New nutrition standards: does that mean no more Frito pie?

The USA will now join countries around the world that offer healthy guidelines for school meals.

Salt will be limited, no trans fats allowed, kids will be offered a wider variety of fruits and veg, milk will be low fat and whole grains are prioritized. School lunch providers will get an additional six cents per school lunch in order to achieve these new standards. (USA Today offers a few more details here.)

It’s about time.

But the fight for healthy school lunches is not over. The new standards will be phased in over time, there will no doubt be food companies looking for ways to cut costs, and the amount provided per meal may simply not be enough in the first place. Vigilance is necessary.

Check out Bettina Elias Siegel‘s always excellent analysis at The Lunch Tray for more on the Good, Bad and Ugly of the new standards. I also thought Mrs. Q., of Fed Up with School Lunch fame, did a nice job expressing how parents can help improve school lunch in her babble.com column.

Incidentally, Mrs. Q. posted an interesting piece about lunch ladies. Seems the staff of Chicago school cafeterias were actually asked what they think about school lunch. More evidence of their makeover, methinks.

A (very) quick search uncovered book titles ranging from Killer Lunch Lady to Revenge of the Lunch Ladies to Attack of the Mutant Lunch Lady and Help! I’m Trapped in my Lunch Lady’s Body.

Those poor lunch ladies couldn’t get a break—as if they were solely responsible for the nasty food served in so many school cafeterias.

Now that school lunch is being reclaimed—not least by the self-proclaimed “Renegade Lunch Lady” herself, Ann Cooper—the ladies of the lunchroom are faring slightly better in the world of pop culture.

Take the Fly Guy series, one of my 7-year-old son’s favourites.

These hilarious and  easy-to-read books follow a pair of googly-eyed friends, one a boy (Buzz), the other a fly (Fly Guy). Fly Guy loves garbage soup, piles of dirt, smelly mops and dirty dishes, and the pair have many icky adventures over the 10 books in the series. In Super Fly Guy, our little hero finds happiness in the lunchroom.

At first, it seems like the lunch lady hates him, but the good woman is swayed by his intelligence and feeds him chicken bones and fish heads in sour milk (served with a straw). Her boss, however, isn’t pleased that she’s entertaining flies in the lunchroom and fires her. Everyone is sad since the lunch lady was actually a good cook!

There’s also a graphic novel series for older readers about a superhero Lunch Lady—”serving justice and serving lunch”!—by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Named 3rd and 4th Grade books of the year in 2010 and 2011 at the Children’s Choice Awards, the series is reportedly being made into a live action movie with Amy Poehler. This lunch lady fights cyborg substitutes, evil authors and swamp monsters using only her wits, food gadgets (a banana boomerang, a lunch tray laptop) and floods of sloppy joe mix.

From super villain to superhero, the ladies who (make) lunch have truly had a makeover. Now if school lunch itself could only get the same super treatment…

In the last few years, Brazil has emerged as the darling of the world economy. The GDP is growing while income inequality is decreasing.

Of course, it had no where to go but up on the equality issue. It wasn’t so long ago that Brazil was the most unequal country in the world, with the wealthiest 10 percent earning half of all income. But a vast suite of government programs aimed at poverty reduction has meant poverty has actually been cut in half. Countries around the world are now looking to Brazil for advice on how to do the same. (In fact, political economist Doug Henwood wrote recently that New York City could use a few tips—it’s now more unequal than Brazil.)

Food access is a huge part of the Brazilian strategy and free school lunch programs in public schools have long been part of the  landscape.

Photo from What's for Lunch? Copyright Yvonne Duivenvoorden

But it’s not just about free food for kids. School lunch is integrated into other aspects of the food system. Seasonal produce, for instance, is prioritized and schools must buy a portion of ingredients from local farmers (like the banana in the image above). Everyone benefits: kids get great fresh food; farmers have a ready outlet for their produce; and these new relationships grease the economy.

This kind of connecting the dots between schools and farms, education and the economy is exactly the way forward. No wonder Brazil is becoming a model for the rest of us.

My son is a pretty savvy kid. He’s knows his way around technology, too, but, like most of us, didn’t read the fine print.

I thought of this devious marketing trick (and my son’s bewilderment) as I read a fascinating report put out jointly by The Children’s Food Campaign (part of Sustain UK) and the British Heart Foundation called “The 21st century gingerbread house: how companies are marketing junk food to children online” (available for free download—no hidden subscription fees involved!).

Researchers conducted content analysis of 100 food brand product websites in the UK, and discovered that food companies have come up with a huge variety of techniques to promote junk food to kids.  TV advertising has long been regulated to ensure kids aren’t getting sold crap food every two seconds, but the internet remains the wild west, with vague regulations that marketers have easily eluded.

Using cartoons, animations, brand characters, competitions, promotions (free stuff—no kid can resist free stuff), games, quizzes, free downloads, etc. these companies are building brand loyalty one 10 year old at a time.

Of course, schools and parents have a key role in helping educate their children about how to be smart consumers (of both websites and junk food), but this is very insidious stuff—it’s not easy to identify some of these sites as advertising. (Not unlike my son thinking he was simply downloading free music but instead passively “signing up” for some expensive subscription.)  With a diet-related health crisis on our hands, there’s no question we need stronger regulations of junk food marketing (wherever it occurs) in order to support kids to make good choices.

As Charlie Powell, Campaigns Director for the Children’s Food Campaign writes: “…research has now shown that the marketing of unhealthy foods to children influences not only which brands they choose, but the overall balance of their diet. Unsurprisingly, it encourages children to eat energy-dense fatty, sugary or salty foods rather than more nutritious options. If marketing didn’t work, the food industry wouldn’t devote multi-million pound budgets to developing slick campaigns to spread their messages.”

Check out also Sustain’s “Dodgiest junk food marketing claims” of 2011. A public poll determined that Chupa Chups’ suggestion that its yellow lollipops were made with only real lemon juice was the most egregious marketing claim. Seems there’s only 3 per cent real fruit in the suckers.

Is it weird that my favourite ones are the skeletons and monsters?

The truth is, I really don’t like this chore—whether it’s at the beginning or end of the, uh, race. I like to cook, I love to eat, but making food for children that must fit in small containers and be consumed in five minutes or less while squeezed in a stinky gym (child #2) or eaten walking to the convenience store (child #1), is not something I relish.

I realize there are those bento moms who love making cute lunches for their admiring children (who no doubt happily gobble them up), but for most of the rest of us scrambling to make the meal from something the kiddos will actually eat,  making school lunch is unrewarding, tedious drudgery. We are the multitudes haunted by uneaten sandwiches and browned apples, by the gut-turning early morning aroma of tomato sauce on leftover pasta.

In fact, my loathing of this task was one of the reasons I pitched the idea for the book, What’s for Lunch? in the first place. I was in the shower (where all good ideas flow) and began to wonder what other parents around the world—most of whom live lives far more complicated and difficult than mine— do to feed their children at school.

The answer wasn’t straightforward—there are as many different approaches as there are countries—but it was nonetheless astonishing to me. There are far too many places in the world where kids don’t get enough to eat at school or elsewhere, or what they eat isn’t healthy, but in a surprising number of nations, citizens and governments have prioritized feeding kids a school meal. Places like Japan and France, Finland, Italy, Russia and India have taken on this responsibility because they believe that school meals will help kids grow and learn and become good citizens.

Next spring, my book, What’s for Lunch? How Schoolchildren Eat Around the World will be published by Red Deer Press here in Canada (it will come out later in 2012 in the U.S) and the answer will be available—in a beautifully designed and illustrated format—to other parents. I’ll be offering some sneak peeks in the new year as we get closer to publication.

In the meantime, I’ll be taking a holiday break from blogging…and making lunches. Happy holidays everyone!

There was gingerbread and my new favourite, chocolate chip shortbread (pictured above), peanut brittle and various holiday bits and pieces. The three boys—who didn’t really know one another very well but seemed to bond over their gluttony— stood near the cookies, but not so near as to be conspicuous, and slowly and carefully devoured nearly the entire tray while the adults paid them absolutely no mind.

I found it hilarious, mostly, I think, because it cast me vividly back to my own childhood and the recollection that the best part of going to parties with your parents is how they end up ignoring you and you can fly below the radar.

And, in the boys defense, these cookies are outrageously delicious.

Chocolate Chip Shortbread

(tweaked from Chatelaine magazine, November 2006)

makes about 50-60 small cookies

3 1/2 cups flour

2 cups chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups butter

1 cup icing sugar

4 tsp cold water

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt (omit if you use salted butter)

6 squares chocolate (the best you can find)

1. Preheat oven to 325F. Spray baking sheets with oil or line with parchment paper.

2. Stir flour with chocolate chips in small bowl. Using larger bowl with electric mixer, beat butter until smooth, then add sugar until fluffy. Beat in water, vanilla and salt if using. Stir in the flour mixture slowly.

3. It will seem dry but the butter will allow you to shape it into smallish balls to put on the greased baking sheet. Bake until edges are golden 15-20 minutes. Cool on a rack.

4. I often freeze them at this stage and bring them out the night before I need them.

5. Melt chocolate in double boiler or microwave. Stir until smooth. Dip half of cookie into melted chocolate and place on wax paper. Let sit until cooled or refrigerate about 30 minutes until chocolate is set.

Enjoy!

One of the funding streams on the chopping block is school nutrition programs. Readers of this blog will know that there is no universal school nutrition program in Canada—families in need rely on a patchwork of offerings.  In a twisted version of the “last in first out” layoff logic, schools that have most recently added these modest snack and breakfast (occasionally lunch) programs to their schedule will be the first to lose them.

After what was no doubt one particularly heart-rending deputation from a school nutrition program coordinator, the mayor’s brother, councillor Doug Ford, handed the woman a cheque for $1,000 for her school.

She was apparently speechless.

I’m not interested in casting aspersions on Ford’s motives. It was a generous, spontaneous gesture.

But what about the 14,000 other children whose programs are getting chopped unceremoniously? Where’s their money? (According to The Toronto Star, the bill would be $380,000.) Is Ford going to cough up for every school that has a story to tell?

My issue is not with the gesture but with the attitude behind it. Ford and his ilk seem to think that government’s job is to clear the snow and repair the roads rather than “meddle” with the health and welfare of children and people struggling on low incomes. Private charity, they say in word and deed, is the place to turn for the latter.

And yet Ford’s own actions reveal starkly the inadequacy and arbitrariness of relying on the vagaries of private donors.  A handful of kids have a snack while thousands of others go hungry (literally in many cases, according to the deputants.)

Of course, people love these stories. Witness the warm fuzzy feelings so many have about the good Samaritans who have been paying off layaway gifts at discount retailers this holiday season. It makes us feel good about the world, especially at this time of year when we’re all looking/hoping for reasons to believe in the better side of humanity.

And while I’d never want to deny how important this is on a psychological level, shouldn’t we be looking upstream on this? Demanding our democratically elected governments—whose job it is to ensure our society functions in all our interests, not just those who benefit from tax cuts—care for those who need help in careful, nonarbitrary and adequate ways?

The first time I served it, it was more of a stew: I skipped the pesto (to be added toward the end), omitted celery and served it topped with couscous. The second time, I blended it with the hand blender and made it into a thick, puréed soup. Each time, it was rich and flavourful and made me feel good about the world. I could eat this hearty soup every day and never tire of it.

Sadly, my children feel otherwise.

The tolerated it the first time, but the most recent variation met with a wholesale boycott.

The upside of this potentially challenging family moment was that when I told our older son if he didn’t like it, he could make his own dinner, he gladly agreed. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s about to start cooking class at his new middle school and wanted to give it a whirl on his own. Or he wanted to show us (again) that he doesn’t need us all that much. But he pulled out a children’s cookbook that’s been gathering dust at our house for some time, and made Pesto Toast—pesto on grilled bread topped with melted cheese. And he actually learned a few things. Like, say, you should read the entire recipe before starting. And a garlic clove is different from a garlic head (I stopped him before he turned into a vampire destroyer, but he was still burping garlic for two days). And you have to watch things under the broiler. And cleaning up isn’t all that great, but cooking is actually quite fun.

In fact, it was a teachable moment for all of us. I’m often trying to find ways to get my children cooking and preparing food—coming up with various gimmicks, including kids’ choice nights, etc.—but maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe all this meddling is working against me and given the opportunity, they’ll come to this cooking/appreciating food thing on their own terms. Or maybe I should stage a boycott of my own…

But Dr. Mike Evans posits a simple answer to the perennial question in this fun and accessible new short film/animated lecture called 23 and 1/2 hours. It’s aimed at adults, but the same goes for kids.

Dr. Mike is a multi-talented Toronto doc and all-round great guy— he’s founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto, a staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and a regular contributor on CBC radio’s Fresh Air.