.C. Council kids aren't drinking milk as much since chocolate milk was removed from the menu.

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown last week grilled schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on the subject during her confirmation hearings, trying to get Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk in school cafeterias based on the 7-year-old boy's "research."

The boy's father, Chris Murphy, told Washington Post columnist Mike DeBonis that his son, Aidan Cohn Murphy, "is not a dairy lobbyist." But yesterday I was on the receiving end of a mass e-mail sent by Greg Miller, vice-president of science and research at the National Dairy Council, linking to Aidan's testimony with the words, "This kid did his homework."

Did he really?

Kwame Brown said he was impressed by the sleuthing Aidan had conducted, including a poll of 410 of his school mates to find that 58 percent are not drinking milk. (Apparently 42 percent are drinking plain milk, a lot more than are eating the green beans.) But a closer look shows that on several key points, Aidan got it wrong.

"We use to have chocolate milk in D.C. public schools," Aidan said in written testimony he submitted to the Council June 11. "But then you passed a law that said that no kids in D.C. Public Schools could buy chocolate milk. They could buy only white milk."

False. Apparently Chairman Brown thought Aidan was referring to the "Healthy Schools Act" the Council approved last year. But the act did not address flavored milk, nor does any other D.C. law. Removing flavored milk--which had included chocolate and even more sugary strawberry milk--was a decision made independently by school officials as part of an overhaul of school menus to make them healthier.

The chocolate milk from Cloverland Dairy the schools had been serving contained 14 grams of added sugar in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, or 3.5 teaspoons. “We’d like to teach students that sugar doesn’t need to be added to a natural food to make it ‘taste good,' " school food services spokeswoman Paula Reichel told the Post.

Aidan says that according to his survey, kids now substitute water for milk more than anything else. Many parents think that's a good idea. They don't believe milk is necessary. But Aidan went on to say that kids are substituting fruit juice for milk, and that would not be accurate. In D.C. elementary schools, children are required to take all of the offered food items at any meal. Milk is always offered. If juice is on the menu, they would be required to take that as well, not in place of milk. Juice typically is offered at breakfast, not so much at lunch. And at affluent schools like the one Aidan attends, breakfast participation traditionally is very low.

In proposed new meal guidelines, the USDA would make it more difficult for schools to substitute juice for whole fruit.

Aidan says Fairfax County also removed chocolate milk from the menu, but then brought it back with a "healthier kind of sugar." The truth is, sugar is sugar. There is no real difference between cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup as far as your body is concerned, except that the corn syrup may contain a higher percentage of fructose. Both are equally bad. In fact, Robert Lustig, a specialist in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar "poison." The American Heart Association has linked it to risk factors for cardio-vascular disease in children. According to the heart association's guidelines, millions of children drink too much flavored milk.

Aidan said that as part of his research he interviewed a doctor who told him chocolate milk is "medium healthy" and "better than drinking soda." The policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics is that flavored milk served in schools can be a "healthful alternative" to sodas and other soft drinks. But D.C. schools have not allowed the sale of sodas or soft drinks since 2006. They are not available for sale in D.C. elementary schools, although some kids bring them from home.

According to this doctor, the calcium and protein in milk "are good--but the sugar is not good."

Aidan quotes a recent Washington Post article in which a USDA spokesman says the agency would rather have kids drink milk with added sugar than no milk at all. But there's something Aidan needs to know: the USDA's job is to promote dairy products. In fact, the USDA oversees the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which collects money from dairies by congressional fiat in order to spend millions of dollars promoting the "Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!" campaign.

The USDA designates milk as its own food group in the school meals program, and requires that it be offered at every meal. No other agricultural product receives such preferential treatment from the federal government. Still, sales of plain milk are only half what they were after World War II, while sales of flavored milk have tripled in since the 1970s. Chocolate milk is the dairy industry's way of competing with Coke and Pepsi. Big Dairy is desperate to keep kids drinking chocolate milk.

In other words, Aidan, there's very little difference between the dairy industry and the USDA when it comes to peddling chocolate milk to children.

Aidan, you should be listening to your doctor and your other schoolmates and just drink water if you don't like plain milk. Kids are not suffering a "calcium crisis," as the dairy industry would have you believe.

We know you and your friends love sugary chocolate milk. But you need to make the healthier choice and learn to like plain milk. What you should be lobbying the D.C. Council for is extra money the schools can use to install electric milk dispenser so kids can have fun pouring themselves glasses of cold, delicious white milk instead of the stuff they serve you in those miserable little cartons.

Now Appearing on Jamie Oliver's Blog

Read all about it at Food Revolution

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Have you read about my debate with a 7-year-old over chocolate milk in D.C. schools? It's been playing out the last couple of days in the Washington Post via columnist Mike DeBonis. Imagine, the Post has finally realized that there are real issues worth covering in our local cafeterias. What took them so long?

Pity that it takes a first-grader polling his fellow students and presenting it to the D.C. Council (with a little help from dad, no doubt) to get people's attention. But we're all for having the discussion. Jamie Oliver's people caught wind of it and asked me to write it up for his blog.

So here it is. Thanks, Jamie.

Wake Up, Parents! Or Let Kids Run the Cafeteria

No question: kids like chocolate better

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Suddenly a debate over chocolate milk in school is heating up in the pages of The Washington Post. Or should I say our hometown paper has finally noticed there's a food revolution going on in D.C. school cafeterias now that a first-grader has polled his fellow students and found--shock!--they are not drinking as much milk as some people think they ought to since chocolate and strawberry milk were taken off the menu a year ago.

Post columnist Mike DeBonis sounds downright sympathetic to the plight of these elementary schoolers in affluent Chevy Chase, 58 percent of whom (according to a 7-year-old's poll of about 100 school mates) are not drinking milk. But here's the good news: Apparently, 42 percent of the kids are drinking milk, and that's a lot more than are eating the green beans.

Notice, this dispute centers on something kids love--sugary milk. Nobody is conducting any surveys to see how many kids are shunning the vegetables or whole grains the USDA says kids need more of to avoid becoming obese. Having spent the last year and a half monitoring what kids eat in my daughter's elementary school here in the District, I'm here to deliver some bad news: obscene quantities of vegetables and whole grains are being thrown in the trash every day. In fact, I recently visited an elementary school cafeteria on Capitol Hill on a day when green beans were on the menu. I did not see a single child in the lunch room eating them. But they were all eating the hamburger. (Quite a few were drinking plain milk.)

There is no real secret to all of this. If we allowed kids to write the school menu, it would follow approximately these lines: Chicken nuggets, Tater Tots, pizza, hamburgers, French fries, chicken nuggets, pizza, french fries, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, chocolate milk. Those are all things kids love.

Now, what are the adults serving instead? Bone-in chicken, whole grain buns, green beans, whole grain pasta, sauteed squash, roasted sweet potatoes, Caesar salad, bone-in chicken, plain milk. Which would you choose as the healthier menu? Would it surprise you to learn that the kids don't eat it? Why do you think that is? But note, also, there are no adults in the cafeteria talking to the kids about the food. Nobody is marketing the new menu to the children who are supposed to eat it. In other words, the adults really aren't following through to make this food revolution a success.

The real issue is not the sugar in chocolate milk. We already know kids love sugar. Look at the article I posted yesterday on the sodas and other sugary foods elementary school children bring to school from home. The problem is what chocolate milk stands for. More than any other item on the school menu, chocolate milk embodies our failure to pay attention to the way kids are eating, our surrender to a toxic food culture that embraces industrially processed convenience foods because they are easy shortcuts.

We teach children to expect sugar in their food, then we're surprised we have an obesity epidemic?

Yes, chocolate milk pretty much sums up our failure as adults to engage children in the more difficult act of eating thoughtfully, our willingness too often to just let kids eat what they want. Getting children to eat more green beans and less candy is hard work. But nobody said it would be easy.

It's high time we had this discussion. Hooray for first-graders researching the food question. But that doesn't mean it's time to bring back chocolate milk. It means parents (and maybe the Washington Post, too) need to pay more attention. If we want kids to drink more milk--and not everyone thinks that's necessary--then let's get kids to like plain milk.

Heck, while we're at it, we could pony up some more money for electric milk dispensers in the schools--cool machines like the ones I've seen in use in Berkeley and Boulder and other progressive school districts--so kids can help themselves to as much cold, delicious, organic plain milk as they like.

There you go, Council Chairman Brown. Why not do a little research into how we might fund milk dispensers in D.C. schools so kids don't have to drink the stuff in those cheap little cartons. I'm sure they would love pouring their own milk. And maybe if you offered kids really good plain milk, they would drink more of it. But that's not going to happen as long as chocolate milk is an option.

Yes, getting kids to eat more healthfully means getting more involved--with our time and with our wallets. But as my wife likes to say, this is a process, not an event. This revolution is just beginning, and there's lots more work ahead. Think about that before you try to undo the progress that's already been made.

The Sugar Kids Bring from Home

Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Yesterday I wrote about the chairman of the D.C. Council relying on "research" conducted by a six-year-old to conclude that city schools should bring chocolate milk back to the cafeterias. As I noted there, children may not be the best sources for nutritional advice. Given a choice, they will always pick sugar over real food.

I do not exaggerate. Take a look at this photo from the lunch room at my daughter's inner-city elementary school a year ago. This fourth-grader's lunch from home consists of a 12-ounce can of Sprite, a gigantic cupcake (she'd already licked off the icing), a bag of Oreo cookies and a lollipop.

In case you're wondering, a 12-ounce can of sprite contains 36 grams of added sugar (high-fructose corn syrup), or 9 teaspoons.

Also that year, kids were bringing this Safeway brand cola to school. I'm not sure how much sugar is in it, but you can bet it's a lot.

Things didn't change this year, when my daughter transferred to fifth grade at an elementary school in a more affluent part of the city. Except the sodas have gotten bigger. This 20-ounce bottle of Sprite contains 60 grams of added sugar, or 15 teaspoons worth.

Some kids at least skip the sugar by bringing diet sodas. Does that make it okay?

This boy was nursing a 32-ounce bottle of orange-flavored Gatorade Power G. An 8-ounce serving delivers 14 grams of sugar--about the same amount added to a typical carton of chocolate milk. Do the math, however, and you see that this is just one-fourth of the sugar in the entire bottle, which contains a whopping 14 teaspoons of sugar.

The same boy then pulled out a foil pouch of Kool Aid "Jammers," tropical punch flavored. This 6-ounce serving contains 19 grams of sugar--nearly five teaspoons worth--making it even more potent than the Sprite.

What do you think? Should schools do something about children bringing sodas with their lunch?

D.C. Council Chair Would Have First-Graders Make School Food Policy, Reinstate Chocolate Milk

Just say no to chocolate milk

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

D.C.Council Chairman Kwame Brown says he's in possession of "research" conducted by a first-grade pupil that convinces him schools in the nation's capitol should bring back chocolate milk.

Brown made the remarks in an animated exchange last week with Kaya Henderson during hearings to consider her confirmation as schools chancellor. Saying a sleuthing first-grader had conducted "a study" concluding that kids just won't drink milk unless it's chocolate--information Brown said he confirmed talking to children at two recent elementary school promotion ceremonies--Brown pressed Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk, which school officials removed from the menu a year ago as part of a push to make cafeteria food healthier.

Brown said he was impressed by the nutritional information on flavored milk the first-grader had amassed. More likely, Brown was tagged by the long arm of the dairy industry, which relentlessly pursues efforts to keep flavored milk in schools to offset decades of decline in sales of plain milk. As one of a few major school districts to ditch chocolate milk, the District of Columbia has become a crown jewel for activists aiming to topple flavored milk's rule in the nation's lunch rooms. Brown parroted the dairy industry line that kids won't drink milk unless it's tarted up with sugar, and will collapse in a heap of osteoperosis and rickets without it.

Henderson says dairy lobbyists have been pressuring her as well.

So how does a six-year-old dicatate school food policy in the nation's capitol? Here's the transcript from last Thursday's hearing:

Brown: This is from our youth hearing, a first-grader, and he made sense. And I want him to know to get his question in. We have the Healthy Schools Act. And we all know we want everyone to eat healthy. And I’m all supportive of that. But he had a survey of about I think 100 and something students that he had spoken with and I did my own independent survey of a couple of graduation ceremonies I attended and I come to find out that most students agree. They want to know why they can’t have chocolate milk in the schools. They said they’re getting juices that have more sugar than chocolate milk that has protein and less sugar. And their question to you was to say that it’s not because it’s not part of the Healthy [Schools] Act but because the schools just don’t offer it. And it’s wrong that the schools don’t give them a choice to have chocolate milk anymore. And I want to know can you commit to make sure that we have chocolate milk back in our elementary schools. Because they made an argument that it has protein and calcium and is better than some of the juices they’re getting inside the school now.

Henderson: I got a call from the milk producers of America telling me that research effectively says that if kids don’t drink chocolate milk, they won’t drink milk. I’m happy to work with my food services department on it.

Brown: So we’re going to get chocolate milk back into schools?

Henderson: I will work on it. I mean, here’s the thing, right? We didn’t make that decision lightly. There was a reason.

Brown: I know. I’m not saying….

Henderson: I’m willing to reopen the conversation about chocolate milk.

Brown: We reopened it already. You called and you talked to the milk people and….

Henderson: The milk people called me. That’s the lobbying people [laughs].

Brown: The first-grader came and he did the study and it said that most kids aren’t drinking milk at all now. They’re drinking more juices with more sugar and they’re more inclined at a young age to drink chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’ll talk to my people. Our priority is to have our kids drinking milk.

Brown: Chocolate milk?

Henderson: Why do you all try to get me to get up here and….

Brown: This is an interview, right? We asked you a question and we want to know what you’re committing to.

Henderson: Until I talk to my food service experts, I can’t make that commitment.

Brown: Is anyone here from….

Henderson: No, food services is not here.

Brown: Chocolate milk. Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate. We want our youth to know when they come to testify, they sit all day long, and he put an incredible amount of work into some of this research and I went to two elementary schools and spoke at their promotional exercises— graduations—and I asked them about chocolate milk and, yes, they want chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’m on it Mr. Chairman.

Brown. Thank you.

Brown's remarks came as members of the school board in Los Angeles--the nation's second-largest school district--were voting to eliminate chocolate, strawberry and other flavored milk as part of that city's battle against childhood obesity. Schools in Berkeley, Boulder, Minneapolis and elsewhere also have sworn off flavored milk because of the added sugar it contains. D.C. school officials made the move with little fanfare nearly a year ago after appointing a new food services director who has aggressively redesigned the menu, removing many of the processed and sugary items that had been served daily to the district's 45,000 students. Nearby Fairfax County, Va., also removed chocolate milk, but then reinstated it to quell protests.

Elected last November as chairman of the D.C. Council, the city's law-making body, Brown created controversy when it was revealed that he had leased not one but two fully-loaded Lincoln Navigators at a cost to the District of nearly $2,000 a month. He had returned the first car because he didn't like the color of the interior--he wanted black-on-black.

A report by the Institute of Medicine last year found that most Americans do not lack calcium or Vitamin D, refuting claims by the dairy industry that children suffer from a "calcium crisis." School food guru Ann Cooper, who refers to flavored milk as "soda in drag," has recently said, "we don't have a calcium crisis, we have an obesity crisis." In fact, kids in D.C. rank eighth in the nation for being overweight or obese.

The average eight-ounce carton of chocolate milk contains 14 grams--or 3.5 teaspoons--of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The American Heart Association has warned that children on average now consume an astonishing 21 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, and as a result exhibit common markers for heart disease, such as low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides and high LDL cholesterol. Robert Ludwig, an expert in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar "poison" because of its link to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease risk. Ludwig cites a worldwide epidemc of obese infants and fatty liver disorder in children.

No less an authority than Walter Willet, head of the nutrition department at Harvard University, has warned that children should not be served flavored milk in school and that milk itself "is not an essential nutrient."

As for sugar in fruit juices, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times last week also wondered why chocolate milk has been getting all the attention, when fruit juice contains as much sugar. The sugar in juice occurs naturally. Still, proposed USDA guidelines [PDF] for school meals would sharply curtial schools' ability to substitute juice for whole fruit.

Milk is not categorized as a protein in the federally-subsidized school meals program. Because of the dairy industry's special relationship with the USDA, milk comprises its own food group and must be offered with all meals. Protein in school meals comes from other designated sources, such as meat, poultry and fish. Most schools elect to offer milk as an optional meal selection, but D.C. Public Schools officials, in an effort to speed up food lines, this year required all elementary school students to take milk with their meals. The schools have not released data indicating how much milk children are drinking.

The dairy industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting chocolate milk while trying to scare parents, politicians and food service directors into believing that children won't grow healthy bones if they do not have access to milk with added sugar and flavorings. The slick industry campaign, including a "Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!" promotion, pays for "studies" that bolster the industry cause, then dresses them up with statements cherry-picked from various health and medical groups to create an impression of widespread approval for kids drinking sugary milk products as much as they like.

Dairy interests have vigorously promoted one "study" in particular purporting to show that milk consumption plummets when flavored milk is removed from school. But that was the product of a marketing research firm hired by by the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which refuses to make the "study" available for public inspection.

For the last year and a half, I've been monitoring what kids in the nation's capitol eat in the cafeteria every day and I can attest that they still drink plain milk. Sure, they'd drink more if it were chocolate or strawberry. But we already know kids love sugar. They'd eat lollipops instead of lunch if we let them--and some do. Only a year ago, they were pouring strawberry milk over Apple Jacks cereal as part of a breakfast that included Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. Kids as young as five were regularly being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started. All that is gone in favor of plain milk, cereal containing no more than five grams of sugar, string cheese and yogurt.

Still, just in the last week I saw children at my daughter's elementary school unpacking bottles of Sprite and Pepsi and containers of Kool Aide from lunch boxes they brought from home. I've seen kids eat bags of home-brought Oreo cookies, giant cupcakes, huge Hershey's chocolate bars and packages of Skittles. I recently witnessed one high-schooler make a lunch out of a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of Lifesaver candies.

Conducting my own unscientific survey for this article, I asked my 11-year-old daughter for her opinion. She said all schools should be made of chocolate and jelly beans, security guards should be replaced with giant Gummi Bears, and classes should be held at the Dave & Buster's arcade at the White Flint Mall. Her nine-year-old cousin, meanwhile, said half of all school hoursshould be spent in recess, the other half at lunch.

Schools are not free choice zones. Last we checked, adults--not children--were still responsible for making important policy decisions involving curricula, teacher hiring, standards and a host of other vital school issues--including nutrition and meal service. Local elected leaders are expected to act like grownups and look out for the welfare of minors, not pander to six-year-olds and the dairy lobby.

You can watch video of the Council hearing here. Fast-forward to 2:23.30 to view the discussion concerning chocolate milk in schools.

This Week in School Food News

They actually did it: Members of the Los Angeles school board voted to remove flavored milk from the nation's second-largest school district. By the time classes begin again in the fall, kids in L.A. will no longer see chocolate or strawberry-flavored milk in the cafeteria.

The Los Angeles Unified School District serves some 650,000 meals daily at 1,000 sites, second only to New York City. The decision to remove flavored milk has to be seen as a victory for star chef Jamie Oliver, who had campaigned against chocolate milk as part of his television series, filmed this year in Los Angeles.

Others, such as "renegade lunch lady" Ann Cooper, see the decision in L.A. as a tipping point in the war against milk with added sugar.

'"Absolutely, by the fall the district will be a national leader," said Matthew Sharp, senior advocate with the California Food Policy Advocates, who has long worked on school food reform.

Parents and others have also lobbied against chocolate and strawberry milk, saying flavored milk contains unnecessary added sugar in a county where about one in three kids is overweight or obese.

L.A. joins Berkeley, Compton, San Diego, Boulder, Colo., Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., as cities that have said no to flavored milk. Next to go: Corn dogs and chicken nuggets. But some wonder how the city can really make school food much better when only 77 cents is spent on the ingredients in a typical lunch.

The editorial board at the Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, supports the move to eliminate flavored milk, but wonders why schools continue routinely to serve fruit juice with just as much sugar.

"Flavored milk might be an easy target, but what matters isn't one 'evil' product or another; it's the balance of reducing empty calories while increasing nutrition," says the Times.

In fact, the USDA's proposed new meal guidelines would make it more difficult for schools to substitute juice for whole fruit in school meals. But could juice be the next sugary food item to appear in advocates' cross-hairs?

*****

Jamie Oliver might have scored a big victory in Los Angeles, but ratings have nose-dived and now there's speculation that much of the progress he's made improving school food back in the United Kingdom might be undone by sharply rising food costs.

The price of a school lunch has jumped 10 per cent this year, an Independent on Sunday investigation has found, sparking fears that the financial crisis and rampant food inflation could jeopardise the "Jamie Oliver effect."

The newspaper's survey of more than 80 local education authorities found after years of minimising rises in the cost of school meals, scores of town halls have been forced to impose increases of up to 16 per cent. The cost of a school lunch is now almost $3.25 with many parents having to pay an extra $1.60 a week to ensure their child gets a nutritious meal.

Rising prices push poorer students out of the lunch program. The British government has urged schools to work together to buy more products in large volume.

*****

Elsewhere, hard times continue to force schools to take extreme measures when families fail to pay their lunch bills.

In North Carolina, Lexington County schools want to hire a collection agency to "ding" the credit reports of parents who fall in arrears with their cafeteria tab.

In the past, if parents didn't pay for their child's lunch, the county covered the cost at the end of the year. But with the county struggling financially, the $54,000 parents currently owe looms large. That money save a teacher's job or keep critical supplies in the classroom, school officials say.

"We're calling a collection agency because we have to have some type of accountability," said nutrition director Brittany Benge. "At the end of the day, we all need accountability," .

*****

More and more schools are starting to look beyond the lunch line and vending machines to the junk kids eat in regular classroom celebrations. It seems there's always a birthday or some other reason to throw a pizza party or bring sugary treats to school. But some districts think there need to be limits.

Schools in Mansfield, Mass., recently approved a no-food policy for classroom celebrations because of a rising number of children with food allergies and other illnesses, ending a longstanding tradition of parents and others sending in birthday cupcakes and other treats.

The new rule limits any food-related celebrations to two a year and urges school officials and parents to work out other, more creative ways to mark special occasions.

“Socially, and as a culture, we seem not to be able to get together without eating and drinking,’’ said Janice King, president of the state’s School Nutrition Association. “Is the world going to cave in if we don’t have a cupcake? A treat for some children is to have a slice of watermelon.’’

Others call such moves more evidence of a "nanny state" trying to control what kids eat at school. The Texas legislature, for instance, in 2005 passed a “Safe Cupcake Amendment"after parents lobbied to have the exception added to that state’s wellness policy so that they would not lose their right to bring any kind of cupcake to their child’s classroom.

But a new Massachusetts school nutrition bill kicks in July 1. It bans high-calorie, high-salt foods and sugary drinks in school cafeterias and vending machines and gives districts a year to comply.

Here's are some suggestions [PDF] for healthier classroom celebrations from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

*****

School officials in California have been wringing their hands over food trucks pulling up outside local high schools, luring kids away from the lunch line with junk line and forcing some principals to call police.

But researchers in Maine find that locating fast food outlets near schools does not make kids fatter--because bad food is everywhere.

Some people joke that the state vegetable in Maine is a donut. A survey of some 550 students in grades nine through 12 at 11 schools revealed that most teens in the state are indeed consumers of fast-food staples such as burgers, fries, pizza and soft drinks. But it also indicated that the pull toward unhealthful food among teens appears to be a function of generally bad dietary habits and poor nutritional knowledge, rather than the location of fast-food outlets.

"Our hypothesis was that the so-called 'built environment' -- what a person's environment around them might be -- would have an influence on the [teens'] diet and obesity rate," explained study co-author Janet Whatley Blum, an associate professor in the department of exercise, health and sports science at the University of Southern Maine. "But in terms of their school environment, we did not find that," she said.

"We think the reason for that is that the availability of unhealthy foods is basically ubiquitous," Blum noted. "So while the students said they do go and buy it around their schools, they also said that they also get that same food from home and from local stores near their home. So whether or not fast-food places are near to their schools really doesn't change the overall situation."

So, is this supposed to be good news?

*****

Finally, it's no secret where kids get all those messages to eat junk food. The food industry markets to children in every possible way, a practice that's decried by governments around the globe.

But it may also be a problem of mixed messages--meaning corporate food interests talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Case in point: the Nestle company's website, which advises kids to "be healthy," but then tells parents they can get their children to drink more milk by tarting it up with chocolate or strawberry syrup, or even dropping some food dye and marshmallows into the glass.

It's hard to make this stuff up. Here's the entire list of Nestle's suggestions:

1. Add NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® chocolate or strawberry syrup or powder.
2. Drop some food coloring or marshmallows into the drinking glass.
3. Let me make my own instant pudding.
4. Serve milk ice-cold with a fresh batch of NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® cookies.
5. Put a star on the calendar for every glass I drink.
6. See who can make the best milk mustache.
7. Buy some crazy straws.
8. Make me a bowl of STOUFFER’S® Macaroni & Cheese for an afternoon snack.
9. Let me pick out my own special milk glass the next time we go to the store.
10. Let’s make NESTLÉ® NESQUIK® Chocolate Igloos!

The Salad Bar Story that Wasn't

Do these beans look appetizing to you?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I had meant to end another year in school food on an up note with a report about the salad bars being installed in some D.C. schools. A few of the 128 schools in the system now have salad bars, thanks to grant programs like the one Ann Cooper was running last year in partnership with Whole Foods. That has since turned into a much more substantial effort with the White House, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and produce growers called Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools.

I took the subway to an elementary school just a few blocks from the capitol dome expecting to take photos of a salad bar in action. But when I arrived, the salad bar was completely empty. I was told that no produce had been delivered that day. Subsequently I learned that being the last week of school, Chartwells to cut down on food waste had not ordered produce for the salad bars.

What the kids were eating instead were hamburgers and canned green beans like the ones you see in the photo above. Or perhaps I should say what they were not eating were the green beans. I often wonder whether kids in other parts of town have the same vegetable-averse lunch habits as the ones at my daughter's school, located in a more affluent neighborhood. Maybe I should not be so gratified to learn that--yup--kids over here on Capitol Hill dislike green beans just as much as the kids in Glover Park.

I took a stroll around the cafeteria to confirm and did not see a single child eating the green beans. Too bad, since canned green beans are much more flavorful than the fresh variety. They just don't look as sharp as beans that have been barely cooked, then "shocked" in cold water to keep them bright green--the way Julia Child might cook them.

I think of this every time the matter of the USDA's proposed new meal guidelines come up and all those extra servings of green vegetables they call for. Will the kids eat them? Why would the kids eat them, if they're not eating them now?

As soon as school starts up again in the fall, I'll have a report on salad bars. Because from what I've seen in other school districts, salad bars do engage kids in making better meal choices--including, obviously, vegetables.

USDA Rejects GOP Demand to Undo New School Meal Guidelines

What's the price of healthier school food?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

The Slow Cook has learned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will not back away from proposed guidelines for more expensive school food despite demands from Republican lawmakers that the agency eliminate any requirements that would increase the cost of the federally-subsidized school meals program.

The GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee recently attached language to a funding measure for agriculture programs directing the USDA to rewrite the proposed school meal guidelines so that they do not create any additional costs. The USDA has estimated that the proposed guidelines as currently written [PDF], calling for much larger servings of vegetables and whole grains and less salt, would require schools to cook more food from scratch and would raise the cost of a subsidized lunch by 15 cents, breakfast by more than 50 cents. The result would be some $7 billion in additional expenses over five years, to be paid mostly by state and local governments that are still reeling from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But the USDA believes the appropriations language cannot undo the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act approved by Congress last December, which mandated new meal guidelines. The guidelines were the result of years-long study by the Institute of Medicine. USDA officials consider them to be "science based," and do not intend to rewrite them in response to what they see as an arbitrary and perhaps politically motivated move by conservative lawmakers.

The proposed guidelines recently underwent a public comment period that generated some 130,000 responses. The USDA in coming months may modify the guidelines. They could be in place as early as fall 2012.

In passing its re-authorization of the school meals program, Congress approved a six-cent hike in the federal reimbursement rate for lunch, but only for schools that comply with the new guidelines. The USDA currently provides schools with $2.72 for every student who qualifies for a free lunch. About 32 million of the nation's children participate in the subsidized lunch program daily.

In fact, the House directive aimed at meal guidelines was not contained in the appropriations bill, but rather in the committee's report []PDF] on the bill. The report, which serves as an explanatory text, travels with the bill through the legislative process. In some cases such committee reports contain language giving specific directions to government agencies. Agencies of the executive branch may follow Congress' wishes. But such directives do not carry the full force of the law and in this case the USDA would choose to ignore what GOP House members have demanded.

The report states: "The Committee urges restraint and practical timeliness for implementing new national nutrition standards in the school brakfast and lunch programs. As many of the representatives in states and local school districts have cautioned, an overly aggressive implementation schedule and unrealistic demands on changes in nutrient content can lead to burdensome costs, estimated to be about $7 billion over 5 years. Therefore, the Committee directs [USDA Food and Nutrition Services] to issue a new proposed rule that would not require an increase in the cost of providing school meals."

The language was expected to be approved by the full House when it takes up the agriculture appropriations measure, but is not likely to survive reconciliation with the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Institute of Medicine panel that wrote the proposed guidelines cautioned that there was no guarantee children would actually eat the "healthier" foods the USDA is calling for. School food service directors have urged that the new requirements be pilot-tested on a small scale before being mandated nationwide. Some have said they may have to drop their breakfast program because of additional food costs.

The GOP House appropriation for agriculture programs has also drawn fire from the Obama administration and the advocacy community for rolling back spending on food entitlement programs such as WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and others serving seniors. It would also curtail funds for food safety inspections.

The action on school meal guidelines was probably intended more as a political message for consumption by the party's conservative base. Cost cutting has become the GOP mantra. It also favors corporate food interests, which would just as soon see meal guidelines unchanged and schools reliant on cheap processed products, rather than the kind of whole foods the new guidelines call for.

Nevertheless, the appropriations committee directive has caused much hand-wringing among advocates of healthier school food. Media accounts thus far have failed to adequately explain the actual impact of the committee action, and the USDA has remained silent.

We're on YouTube

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I had a visit recently from an English teacher who flew into Washington from St. Louis for a course in "backpack journalism,' meaning documentary filmmaking by citizen journalists.

Dan Sadicario followed me around for the better part of the day, resulting in a five-minute film about a former newspaper reporter who now grows food in his front yard two miles from the White House and has made dissecting the school lunch program a personal crusade.

Okay, enough drama. I think Dan did a great job with the camera and some snappy editing. He even managed to squeeze in a few humerous moments. Take a look at what he calls "Concrete Tomato."

What's for Lunch: Uneaten Tilapia

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

D.C. schools lately have been serving tilapia on Thursdays on a fairly regular basis. You might think that's a great thing. Fish is a clean, lean source of protein and exposes children to something different from the usual routine of chicken nuggets and mac-n'-cheese.

But while fish looks great on the menu, it doesn't go over so well in the cafeteria--at least not at my daughter's elementary school in Northwest Washington. Yesterday I was careful to wait until most of the kids had eaten, then I took a slow walk around the lunch room. I saw only three kids who had actually eaten the tilapia. A couple others had poked at it.

Most of the trays looked like this one. As you can see, the fish hasn't been touched at all. Nor was the featured vegetable side dish, the "crunchy spinach," as Chartwells calls it, a mix of frozen spinach, corn, peas and sunflower seeds. It's a clever combination of vegetables--whoever thought of it deserves a hat tip. But the kids don't eat it.

What did they eat from this meal? From what I saw, this tray was pretty typical. The kids dove into the roasted potatoes and the whole wheat biscuit. In other words, they gobbled up the starch.

Kids love potatoes, of course. It's their second favorite food after pizza. And now there's a controversy around spuds because the new meal guidelines the USDA has proposed would limit servings of potatoes and other starchy vegetables--corn, peas, lima beans--to just one cup per week in favor of more green and orange vegetables that kids are much less fond of.

They also loved the watermelon. And what's not to like about that? I tasted the watermelon and it was delicious. So much of the fruit served in school isn't nearly ripe, but this watermelon was. This was a real treat.

The lesson I draw from all this is that menu changes don't mean nearly as much as what actually takes place in the cafeteria. You can put "healthier" foods in front of kids every day and still they'll only eat what they want and throw the rest in the trash.

I shudder to think how much uneaten tilapia D.C. schools sent to the landfill yesterday.

Lunch from Home: Tofu & Noodles

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Our daughter loves tofu and Chinese food. So for a special school lunch treat I sometimes stop at the hot food bar at our local Harris Teeter and put together a meal like this one, with tofu in a spicy sauce, noodles and vegetable won tons.

I try to minimize the carbs. Daughter would eat noodles and rice all day if you let her. And I know I don't get any browny points for buying prepared food at the supermarket. Still, I don't think it's such a bad thing, and I know daughter appreciates it. She doesn't care much for the food at school.

What do you think? Am I a really bad dad for feeding my kid from the food bar at Harris Teeter?

High School Lunch

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I've been meeting lately with a small group of students at a D.C. high school in hopes of developing a journalism project that looks at food service and kids' eating habits. One thing that leaped out at me during our talks was the fact that most of the students do not bother eating breakfast at school even though it's free.

Why would kids turn down a free meal? With the help of their teacher, we've turned that into a survey the students in my group say they will administer to their friends to determine where and what kids are eating in the morning and what it is about breakfast at school that turns them off.

Having lived in the city for many years, I'm quite used to seeing kids walking to school with a bag of chips in one hand, a jumbo soda in the other. Convenience store dining is de rigeur in these parts.

Meanwhile, last week we had our first outing in the school cafeteria, a place my group seldom ventures. Why? Well, the subterranean feel of the place--absence of windows, low ceilings, exposed pipes--for one thing. And there doesn't seem to be any particular line or order around the steam table. It feels more like a mosh pit, with kids pressing together, jockeying for position.

The kids in my group would just as soon avoid the whole scene.

Here you see the canned green beans on display last Thursday. Does this look appetizing to you? Plus, there was no real sense of urgency behind the steam table. Getting served seemed to take forever while the food just sat there.

Here's what one kid's tray looked like. No surprise: these kids want pizza, just like kids everywhere. In high school, the students only have to take three of the five items offered to constitute a reimbursable meal for purposes of the federal school lunch program. That's called "offer versus serve," to cut down on waste.

Here's the other option: pasta with marinara sauce. I noticed the high schoolers were being served traditional spaghetti noodles, while the kids at my daughter's elementary school now get only "whole wheat" pasta. I wonder if there's a reason for that. Do high schoolers reject the whole wheat pasta, or did they simply not have any on hand on this particular day?

According to the student who chose this lunch, the beans were "the best part" of the meal. The pasta, he said, was cold. "I don't mean not hot," he elaborated. "I mean it's really cold."

This was my first experience with an a la carte line in D.C. schools. I photographed the signage, but could not lose the glare from the overhead fluorescent lights. Still you can see what's being offered pretty clearly on this price list.

No sodas, "V-8 Fusion," juice, baked chips, crackers. There's nothing terrible for sale here--no ice cream bars, corn dogs or flaming Cheetos. Notice they do sell chocolate cookies, but only on Fridays.

I have no idea what "Sunset Strips" refers to. The signage is pretty weak.

And here's a list of the "Crust n' Stuff" schedule for the week. How 1950s. Here's where you find pizza for sale three days a week, and a choice of two different chicken flat breads the other two days.

This is the same pizza and same flat bread served as entrees at my daughter's school.

Finally, I don't understand why this "a la carte merchandising guide," explaining how the food items are to be displayed and stored, is taped to the sneeze guard for students to see. The curling edges just add to an atmosphere of cheapness and neglect.