SHAKING UP LUNCH LINES
I believe in the right to be healthy. ~Tara, age 18
KIDS WHO CARE
More kids are impacting the food world, contributing mightily to the health and well-being of young Americans captive in public school food programs.
Teen Tara has it goin’ on! Chronicling her efforts on her own blogsite, she’s on the ingredients lists like white on rice, analyzing the processed food products her high school’s lunch program with the maturity of a professional and the relentlessness of Woodward and Bernstein.  She personifies the savvy consumer, taking a single food issue – ingredients – and making it her mission to illuminate exactly what is going on inside the food they are expecting students to eat. What are all of those names that go on with letters of half the alphabet, unpronounceable and foreign to the brain as they are to human biosystems? I bet if you left some of this artificial stuff out on the counter, even cockroaches wouldn’t bother crawling out to feast.
I love what she says about herself, above, and another quote that could be a rallying cry for the century,
If you don’t know what it is, DON’T EAT IT. [emphasis the author's]
Ah, the refreshing directness of a pithy statement. Think of both quotes the next time you go to buy food in the lunch line or the grocery line. In fact, write it down and keep in your coupon carrier so you can see it when you peruse your food market options.
Such simple words. Tara’s website could be a handbook for obtaining information. She began her mission by seeking transparency in the school lunch program managed by food services giant Aramark. When asked by her friends why it is so important, she responded:
By witholding [sic] the information as to what is in the food students and teachers eat on a daily basis, Aramark is disabling us from making the choice for many of us to be aware of our own health. It is as if many of us are blindfolded, being forced to trust that a corporation that wants to shield our eyes will also want to take care of our bodies.
Good point, well put. Tara’s efforts continue, as Aramark has declined to comply on a lame technicality. Stay tuned to see her efforts continue as she shines the light of day into the inner recesses of the school food supply.
SHE SAW, SHE STUDIED, SHE SOLVED
Another high school student, Nina Gonzolez campaigned and won a place in the lunch line for vegetarian foods., achieving what the county Nutrition Director couldn’t do. Gonzolez did her own research into the federal school lunch program and looked into what other schools were doing to get the results she was after.
Nina’s efforts paid off big time, as the vegetarian lunch line became instantly popular with students who wanted higher nutrition standards and plant-based alternative choices. Going so far as to organize student taste testings resulted in improved lunches that make realistic accommodations for food allergies, vegetarians and simple, fresh produce.
It sounds like the Fredericksburg, Virginia high school lunch program could serve as a model for what can be done through simple determination and willingness to find a way to help everyone eat better in the public school system. Smart. Realistic. Achievable by kids.
Do you find such activities by the youngest members at the top of the food chain as humbling and inspiring as I do?
GIVE A FIG
Summertime brings out the figs, that luscious, sweet mouthful of Mediterranean flavor. Their unique texture and burst of intense sweetness distinguishes the fig’s personality, be it purple or green. It’s almost a gigantic berry. Wikippedia reveals the fig to be the first plant to be cultivated for human consumption, since the ninth millennium BC, a full thousand years before wheat. Wow. Need more calcium? Eat figs.
Growing up in the east I never even tasted a fresh fig before going to study abroad, and I still feel as though I have to make up for that time lost savoring this most delectable of fruits. Buying them from green markets and street fruit vendors whenever I see them, I simply cannot get enough. One bite transports me back in time to plucking them off the trees in the south of France of my early college days.
Figs can be eaten alone, of course, but can also be combined with other foods and put into fruit and vegetable salads. They can even be cooked, but I don’t know why anyone would want to do that to a beautiful fresh fig. If there was ever the case to be made for eating raw, it is the fig.
Look for them to be well on the way to soft, buying only as many as you can eat within a twenty-four-hour period. They ripen quickly and you want to eat them before they begin to wilt. Store at room temperature in the fruit bowl. Rinse lightly just before devouring. Delightful.
