The New York Times reports on the creative and healthful lunches being cooked up at private schools in and near New York City. At Dalton, a recent meal, served family style, included ?roasted fennel salad with Parmesan frico, apple and red onion on fris?e and faro with grilled vegetables and nebbiolo vinaigrette.? The school is concerned about eating: in addition to the fris?e, it invited Eric Schlosser, a food writer, and Blue Hill chef Dan Barber to talk to students during an all-day ?food symposium,? where topics ranged from agriculture policy to ?the perfect Moroccan merguez.?
Obviously, public schools can't provide pupils with the same sort of fare or food education?on offer at $35,000-a-year private institutions, but they can definitely do better than day after day of chicken nuggets, tater tots, pizza and corn. And with recent passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, they must do better. Unless, of course, the USDA?which, unfortunately,?is in charge of the nation's school food programs and thus in charge of specifiying new nutrition standards mandated by the Healthy, Hunger-Free legislation?bends to the desires of the myriad agriculture lobbyists now swarming it. USA Today reports, for example, that the National Potato Council is campaigning to keep starchy vegetables in school lunches; in fact, the potato people have launched a website, potatoesinschools.com, to communicate their bizarre view that ?there is no need to, or value in, limiting starchy vegetables in school meal plans.? Oh, no?
There has been a lot of debate on this blog lately about whether rich kids and poor kids should be educated in the same way. It's an arguable topic. That rich kids and poor kids should be fed in the same way, however, is inarguable. Quite a few low-income students rely on the food their public schools dispense?for breakfast and lunch; it's unconscionable that those meals are so often essentially garbage, nutrient-less, processed, made-in-a-lab crap. And unlike academics, where more ?inputs? do not necessarily yield better ?outputs,? school food is almost entirely input-based?in other words, there are not a lot of mysteries when it comes to bettering the stuff in the cafeteria. Maybe public schools don't abandon the tater tots and replace them with organic roasted fennel salad all at once, but they should and easily could introduce more fresh fruits and vegetables and more whole grains, and limit the fatty, the fried, and the processed. One hopes that the USDA will break with its past behavior and craft school-food standards that are influenced by nutrition and healthful living and not agricultural interests and their lobbyists.