Healthy Changes—“Fed Up with Lunch”

 

Image

I love the Sunday newspaper…the coupons, the local news, and the obits are my fave.  I also faithfully read Parade Magazine and Sunday I found this article on Sarah Wu and her new book, Fed Up with Lunch.  Sarah is a public school teacher who forgot her home lunch one day and decided to eat in the school cafeteria.  Frustrated by what she ate and discovered about school lunch, she has since become an “in-the-trenches” advocate for healthy school lunches.  In 2010, Sarah, known anonymously as “Mrs. Q” ate lunch in the school cafeteria every day for the entire year, and documented her experience through blogging and tweeting.  This led to her book and now anonymous-no-more role as an advocate.

I love it all!…Love that she found a problem, personally researched and learned about the problem first-hand, shared her information with the world, and is committed to healthy changes for the children of America.  Go Sarah! 

Here are a few details from the Parade article that I thought I would share:

-At some schools, pizza can have 62 ingredients.
-For students living in poverty, school lunch might be their best meal all day.
-The kids at Sarah’s lunch had only 20 mins. to go through the line, get their food, eat, and clean up…they quickly ate what they liked best and tossed the rest.

And here are Sarah’s suggestions to parents to help improve their school’s cafeteria:

-Eat lunch with your child at their school cafeteria to discover how much time is allotted and what is being served.
-Talk to the principal  about changes like vending machine issues, adding a salad bar, or planting a school vegetable garden.

I’m going to see what I can do to make a change in the lunches at my local schools, if one is needed.  I’m committing to a fact-finding lunch with each of my daughters over the next week, and because they attend three different schools, that will entail three school lunches over the next week.  Please join me and we can all report back next Wednesday