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.
Want to be part of the change to healthier school lunch programs? Boy have I got a resource for you: The Lunch Box. You won't be alone. On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let's Move Campaign to improve school lunches, get kids moving, and give them a chance to live as long as their parents expect to live. If things don't change soon, expectations are slim that they will, so let's all get moving. Join the school lunch revolution!
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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.