Rethinking School Lunch: Center for Ecoliteracy

[Earth_First]

While perusing a local bookstore today, I came across a link for the Center for Ecoliteracy and their "Rethinking School Lunch" program. Anyone with or even WITHOUT school-aged children owe it to themselves to read through the 'radical' ideas proposed in this text, and perhaps even introduce the idea at their next PTA or School Board meeting.

After reading several pages of the online resource guide, I know that we will be presenting the idea(s) to our district.

The RSL program:

- Includes an online Rethinking School Lunch guide, an essay series, "Thinking outside the Lunchbox," technical assistance, grants, and presentations

- Creates a framework for a comprehensive curriculum that integrates campus gardens, kitchen classrooms, school lunch, and a wide range of academic subjects

- Treats childhood obesity, nutrition-related illness, the quality of school lunches, and children’s ability to learn as related issues

- Recognizes that lunchroom experiences (including poor-quality meals, shortened lunch periods, commercial messages, and excessive packaging and waste) can be a "hidden curriculum" that undermines classroom lessons about nutrition and health

- Links schools’ food purchasing decisions, the viability of family farms, solid waste generated by the lunchroom, and the environmental cost of shipping food over thousands of miles

http://www.rethinkingschoollunch.org/programs/rsl.html

[msongs]

1. 2/3 of all lunch goes straight to the trash can untouched -

visit your local elementary school and see for yourself (2/3 is just an educated guess, it could actually be MORE).

the milk program is welfare for the dairy industry. kids HAVE to take a milk carton even if they have no desire to drink any, and that goes in the trash unopened even though the taxpayers have bought that milk.

some schools use trays that are washed and reused but that takes paid labor. so, many use styrofoam trays that go straight to the dumpster. Recycling will take those, but they want them CLEAN, as in washed first for crap sake, so no savings in those situations.



Msongs
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