Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children

Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children

Remember how simple school lunches used to be? You'd have something from every major food group, run around the playground for a while, and you looked and felt fine. But today it's not so simple. Schools are actually feeding the American crisis of childhood obesity and malnutrition. Most cafeterias serve a veritable buffet of processed, fried, and sugary foods, and although many schools have attempted to improve, they are still not measuring up: 78 percent of the school lunch programs in America do not meet the USDA's nutritional guidelines. Chef Ann Cooper has emerged as one of the nation's most influential and most respected advocates for changing how our kids eat. In fact, she is something of a renegade lunch lady, minus the hairnet and scooper of mashed potatoes. Ann has worked to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms. In Lunch Lessons , she and Lisa Holmes spell out how parents and school employees can help instill healthy habits in children. They explain the basics of good childhood nutrition and suggest dozens of tasty, home-tested recipes for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. The pages are also packed with recommendations on how to eliminate potential hazards from the home, bring gardening and composting into daily life, and how to support businesses that provide local, organic food. Yet learning about nutrition and changing the way you run your home will not cure the plague of obesity and poor health for this generation of children. Only parental activism can spark widespread change. With inspirational examples and analysis, Lunch Lessons is more than just a recipe book—it gives readers the tools to transform the way children everywhere interact with food. “Perfect for working parents who believe they’re far too busy to pack a school lunch for their child” — Publishers Weekly Chef Ann Cooper, a former Executive Chef of the Ross School in East Hampton, New York, and the Putney Inn in Vermont is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She has turned her commitment to sustainable, delicious, nutritious food toward education in order to help children. Chef Cooper is the author of A Woman's Place Is in the Kitchen and coauthor of In Mother's Kitchen and Bitter Harvest . Lisa M. Holmes is the coauthor of Bitter Harvest and In Mother's Kitchen . In addition to her writing, she received top honors at the Culinary Institute of America and is the Administrative Director of Periwinkle Montessori School in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where she is in the process of implementing her own school food, nutrition, and gardening program. Lunch Lessons Changing the Way We Feed Our Children By Ann Cooper HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Ann Cooper All right reserved. ISBN: 0060783699 Chapter One Basic Childhood Nutrition When it comes to nutrition, children are not just miniature adults. Because they're growing, they have different dietary needs. When they start school, even preschool, it becomes more difficult to keep an eye on what they're eating. Since it's impossible for most parents to be with their school-age children at lunchtime during the week, the best you can do is send them to school with a healthy, well-balanced lunch. Start educating them early about what constitutes good nutrition so that when they're given the opportunity to make their own lunch choices they'll choose the best foods available to them. Tips for Healthy Children Eating habits are learned behaviors; they're not intuitive, so what your children learn to eat at home early in life sticks with them well into adulthood. Today we are disconnected from our food sources in a way that is unprecedented in human history. Fewer and fewer Americans cook meals from scratch because it's easier and faster to throw a frozen dinner in the oven or grab something from a fast-food restaurant on the way home from work. And the guerilla marketing foisted upon us by fast- and processed-food companies isn't helping. Most parents know that their kids are under continuous assault by corporate food advertising but feel frustrated by and even powerless against it. In reality, a few simple tools combined with a mantra of "variety, moderation, and balance" will provide you with all you need to ensure the long-term nutritional health of your child. 1. Be a good role model. Most of the parents we know complain that their children refuse to eat healthfully and come to us in search of magic recipes that will put an end to mealtime madness. The real problem most often lies with the parents, not the kids. Most of us are so accustomed to eating out and buying prepared foods in the grocery store that we don't even know what good food is anymore. We can't line our cabinets with packaged cereals and sodas and expect our kids to eat like they were raised on a commune in rural Vermont. In order to be good role models we must educate ourselves first and then practice what we preach. 2. Take your kids shopping with