When I was a kid, the lunch ladies still made big pots of tasty homemade soup like this woman is dishing up. Yeasty, oven-baked rolls made our mouths water all morning. Our stomachs growled so loud during the last period before lunch we could have started a chorus.
You saw an example of the meals Mrs. Q and her Illinois students eat yesterday (Would you eat this?). Hungry tummies may still compete with the teach for attention, but I doubt those BPA-laden, processed food units smell as good heating in the industrial microwave as the scent of the soups, breads and homemade desserts that wafted through our hallways.
When did we abdicate responsibility for the welfare of our children to a bureaucracy so tied to Big-Food and Big-Agriculture that we feed our children unappetizing, unappealing substances their teacher can barely choke down?
To build Ordinary, we must take back responsibility for our food, our children's welfare, and our own welfare, for that matter. I'm not advocating throwing out the government programs. I'm advocating getting involved in making them work for us.
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We make peace in a million small ways every day.
All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.
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3 comments:
Good stuff, Kathryn. I became aware of the awful state of school food 12 years ago. I was stunned to see candy bars, potato chips, cokes available in machines in the cafeteria. And the food... well, no wonder the kids ate the candy instead. Thankfully parents are mobilizing to get the crap out, and some good food in. I have been excited by the role our First Lady has taken to draw attention to decent nutrition.
Oh, honey...don't get me started on the food. It is a national crisis in my opinion. The conventional agriculture has taken nutrition right out of the food...the processing...the microwaves....
Research shows that removing the junk food and putting fruits and vegies in the vending machines reduces school violence, too. What more do we need to know?
Hayden, yes the First Lady has made a start. I only wish she had been up to bearing flack from conventional food companies (After the flack she took from Big Ag over installing an organic garden, who can blame her, though?), and used the weight of her popularity and office to encourage them to stop marketing unhealthy eating habits to our children.
Wanda, what more do we need to know? How to support the parents who are trying so hard to get nutritious food into the schools. That's probably the first. What bills are pending in Congress to address this issue would be second.
I'll keep writing, researching and linking. A lot of what we need to know can be found at The Lunch Box, which I've highlighted in the post. Though their web site is in beta, they're adding to it all the time, and there is already more information than I've been able to digest to date.
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