Mama Reads :: Lunch Wars
This week I’m doing something a bit new and different and reviewing a book. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve overloaded y’all on cuteness anyway so why not go a bit of the intellectual route for – oh – say – thirty seconds. Let me know how you like it!
I’ve been reading and I’m ready to start a school food revolution!
Um, “What’s that?” you say: “Fiona isn’t even out of diapers. Why do you care about school food?”
Well, the past few weeks I have gotten back in touch with my Health Counselor roots of 2006-2008. (Yes – I have lived alot of career lives.) I started reading Amy Kalafa’s Lunch Wars and found myself getting all worked up about the state of food in schools and how one day Fiona will be in those schools and how if I don’t do something now then when she gets to those schools the food will be total processed crap and she will eat it because that’s what kids do and then she will be tired and get fat and develop all kinds of medical issues that she really wouldn’t have if she just ate normal food and didn’t buy into the “Standard American Diet” so I really should get cracking on finding out how to fix it all!
Luckily Amy came to the rescue through her book with all kinds of things to do to help improve school food so I didn’t feel totally forelorn. Some things are so obvious (in a good way) that I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. Like when I was shocked that some schools actually cook their food on site and try out recipes. (For some reason I really thought that food had to be shipped into schools from places afar.) Or like when she pointed out that even though she sent her kids to school with healthy lunches they still managed to find a way to buy the processed yuck that was in the cafeteria. (Um yeah. That may have been me. Sorry Mum!)
So now I’m a-thinking. What should I do to get started on making sure we have good food in our home and good food everywhere Fiona may happen to go in the next, say, eighteen years? Thoughts?
And if you want to read more about Lunch Wars check out the Lunch Wars Book Club page on BlogHer.
Love, Mama
Full Disclosure: This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.
You have to educate the parents too. When they really tried to offer all healthy food into schools some parents handed their children a big Mac through the school fence when lunch had ended.
And I didn’t know you bought food at school!! M.
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Mama of Pup and Sippy Cup Reply:
September 29th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
So true. It’s crazy to me to think that parents would go out of their way to feed their kids Big Macs. Its one thing if its all there is but its another to decide that that is what they really need instead of a nutritious lunch.
And yes – the beauty of the school food system is that you don’t get to know when you kids buy what they have on offer. I can’t say I ever really bought real “lunches” (they looked gross) but the school did a good job of feeding the cookie monster in me from time to time…
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