Dharma Feast Cookbook (55 page)

According to an article by Alice Waters and Katrina Heron published in 2009 on the
New York Times
Op Ed page, as part of the National School Lunch Program, “schools are entitled to receive commodity foods that are valued at a little over 20 cents per meal. The long list of options includes high-fat, low-grade meats and cheeses and processed foods like chicken nuggets and pizza. Many of the items selected are ready to be thawed, heated or just unwrapped … Schools also get periodic, additional ‘bonus’ commodities from the U.S.D.A. [United States Department of Agriculture], which pays good money for what are essentially leftovers from big American food producers.” These bonus foods are no more nutritious than what Mr. Spurlock ate at McDonald’s or what we encounter at any other fast food restaurant.

Foods like this are filled with “empty calories"— calories that deliver energy but have little or no accompanying nutritional value, meaning they
contain little or no vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or anything else the body needs to keep running. These calories are generally converted to fat. The foods that contain the most empty calories are candy, soft drinks, “juice” drinks with a low amount of actual juice, chips, foods with a high sweetener content, and high-fat foods like fast-food and school-lunch hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, burritos, pizza, and French fries—the staples of school lunches across America. In essence, children are eating what amounts to fast food once and sometimes twice a day, five out of seven days a week. It is no exaggeration to say this is a health disaster.

However, it isn’t as if there is nothing healthy on a school lunch tray. There are standards in place that determine the nutritional requirements for lunches. Cafeterias must offer a protein, a fruit, a vegetable, and a grain. But part of the problem is that the unhealthy foods get eaten and the fruits and vegetables get left behind. Another good example of healthy foods being pushed aside for unhealthy choices is milk. Milk is offered as part of the school nutrition plan, but flavored milks consistently outsell regular milk. Flavored milks are full of sweeteners and artificial flavorings and colorings. In 2011, according to the
Los Angeles Times,
in the L.A. Unified School District, chocolate and strawberry milk accounted for 60 percent of their milk sales. The L.A. Unified School District Board of Education voted to pull flavored milk from all its campuses in a move to make school lunches healthier. Steps like this, which ensure healthy choices are offered for all required food groups, would ensure that children were getting—and eating—good, nutritious food at lunch.

Vending Machines, Sugar, and Other Gambles

And now back to those vending machines. The second relevant factor in the obesity explosion and the health crisis facing our children is drinks like sodas, energy drinks, and “fruit” juices. These drinks are full of sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (also called HFCS; it is used in many foods because it’s cheap to make), and/ or artificial sweeteners, all of which affect health. Artificial sweeteners, for example, are neuro-toxins, meaning they cause an imbalance in the chemicals that transmit signals in the brain. Over time, this can manifest as emotional instability, fatigue, insomnia, and impairment of memory and concentration. This has a huge impact on a student’s ability to perform in school.

Developed over the last thirty years, sweet corn-based syrups account for fully half of all caloric sweeteners eaten in America today.
²
Dr. Bray is one of many research scientists who have found that HFCS is a contributing factor to childhood obesity in the U.S. A study published by the
International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders
found that when humans are given high amounts of soda, a main vector for HFCS intake, for just four weeks, they gained much more weight than when given only jelly beans for an equal amount of time.
³

But even if we cut soft drinks from our diet, we are still eating more HFCS that we think. I (Theresa) recently taught a class on sweeteners to a group of fourth- and fifth-graders. I unpacked a bag of groceries and walked them through a typical, “American” food day—processed cereal for breakfast, a popular granola bar and juice drink included with lunch, some gum shared with a friend, soda with their after-school snack, and a barbeque dinner with catsup for French fries. They busily researched the ingredients of each food item and were outraged to find that there
were one or more sweeteners in every one of the foods on the table and most had HFCS. The first, meaning biggest percentage, ingredient in the barbeque sauce was high fructose corn syrup!

One of the problems with HFCS is that it does not trigger chemical messengers that tell the brain the stomach is full.
⁴
This leads to overeating, especially of HFCS-sweetened drinks, which do not have a solid food component. The same AJCN article states:

We propose that the introduction of HFCS and the increased intakes of soft drinks and other sweetened beverages have led to increases in total caloric and fructose consumption that are important contributors to the current epidemic of obesity.
⁵

See
Sweeteners
in
Resources and Recommendations,
Chapter 8
, for a fuller discussion of HFCS and other substances.

Soda consumption is also linked to a wide range of other health issues, such as osteoporosis, tooth decay, heart disease, kidney stones, and caffeine and sugar addiction, meaning that people are much more likely to drink more and more soda.

Given the known health risks of drinking soda (and eating empty-calorie snacks), why is that line of vending machines on campus? It is no secret that school districts are struggling for money. For years Pepsi and Coke have been offering money in return for exclusive access for their products. The way the school makes a profit is it receives a commission for every case of soda consumed. To desperate districts scrambling for funds, these deals can seem like a wonderful way to get badly-needed money for any number of projects.

It seems that little thought is given in these deals to the effect easily-available sodas would have on our children, despite the fact that according to an article in
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,
⁶
“
sugary drinks are the main source of added sugar in the daily diet of children. The main nutrient in sugary drinks is high-fructose corn syrup; each 12-oz serving of soda has the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. Between 56% and 85% of children in school have at least 1 can of soda every day.”

New Directions

There has been a backlash against these kinds of drinks as well as their accessibility on school campuses. The scientific community is stepping forward with recommendations of its own. An article in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
found such a strong correlation between HFCS intake through sodas and juice drinks and obesity that it recommended “reducing the availability of these beverages by removing soda machines from schools…as [well as] reducing the portion sizes of sodas that are commercially available.
^7
”
Recently Coca-Cola introduced a new can size— instead of 12 ounces, it’s 7.5. This is a move in the right direction, but these cans are sold as an eight-pack instead of a six-pack, and the smaller size doesn’t address the actual ingredients or its general availability.

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint initiative run by the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association, has tackled the availability problem. They’ve brokered a deal with Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Cadbury Schweppes to get them to stop selling soft drinks on elementary- and middle-school campuses and to replace them with “water, certain fruit juices and low-fat
or fat-free milk.” High school students will continue to be offered “diet or low-calorie sodas, teas and sports drinks.” While this is a huge step forward, it does not address the fact that the drinks offered at the high school level are still full of artificial sweeteners and other chemicals.

Other organizations are fighting back against the poor quality of school lunches. One is the Edible Schoolyard Project (
www.edibleschool-yard.org)
formed by Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse, a landmark restaurant in Berkeley, California. Chez Panisse’s goal has always been to offer meals made from meats and seasonal produce from local, sustainable farms and ranches. According to their website, Ms. Waters “is a national advocate for farmers markets and for bringing organic, local food to the general public.” The Edible Schoolyard Project’s mission is to “support an educational program that uses food to nurture, educate, and empower youth.” Its goal is to “launch an initiative to build and share a national food curriculum.”
⁸
Ms. Waters’ program helps schools create Edible Education, where children learn how to grow and cook fresh seasonal foods as part of the school curriculum. “Since 1996, over 3,000 students have graduated from the Edible Schoolyard with the skills and knowledge they need to make lifelong, healthy choices about what they eat.”
⁹
These “school gardens” are catching on across the United States.

Jamie Oliver is another powerhouse in the movement to re-do school lunches. Famous for his many television shows and bestselling cookbooks, including
The Naked
Chef,
¹⁰
in 2004 Mr. Oliver,

"motivated by the poor state of school [lunches] in UK schools … went back to school with the aim of educating and motivating the kids and [lunch] ladies to enjoy cooking and eating healthy, nutritious lunches rather than the processed foods that they were used to. Jamie launched a national campaign called Feed Me Better and launched an online petition for better school meals. As a result of the 271,677 signatures on the petition … the government pledged an extra £280 million to improve the standard of school meals, to provide training for [lunch] ladies and equipment for schools … The series prompted a public outcry for change to the school meals system.”
¹¹

He has since started a worldwide petition for better school lunches and is well on his way to having a million signatures. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (
www.jamieoliver.com:81/us/
foundation/jamies-food-revolution/home) is about encouraging people, including school cafeteria workers, to cook healthy, good food from scratch. Mr. Oliver also is working to have cooking lessons be a part of the curriculum at all public schools so children learn how to make healthy meals for themselves.

Michelle Obama’s initiative, Let’s Move! (www. letsmove.gov), is targeting childhood obesity and family food choices at just about every level. Her program addresses not just school lunches but also getting more accurate food labeling, making sure all communities have good grocery stores, educating children and parents about their food choices, and working toward getting children to be more active. She was a huge advocate for the passing of the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” signed into law on December 13, 2010. The bill will, among other things, for the first time establish nutrition standards for school lunches as well as all food sold in schools, including in vending machines. It also covers food offered by schools before, during, and after school and in any federally-funded, school-based feeding
programs, even if they occur during summer. It is the “largest investment in child nutrition programs since their inception.”
¹²

You Can, Too

Even given these facts, we shouldn’t expect, or ask, our children never to buy a soda or eat a school lunch. Demonizing foods just makes them more attractive. Instead we can educate our kids and teens about what’s in the foods they encounter and the effects of eating them. When we come together as a family to prepare and eat delicious, simple meals, we model our food values. The earlier we begin this modeling the more it will be second nature for our children. Then, even if they buy potato chips, they will not think that is a good counterbalance to a soda.

Packing a lunch for your child is the biggest power you have and a huge step toward healthier food choices. You have control over what goes into that bag. And the more you know about food additives and the other ingredients in the food you put in that lunch, the more truly healthy it will be. Please see
Resources and Recommendations,
Chapter 8
, for a more thorough exploration of what we encounter on those grocery shelves, and arm yourself with this knowledge. The more you know, the easier it is to make truly healthy choices, both for yourself and your family. And that is power worth passing on!

I
DEAS FOR
H
EALTHY
S
CHOOL
L
UNCHES

Here are five categories to keep in mind as a basis for a healthy school lunch:

All of our suggestions are easy to prepare and most don’t need specific recipes. They are ideas you can mix and match according to the needs and preference of your child, the leftovers in the fridge, and the season.

Children like food that looks interesting in color and shape. Get creative in how you decorate and present! For instance, use a small scoop and serve melon in balls, or fill celery sticks with almond butter and decorate with raisins.