In December 2010, President Obama signed the "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act" into law. The law, which extended the "National School Lunch Program," (NSLP) authorizes the USDA to set nutritional standards for all food sold in the public schools, and it rewards districts with an increase in the federal reimbursement rate for all purchased school lunches that are in compliance with the new nutritional standards. The first federal school lunch and milk program was enacted in 1943, and legislation to make the federal program permanent was passed in 1946. According to the USDA, in 2010 the NSLP served over 31 million children each day. School lunch guidelines dictate a cap in the percentage of calories that come from fat and from saturated fat, and require that daily lunches must include a minimum of three items, including an entree and either milk or a nutritionally equivalent non-dairy beverage.
I remember vividly watching my mother make my father's lunch each morning, which included a rotation of sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and an accompanying thermos. I also remember how hungry my brother was at the end of the school day when he would barge into the kitchen and help himself to two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. What I do not remember so clearly is what I myself actually ate every day at school, or if I liked school lunch or not. Six months into kindergarten, my daughter has declared herself a school lunch drop out -- she has defected to the ranks of those who carry a lunch from home. The impact on me is that each morning along with hustling to read a new chapter of our current book series from the library, brush hair, eat breakfast, and brush teeth, I must also now pack a healthy, satisfying lunch for my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1.
Each week when I volunteer in my daughter's class during the morning literacy block, I stay for an additional forty-five minutes to join my daughter and her classmates for the ritual of school lunch. This week the menu consisted of milk, banana, and either cheese or pepperoni pizza OR hamburger au jus with a whole wheat bun. Last week, the menu was chicken nuggets with sectioned oranges, and the week before that it was a chicken patty sandwich and canned peaches. While my DD1 was at first compelled to take school lunch because it appeared to her, I think, that such was what "real" kindergarteners do. What my DD1 does not know is that 60% of her classmates quality for free and reduced lunch, which may account in large part for why the clear majority of her peers go through the cafeteria lunch line each day. However, after partaking in the district lunches for the first few months of the school year, my DD1 announced after Christmas that the food in our kitchen "smells and tastes better," and she asked if it would be okay to start bringing her lunch from home. And thus my life as a daily "short order" lunch packer began.
I certainly did not expect my daughter's elementary cafeteria to be as zealous about fresh fruit (locally grown when possible), organic milk, eggs, and meat/chicken, and wild caught fish as I am. And yet I am somewhat surprised that school lunch rotates through the most mainstream of American fare, rather than providing a sampling of foods from a healthier and broader spectrum. For example, the district lunch menu does not appear to be at all in sync with the fact that at home such food as rice, lentils, beans, mango, avocado, fish, noodles, spinach, sweet potatoes, or cantaloupe are likely to be commonplace. While I have reviewed the district's "nutrition action plan", and can plainly see in print the school board's commitment to using "whole grains" whenever possible, and to working towards "low sodium" and "low fat" food choices, the fact that most featured of the offerings are the equivalent of fast food dining does concern me.
With all of the other transitional issues to kindergarten that have required our energy this year thus far, I wonder to my readers: Given what the school lunch menu appears to offer as daily fare, is one of the accommodations I need to make to the public schools to accept that I will be packing my daughters' lunches for the next many years? Or, is this another issue which warrants some individual, and perhaps collective, attention? Is school lunch as described above good enough to meet our children's nutritional needs?
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