New Haven Independent

Posted by: robn | November 14, 2007 11:43 AM

Couldn't we use Connnecticut grown food in the school lunch program and just do it ourselves? CitySeed cut out the big-box middleman and brought organic produce directly to New Haveners...maybe the city should hire them.

Posted by: charlie | November 14, 2007 1:25 PM

The food quality is atrocious. However, the City is not going to be able to afford better unless serious tax reform happens at the State level. Currently, our State's policy involves penalizing cities and rewards wealthy people and developers who want to pave over the remaining farmland in the State.

The billionaires make $1,000 per MINUTE in salary in Fairfield Country and pay a couple bucks in property tax, while meanwhile our children eat pre-packaged peanut butter crap and we have to each pay $6,000 per year in property tax because the State is all backwards in terms of its tax and development policies.

Posted by: Chris Gray | November 15, 2007 3:38 AM

Who else is talking tax reform on the State level? I'm for that!

It wouldn't hurt to have some citizen agitation and action such as Robn suggests. Eric Triffin used to talk about a system for delivering healthy school lunches, it anyone knows where to find him.

Posted by: Dorcas | November 15, 2007 8:59 AM

Aramark is all about deskilling food service work, especially in the face of union organizing. Processed, packaged foods allow them to subcontract food production to wherever they can pay the least to workers. The result is sugary, salty, yucky food that can withstand transportation, storage, and distribution but that does little to educate kids to healthy eating habits. The kids suffer, the workers suffer, and our health suffers. The Rudd Center at Yale is also interested in these issues, and there are several nationally recognized models of bringing local foods and fresh foods into school lunches. Aramark, by the way, also sells riot gear.

Posted by: Amie Hamlin | November 15, 2007 2:38 PM

This is a response to the article and the comments following it.

Why can't schools just have their own employees make the food? One reason is that it costs less to hire a food service contractor. The cost of health care for school employees (and for all citizens)is through the roof. Why? Because we are killing ourselves with diseases of lifestyle: primarily diet, lack of activity, and tobacco. So we serve the students less than ideal food, and the cycle continues.

One person commented about all the property tax they pay. The school meal program does not receive funding from the school budget - ie. property taxes. It must be "self supporting" which means a combination of income from the students who pay for their meals directly, and reimbursements from the state and federal government (from our state and federal tax dollars, but not from our property taxes). The amount the school is reimbursed by the federal government for a student receiving free lunch is $2.47. In New York State, where I live, the state pitches in another 23 cents, for a total of $2.70 in reimbursements for the student receiving a free meal. Out of this total, only 90 cents goes toward actual food costs, the rest is for labor and overhead. How many of you can go out and create a meal for 90 cents for 5 different components required to be offered by schools: milk, entree, grain, fruit and vegetable?

In addition, the funds intended for the students receiving free and reduced price meals are subsidizing the meals of the students who are paying full price, since almost no schools charge as much for a fully paid meal as they get reimbursed for a free or reduced price meal. You can read more about this in an article called "Robbin in the Hood" by chef and school food consultant Kate Adamick at ???

Finally, the USDA law regarding school food does not allow schools to make a profit on school meals. Yet when a school contracts out its business to a food service management company, that requirement is out the window. With profit as a motive, the food quality is going to suffer.

It's all about money. Is your child worth more than 90 cents for lunch and 50 or 60 cents for breakfast? Can you feed your child a quality meal for that amount? If you can't how can we expect the school to. We need to get real and at least quadruple the amount of money that schools have to spend on food for students. That is the amount that schools who are successfully providing healthy school food are spending.

Finally, we have to consider the whole school food environment. It's not just about breakfasts and lunches. Even if the cafeteria was ideal, we still have to consider the class parties (and by the way, kids prefer extra recess for the whole class to cupcakes for their birthdays), the use of food as a reward by teachers, the sale of foods for fundraisers (this includes vending machines, school stores, bake sales, sales of candy bars, cookie dough, and other unhealthy food that is often purchased and consumed on school grounds, and finally, the snack line in the cafeteria which helps make ends meet - such lines often serve cookies, ice cream, and other unhealthy foods.

Posted by: Amie Hamlin | November 15, 2007 3:44 PM

Here is the link to the article "Robbin in the Hood", which I failed to include in my last post.
http://www.healthylunches.org/docs/robbin-in-the-hood.doc