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School Lunches (September 15, 2006, Two)

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Program Summary

What’s for lunch? If you’re at school and ordering from the cafeteria, you may have the option of fueling up with a heaping helping of oily French fries and ketchup for your vegetable group, and greasy pizza for a main meal. Nutritionists are taking a closer look at school lunches and they aren’t so happy with what they’re seeing. High in fats, high in sodium and high in carbohydrates, today’s school cafeteria lunch options may be contribute to an obesity problem facing our children. But what can we do to make sure the kids can make better choices?

Chef Ann Cooper, director of Nutrition Services for the Berkley, California School District and author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, has transformed the way one school district feeds its students.

Guests

Ann Cooper, chef, author of "Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children" (Collins, 2006), and director of Nutrition Services for the Berkeley Unified School District in Berkeley, California

Related Links and Resources

Ann Cooper’s Lunch Lessons
USDA’s National School Lunch Program
Healthy School Lunches / Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

For Discussion:

• What’s for lunch? What are some of the choices available at school for lunch?
• What do you like to eat for lunch and why?
• How do the foods you choose stack up nutritionally? Protein, fiber, vitamins, calcium? How about fat, cholesterol and sodium?
• Are there ways to make good choices at lunch? What are they?
• Are there ways to make changes at the cafeteria level? How?
• What does “eating locally” mean? Research how much your school district spends on food, and find out how much of that money contributes to your local economy.

Activities

You are what you eat. Why do kids make the choices they do? Challenge students to watch television aimed at their age group—after school or on the weekend and track the commercials. What kinds of food are being marketed? Have them research the foods and determine their nutritional value. Ask them to read the labels on the items at the market. How do these foods stack up? Ask kids how they think this kind of marketing may contribute to making bad food choices. Challenge students to create menus for lunches based on what’s available from the cafeteria, or what’s available from local growers. Then have them research the nutritional content. Are there ways to create healthy menus? Also have kids keep a food journal for a week writing down every single item and amount of food that goes into their mouths. Then have them chart the foods in terms of nutrition. How does their diet stack up? How can they make better choices at lunch time?

Food fight. Should the food that kids eat for lunch be policed? Should grown-ups decide for kids what they should eat? What if the choices kids were making were based on taste and not nutrition? What if the choices some kids made were bad for them? In Food Wars: Debating the Merits of School Restrictions on Food and Drink from the New York Times Learning Network, students are challenged to look at both sides of an issue. Extension activities include creating a pamphlet about obesity and interviewing a pediatrician about obesity and diabetes.

What is there to eat? School Lunches from Kids’ Health for Parents is a great, basic information site about how to help kids make better choices. Links to articles about the Food Guide Pyramid, Healthy Eating and Deciphering Food Labels give solid information that could be used as a springboard for lessons about nutrition.

From the Science Friday Kids’ Connection Archives

October 4, 2002: Diet and Nutrition

November 15, 2002: The Hungry Gene

January 3, 2003: Designing the Food Guide Pyramid
March 18, 2005: Not so Pleasingly Plump: Rising Childhood Obesity

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

Hear the Program

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