Great Kids, Great Schools? First Our Kids Need to be Healthy

Any parent or educator in Baltimore City knows that the school meals are in bad shape. Students continue to be served food that they describe as “gross, unhealthy, smelly, and rotten.” These students are not culinary experts, and they routinely travel off school grounds to pick up great alternatives, such as Burger King, McDonald’s, pizza, and Chinese food carryout. Our students are simply not eating healthy, inside school or out.

Can we really expect our students to be great kids if we are contributing to their obesity and future health risks by serving up fatty and preservative laced food? That doesn’t sound like a great school to me.

Jill Wrigley, a principal investigator with the Baltimore Efficiency and Economy Foundation reviewed BCPSS schools meals in a work entitled, School Meal Reform Opportunities for the Baltimore City Public School System. She advocates for reforming BCPSS school meals because childhood obesity disproportionately affects income and minority populations. Nearly one third of low-income Maryland children between the ages of two and five are at risk of becoming overweight and facing severe health problems. National research has also uncovered that 60 percent of overweight children between the ages of five and ten years have developed at lest one serious risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

Despite this research, BCPSS has failed to reform its school meals, sticking with the same old junk. School meal reform does not appear to be at the top of Dr. Alonso’s agenda, and this is a serious mistake that is profoundly affecting the health of Baltimore’s children. BCPSS almost hired the leading expert in the school meal reform movement back in 2006. However, after the appointment fell through, the school meal reform movement also fell through the cracks of North Ave.

It is not too late for BCPSS. New food service leadership can be found to produce healthy food from local vendors. Instruction in culinary preparation and design can be integrated across the curriculum to engage students. Healthy eating and positive examples could also provided by schools across the city. This simply requires placing the health of our great kids as a top priority.

For an example of a successful school meal program, check out the video below depicting a reform effort lead by Tony Geraci. His program successfully turned around the meal offerings in New Hampshire school districts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuLz2p1z6jY