Jamie Oliver Needs Our Help

For those of you following the school lunch revolution, you might have heard that the Food Revolution television show and Jamie Oliver were recently kicked out of the Los Angeles Unified School District. We certainly applaud Jamie's efforts and passion to shine a spotlight on the state of school lunches in this country, but we have to admit that he's sadly uninformed about the USDA National School Lunch Program, and the requirements that have to be met for reimbursement.

One example of this is when Jamie tried to remove chocolate milk from the cafeteria. The lunch ladies insisted that they had to have the chocolate milk to get reimbursed. If Jamie had only known that instead of offering plain milk and chocolate milk he could have offered whole milk and 1% milk, the reimbursement problem would have been solved, and he would have avoided serving the chocolate milk.

That's why we think Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution show need the help of Organic Fresh Fingers. In the past four years, we've hurdled every reimbursement requirement of the USDA National School Lunch Program while still serving healthy, local, fresh and organic lunches to kids. Our schools don't serve chocolate milk because we know what the requirements are. We learned pretty quick that in order to get into the school lunch arena, you've got to know the rules of the game.

So Jamie, give us a call. We'd be happy to offer our knowledge and real-life experience in the fight to give children healthier food in schools!

The Problem with "Healthier" School Lunches

We all know that school lunch needs to change. With the recent legislation of the new Child Nutrition Act in December, schools are required to change their school lunch offerings to a traditional food based approach. Currently, most are using the "enhanced nutrient based approach," which essentially means that vitamins, minerals and nutrients can be added to the food after processing. The traditional food based approach doesn't allow for adding nutrients back in - it has to come from directly from the natural food.

This new approach creates quite a problem as schools struggle to adjust to the new requirements they are expected to meet at the beginning of the next school year. Many providers of school lunch are simply unable, currently, to meet these requirements. This has led to schools trying to serve "healthier" school lunches which taste and look worse than the processed junk food that is currently being served.

For example, take a look at the description of a Chicago school district's new lunch offerings:

"Complaints arise with the reformulated items, including new pizza products with grainier cardboardy crusts. The same goes for overly tangy and tomatoey red beans with whole wheat pasta; chalky whole wheat macaroni salad; a mixture of beans, cheese and tomato called "enchiladas"; nearly flavorless rice and beans; brown-tinged, formaldehyde scented iceberg salad in a cup; a stiff flour tortilla wrapped around fish sticks named a "fish taco"; canned pears that taste like wet toilet paper and, worst of all, waterlogged and unsalted boiled vegetables.

We all know that kids often reject food just to be difficult, but I'm an adult with a high appreciation for whole grains (even whole wheat pasta), vegetables, beans and salad. If I were served the CPS versions of these foods in a restaurant, I would send them back immediately. At the very least, I would sprinkle the vegetables with a few crystals of salt, but students are not allowed salt and cooks are never allowed to use it on meals made in CPS kitchens. If these were my first tastes of broccoli, zucchini and carrots, I might never want to try them again.

Most students love the fresh fruit --even though one table reported that their apple skins taste like hand sanitizer--which makes it even sadder that each day thousands of students are forced to throw away their whole unbitten fruit if they don't finish it during the 14 minutes of average eating time." - Chicago Tribune, Healthier school lunches make kids, and one adult, cringe.

If only we could get the message out about what Organic Fresh Fingers can offer to these struggling school districts! Not all healthy food has to taste bad. In fact, we currently have 25 entrees in our current rotation that kids love. It's our philosophy that during the most important formative years of a child's life, they should have access to quality, delicious and nutritious food - even at school. It's our mission to make that happen - one school at a time!

Healthier School Lunch: Priceless!

No matter the cost of providing healthier school lunch, the cost of not doing so far exceeds that in consequences to our children and our society as a whole. Check out onetray.org to learn more!

Also, take a look at the post below to learn more about the childhood obesity epidemic in our country.

Childhood Obesity - A Nationwide Concern

We found this article from the CDC especially informative and helpful, with links to programs and information below. Through our FRESH n' LOCAL hot lunch program, we work with schools to fight childhood obesity. Unhealthy school lunches are a main contributor to the childhood obesity epidemic in our country.

"Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.^1,2

Obesity is the result of caloric imbalance (too few calories expended for the amount of calories consumed) and is mediated by genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors.^3,4 Childhood obesity has both immediate and long-term health impacts:

• Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.⁵
• Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.^3,6
• Obese youth are more likely than youth of normal weight to become overweight or obese adults, and therefore more at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.⁶

Healthy lifestyle habits, including healthy eating and physical activity, can lower the risk of becoming obese and developing related diseases.³

Make a Difference at Your School: Key Strategies to Prevent Obesity outlines 10 evidence-based strategies for schools to implement in addressing childhood obesity.

General information about obesity among young people and specific facts about determining the body mass index of children and adolescents:

CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity

Child and Teen BMI Calculator

General information on healthy eating and physical activity in childhood and adolescence:

Nutrition and the Health of Young People

Physical Activity and the Health of Young People

Article taken from the CDC's webpage.

Washington DC Lunch Revolution

Organic Fresh Fingers applauds the efforts of schools everywhere that are trying to find ways to make school lunch healthier. Our FRESH n' LOCAL hot lunch program also uses all natural, local and organic ingredients to provide easy and healthy lunches to schools along with food education presentations.

"A group of prominent Washington, D.C.-area restaurant chefs has volunteered to introduce a novel concept in school-food service to one Capitol Hill elementary school: collaborating with parents to take over kitchen operations on a nonprofit basis, replacing the prepackaged, reheated factory meals that Tyler Elementary kids currently eat with food cooked from scratch, served on real plates with real cutlery.

Led by Cathal Armstrong, chef and owner of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va., the group would undo the historically knotty issue of school food finances by putting parents to work in the cafeteria as volunteers, and using the savings in labor to buy better food, much of it from local growers.

... Armstrong['s] involvement with Tyler Elementary stems from a meeting last year with White House assistant chef and food advisory Sam Kass. Last October, Kass provided chefs with a list of local schools to visit and urged them to find a way to get involved in improving school food. Armstrong was assigned to Tyler Elementary at 1001 G Street SE, an economically diverse school with 300 students, 81 percent black and 12 percent white. Sixty percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals in the federally subsidized meal program.

Armstrong said he was alarmed by the food he saw being served at the school by the school system's contracted food service provider, Chartwells. "It was just awful stuff," he said. In January, he met with other chefs at Brasserie Beck, where he reportedly said, "What we are feeding our children is an outrage. We should be marching with picket signs and pitchforks in revolution." Armstrong subsequently formed a non-profit corporation -- Chefs as Parents -- to fund and operate a school venture.

Among the group's goals: "Get rid of all processed foods filled with preservatives, additives, food coloring, and other chemicals. Find local farmers, ranchers and dairies from which to buy directly. Find foods that are at their peak of ripeness," as well as "organic or sustainably produced to the maximum extent possible." And "send positive messages about eating to children and lure them into the kitchen."

... School meals have always been hamstrung by poor financing. The federal government currently provides $2.68 to the schools to offer a fully subsidized school lunch, but most of that goes to pay for labor and overhead, leaving only about $1 for meal ingredients. As a result, many schools don't actually cook at all, but rely on reheating cheap, industrially processed convenience foods -- those famous chicken nuggets and tater tots -- for their cafeteria menus.

Health education is part of the proposal, too. The meal program will work with "nutrition professionals to address the larger issues at hand caused by type-2 diabetes and childhood obesity, as well as linking food and meals with behavioral and other issues." - Article from www.grist.com

USDA Announces Healthier School Lunch Guidelines

The USDA announced new school lunch guidelines for the first time in 15 years on Thursday.

"In that time, childhood obesity rates in this country have risen yet more.

Here's an example of a current school lunch:

Breaded beef patty on a roll
Fruit popsicle
Low-fat milk

And here's what a meal might look like under the new rules:

Baked fish nuggets
Whole wheat roll
Mashed potatoes
Broccoli
Peaches
Skim milk

"The more we can reinforce the right set of choices and encourage the right set of choices, the greater the chances are that we will get a handle on obesity," [said] U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

The underlying requirements are based on an Institute of Medicine study: reduce saturated fat, sugar and sodium. Increase whole grains. Serve both fruits and vegetables daily. And, for the first time, set maximum calorie counts in addition to minimum ones.

"This doesn't mean that we are going to eliminate treats, not at all. But it is a circumstance, situation where treats have a special meaning, a special occasion, a special circumstance that we celebrate with a treat," Vilsack added.

Children consume more than half of their calories at school.

"Schools are supposed to set an example of many, many values of society and one of them ought to be eating well," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at NYU and the author of "What to Eat". "The schools that I've been in that have the best school lunch programs work with the kids very closely on how the foods taste, get the kids involved in cooking, talk about where the food comes from and make the school lunch program part of the whole educational program. " - abcnews.com

Organic Fresh Fingers applauds the UDSA's proposal, which calls for:

-- A decrease in potatoes (those french fries), corn and other starchy vegetables to one cup a week.

-- A gradual reduction in sodium levels over the next decade.

-- Serving only unflavored milk with a 1 percent fat content or fat-free flavored or unflavored milk.

-- Creating calorie minimums and maximums for the first time.

-- Introducing children to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. A serving of fruit would be offered daily at breakfast and lunch and two vegetables would be available for lunch. Green and leafy vegetables, orange vegetables, beans, starchy vegetables and others must be served over the course of the week so students get one of each.

-- Requiring for the first time that half of the grains served be whole grains.

-- Serving only foods with nutrition labels that show zero grams of trans fat per serving.

Obesity Bill a boon to School Lunch Program

Another success for healthier school lunches at the national level. The US House of Representative recently voted in favor of legislation that's being termed an "obesity bill." The bill would dedicate $4.5 billion over the next 10 years to fighting childhood obesity and hunger.

"The fully-funded, bipartisan legislation was passed with a 264-157 vote, and received a signature from President Obama. The legislation will expand free school meals for the needy and give the government the power to decide what foods are to be sold in schools...

"'We simply could not miss the opportunity to support the well-being of our nation's children,' said [Bill] Pascrell, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and a former educator. "Expanding programs such as those that provide school lunch and breakfast is the right thing to do for our children and its a solid investment in our future.

"'Healthy children are more able to succeed in school and grow into become healthy, successful adults who are able to contribute to their families and communities.'

"The bill's provisions include a six cent per meal increase in federal reimbursement rate for school lunches to improve the nutritional quality of school meals.

"An additional cost per meal will help schools meet new meal standards to provide children with healthier school meals. Also it will call for a reduction in the availability of high-calorie junk foods and sugary beverages in vending machines on school campuses through science-based nutrition standards for all foods sold during the school day per the Department of Agriculture." - Debra Winters, "Obesity bill will expand school meals, provide for better choices."