The LocalHarvest Blog

Welcome back to the LocalHarvest newsletter.

The quality of food served in our nation's schools has been the focus of much attention recently, and if you have so much as walked through a school cafeteria in the last decade, you know why. Our kids deserve better. We at LocalHarvest have great admiration for those who are working to reform the complicated system that is our national school lunch program. A significant opportunity will come when the House takes up the Child Nutrition Act after their summer recess. The current school nutrition bill expires on September 30th, so stand by for an action-packed couple of weeks in late September. If you want updates, you can sign up with our friends at Slow Food USA who have been working hard on this.

There ends the overtly political part of this article. The remainder is devoted to another, perhaps even more difficult aspect of our children's nutrition: the food we feed them at home.

When I was a little kid, maybe five or six, my mother got religion about nutrition. One day the cupboard held Honeycomb cereal and Wonder Bread, and the next day we were eating Grapenuts and dense Russian black bread. As you might imagine, plenty of whining ensued. We still ate dessert and very occasional processed snacks, but by and large, the junk was gone and the garden was in. Nutrition was taken seriously. Mom took a lot of flak from all of us, but her response always was, "I feed you this way because I love you and I want what's best for you."

Kind of hard to argue with that.

Yet so often we parents take the easier route. We feed our kids a steady diet of mac and cheese and hot dogs, bananas and sugar and call it "kid food", as if the young of our species require soft, sweet, pasty food for survival. By and large, the culinary expectations of children in our society are ridiculously low. That could be chalked up to a cultural oddity if the consequences weren't so high. Research on the impact of daily nutrition on a child's ability to learn in school is unequivocal: kids must have real food to learn. And in this age of soaring obesity rates, the fact that eating habits picked up in childhood carry over to adulthood is a grave concern.

It's hard. We all know that in a media environment of merciless child-focused junk food marketing, parents' job is made even harder. For those of us who want to choose really high quality foods, the definitions and choices can be dizzying. I have a lot of compassion for families who are too busy, worn out, overscheduled, and unsupported to cook good food and model disciplined eating habits. But it's worth the effort. Kids aren't born knowing why adequate protein, vegetables, and whole grains are important. They need to be taught, and until they can make good choices for themselves, good choices must be made for them. I think Mom was right: it's what love requires.

Last year, my daughter's daycare was considering making some changes to its food plan. They invited input from parents, and I ended up writing a document with some suggestions for serving more nutrient-dense foods, getting kids to eat them, setting priorities, and budgeting for higher quality foods. It's by no means comprehensive or authoritative, but I offer a version of this document below in the hope that it may spark some conversation about how we as a nation, and as individuals, feed ourselves and our children. We love to hear from you.

As always, take good care and eat well,
Erin

Erin Barnett
Director
LocalHarvest