Many food ideas began with Alice Waters, so it’s tempting to begin this column “It all began with Alice Waters.” She opened Chez Panisse in 1971, serving organic and locally sourced food. Her Berkeley, Calif., restaurant changed cuisine culture from coast to coast. But Waters was not satisfied with altering adult American cuisine; she wanted to change the way children ate, too. In 1995 to 1999, years before Jamie Oliver began his school food initiative in Britain, Waters and Ann Cooper (the “renegade lunch lady”) founded the “Edible Schoolyard” project with one garden, one school. There are now several city affiliates to the original 1-acre growing/eating project.
When Michelle Obama moved into the White House, Waters wrote an open letter lobbying for a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. She also lobbied for better nutritional standards for school lunches.
It’s not clear what effect Waters’ letter had on the first lady, but Obama planted that garden — with the help of local schoolchildren — and has endorsed better food and exercise in her “Let’s Move” initiative to combat childhood obesity.
The recent spotlight has been on Jamie Oliver’s school lunch initiative in Huntington, W.Va., filmed by ABC to show Oliver introducing healthy food to one of the unhealthiest areas of our country. But Oliver has been joined by many other chefs and food service workers interested in better food for schools.
John Turenne, founder of Sustainable Food Systems, has helped convert schools and other institutions to meals based on fresh, local, sustainable food. He is in the final stages of introducing Oliver’s lunches to every school in Huntington. Cooper has been engaged in parallel work — bringing the Berkeley project to the Boulder, Colo., school system.
Cathal Armstrong — owner and chef of Restaurant Eve, the Majestic, Eamonn’s and PX, all in Alexandria — helps train food service workers to prepare better meals. No doubt other local chefs will join Armstrong in feeding our children better.
One of Cooper’s meat-and-potato recipes illustrates how to enrich shepherd’s pie with “stealth” vegetables. Seventy-five pounds of ground meat are combined with 5 pounds onions, 15 pounds carrots, 5 pounds celery, 10 pounds peas, some tomato paste and beef stock — then covered with 60 pounds garlic mashed potatoes made with 2 1/2 gallons of 1 percent milk and 20 cloves of garlic. That’s how to upgrade the nutrition of 450 school lunches!
This initiative is not going away; let’s hope the coordinated efforts of politicians, food service workers, chefs, and you and me will improve our children’s future health. Cooking together bonds families and communities, and cooking healthfully will make those families and communities longer-lived. That’s an educational reform we can all get behind!
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason
University. E-mail her at
[email protected].
