The Next School Lunch Revolutionary: You

In our special series Meet the School Lunch Revolutionaries, we’ve look at four individuals working to get healthier food on our kids’ lunch trays. This last part of the series will include steps that even the busiest parents can do to effect change.

Your turn! 

Changing our kids’ school lunches doesn’t take miracles; it takes someone speaking up. Here are some tips and resources to get the ball rolling in your schools.

Greg Christian, CEO and founder of Beyond Green, Sustainable Food Partners, offers the following tips for parents looking to get involved with local changing of lunch programs.

1. Stop letting their kids and their friends’ kids eat bad cafeteria food; only when participation goes down do the numbers crunchers and administration notice.
2. If you have the financial resources, make your children’s lunches’and even a less fortunate family’s lunches’every day.
3. Get a petition signed by all the kids and parents, demanding to change the food to scratch-cooked fresh food every day, and then deliver it to the school board, superintendent, mayor of the town, and the New York Times (and local press).
4. Demand scratch-cooked food in the cafeteria.
5. Write a sustainability strategy with measurable results, and send it out in their RFP [request for proposal] so the winning bidder HAS to do better food; then hire someone to third-party-monitor this (it’s all self-reported right now’a bunch of bent truths in the food service companies’ “green” programs).

Visit Chef Ann Cooper’s site where you’ll find

• tools to assist you in changing children’s diets both within your areas and in your homes;
• recipes and fun items for kids and parents, such as the Healthy Kids Nutrition Report Card and Meal Wheel;
• resources to write members of Congress to inform them that standards need to be raised for the school lunch program.
• Subscribe to remain informed through Ann Alerts.

Celebrated chef Alice Waters believes that schoolyard gardens are essential to turning the tide on our ailing children’s health and promoting healthier school meals. Visit www.edibleschoolyard.com for a bevy of resources on growing a garden at your local school’it’s easier than you’d think.

Talk with your school’s Parent Teacher Organization about hosting showings of films and shows like Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution or Food, Inc. Lead a discussion afterward and see if parents want to get involved in making their school a healthier place.

Attend school board meetings and make your voice heard about the need for healthier school lunches. See if you can meet with your local school board members one-on-one.