Flunking Lunch

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By the end of this year the USDA intends to announce a plan allowing schools to purchase meat that has been irradiated. The process, which involves blasting meat with low-level radiation to kill bacteria like listeria, has its opponents, who claim it also kills nutrients. But serving meats spoiled during processing are only part of the food-borne — illness problem. The much more common causes are poor preparation in the cafeteria and poor hygiene among children, who often forget to wash their hands before picking at the salad bar. Many districts are following the lead of New Orleans, which after the Turkey Day incident required cafeteria workers to take refresher courses in food safety and several times a day test the temperature of dishes they serve. But all students would be well advised to follow their peers at Little Woods and look before they eat. Washing their hands first would not hurt either.

Big Mac=Big $$$

The National School Lunch Program was born of good intentions. In 1946, after World War II draft boards rejected legions of feeble, underfed men, the government began reimbursing schools for lunches, allowing the poorest students to dine for free. The USDA monitors the program, ensuring schools meet certain calorie and nutrition standards.

Today, however, economics drives school nutrition. At best, schools break even on the 27 million federally subsidized meals they serve each day, with most receiving a paltry $2.14 for each free meal, hardly enough to pay for equipment, labor, fresh produce or the relatively pricey ingredients needed for low-fat cooking. Consequently, while school meals meet most of the government's nutritional requirements, fewer than 20% stay within the limits for saturated fat.

The real money — and calories — are in a la carte, branded items, which schools often mark up 50% to 100%, and sodas from vending machines. Consider the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, which managed to entice students and their pocketbooks into the cafeteria by offering Chick-fil-A, Subway and Papa John's products. While Northside's federal lunches sell for $1.75, a single 7-in. slice of Papa John's goes for $2, more than twice what the district pays to get it.

Nationally, 20% of schools sell branded foods, and nearly all senior high schools operate vending machines. Beyond simply subsidizing the government meals, those dollars buoy cash-strapped schools in other ways, funding field trips and buying sports equipment. They also lure kids away from healthier options. In one study by the Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, students in schools with snack foods consumed 50% less fruit, juice and vegetables.

Despite the current momentum, legislation to restrict junk food has faltered at the state level. But reforms are taking off in individual districts like Los Angeles, which voted in August to ban sodas by 2004, and Philadelphia, which rejected a $43 million exclusive contract with Coca-Cola.

Dollars aren't the only obstacle. The state of Illinois last spring tried to crack down on schools in Oak Park that order in lunch from McDonald's, Domino's, Subway, KFC or Tasty Dog once or twice a week as part of a lucrative fund raiser sponsored by the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). But parents fought the state for a special waiver; in exchange, they made some minimal concessions, such as serving pretzels instead of chips alongside the hot dogs. "You could make it a little more health conscious if you skipped the fries and put an apple [with the KFC]," says Candy French, an Oak Park PTO council co-president. Says Patty Jacobs, another PTO co-president: "A nutritious lunch is a lost cause."

Broccoli Gets a Boost

Serving healthy food is one thing. Getting kids to eat — and like — it is another. Schools are doing everything from extending the standard 20-minute lunch period to giving students real silverware, all in an effort to make dining a more agreeable experience.

Even more ambitious thinking has led to a boom in cooking classes in schools. These updated versions of home ec teach children who have been weaned on fast food about grains and vegetables they may never have encountered at home. Alice Waters, the chef of Chez Panisse, the celebrated restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., that builds its menus around seasonal ingredients, has launched an "edible school yard," where students learn to plant, harvest and cook organic fruits and vegetables.

In the CookShop program, running this semester in three elementary schools in New York City, students prepare a different healthy dish each week — most recently, fried rice with green beans, red peppers, mushrooms and more — and exchange letters with local farmers. "This is different from the fried rice I've had before," said a beaming Jose Gonzalez, 8, at P.S. 38 in East Harlem during a CookShop session last week. "Normally it doesn't have all these vegetables." The lesson seems to be sinking in: students in the CookShop program are more likely to pick healthier meals at the cafeteria. "It's not about vitamins and why you shouldn't eat fat," says the program's manager Lisa Kingery. "It's about cooking and tasting your own creation, and then we have them suckered into eating broccoli."