Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is all about the crappy food American public schools serve to kids. Oliver is famous for revamping the school lunch program in Britain, and since the kids there ate crap, and the kids here eat crap, and because kids who eat crap tend to grow up into adults who eat crap, the show focuses mainly on Oliver’s attempts to revamp a school lunch program in Huntington, West Virginia, which is filled to the brim with crap. In Huntington—named the fattest city in the country—they serve frozen pizza to students for breakfast. Lunch is chicken nuggets with a side of goop. The kids gulp it all down with fluorescent pink milk.
The footage of all these kids eating all this crap is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn, and the show got me wondering: What kind of meals are we serving kids in Seattle Public Schools? You’d think our city—home to so many farmers markets, co-ops, and upscale restaurants that make a point of serving only what’s farm-fresh—would have enough people concerned about food to not serve our kids total crap.
To get answers, I called up Seattle Public Schools nutrition services director Anita Finch. With a tiny budget of just $2.25 for each student meal, Finch must devise a healthy and delicious lunch for the city’s school-aged youth, which is then prepared in a sparkling, stadium-sized kitchen in Sodo. We discussed what she thinks of Oliver’s efforts to transform school lunches, how the meals here could be improved without breaking the bank, and why Seattle still serves Franken-nuggets to elementary-school students.
Have you seen the Jamie Oliver show? Did you like it?
I think the show is very interesting, but the producers imply that all school districts neglect the health of their students. In general, food services has already had its own revolution, and we provide meals that meet strict nutritional guidelines.
But do the guidelines make sense? The USDA still calls french fries a vegetable.
As a dietician, I believe in the guidelines and I don’t think they reduce our ability to be creative or healthy with our lunches. It’s our budget that really constricts us.
After you subtract the cost of labor, you have only about a dollar to spend per meal, right?
Yes, and with that dollar we must be able to serve a meat, a fruit, a vegetable, milk, and bread.
Is that where the chicken nugget comes into the picture?
Oh, you must mean the chicken drummies—those are highly processed foods, and we serve them partially because they’re cheap and partially because students enjoy them. They remind students of McDonald’s chicken nuggets. It’s sad but true.
So fast food creates expectations you’re forced to fulfill? But isn’t your job also to introduce students to healthier foods?
Of course, and that’s my passion. That’s why we cut our own salads every day. We bring in heads of romaine, and we add carrots and cabbage. We’ve also been purchasing local for the past eight years. We get our carrots from Eastern Washington and our apples, plums, and pears from Yakima.
So if you had the budget, you’d nix the
nugget?
Yes. It’s undeniable that when you have a piece of whole-meat chicken versus a chicken nugget, the whole-meat chicken wins.
What are other examples of fresh, yummy foods you’ve been able to put on students’ plates?
Four years ago, we began our ethnic-foods program. Our dietician visited local ethnic restaurants, and we developed truly authentic ethnic recipes. Our most popular item is the Vietnamese sandwich, which we serve on an authentic Vietnamese roll with meats, carrots, daikon radish, and a cilantro dressing. We also serve Somali spaghetti with fresh carrots and potatoes.
Does the tension between the lunch ladies and Oliver in Food Revolution ring false to you? It doesn’t sound like you’re resistant to innovation at all.
Yes, we’d love to have someone like Oliver come and help us cook! That would be totally awesome.
If you had unlimited resources, what would be your dream meal to serve to kids?
Oh my goodness, I have never thought of my dream meal. Let’s see… maybe a baked chicken with carrots and a honey-mustard glaze, a fresh green salad, a whole-wheat roll, and skim milk?
Do you know how much more money you would need to make it a reality?
We’d need at least 30 cents more per meal. Obama wanted to pass a bill allocating
$10 million more per year toward school lunches, but Congress just reduced that amount to $4 million. That comes down to only 10 cents extra per meal. We can’t even afford an extra fruit for that amount. 
… oh, how can we afford to feed kins better when the war machine needs so much money?
I believe this woman – and it is all about the money. Kids get more junk at home, by the way.
Do a story about the crap your mom served you as a kid. I dare you.
@Cahed, SOME parents serve crap at home. Too many. I grew up on Velveeta and Miracle Whip myself. I taught myself to cook and now serve my three kids kickass meals with lotsa veggies and garlic. We don’t have pop in the house. Do they love it when they’re out? Hell, yes. Nothin i can do about that. But schools shouldn’t just cave because kids like McDonalds. And get rid of the bread requirement and save some $$$. It’s just filler… and stupid.
I love Jamie’s show, and how he calls those bitches in the kitchen “dahling.”
Here’s trick… when your kids starving, give ’em the salad first instead of with dinner. They’ll eat the whole dang thing.
ggg, I like your thought of when your kid’s starving to give them the salad first then the dinner. And it trains them subconsciously to look to the healthy foods first before shoving down the garbage.
Basic potato – in all its forms – is good food.
Wonder why we have downgraded it in favor of junk food and much more expensive food.
For families, spuds three times a week – just great. Cook with skins.
Research has even found vit. C in spuds … plus fiber galore …
Your school lunch program is a model for the country then. I’m in farm country and chicken nuggets are one of the best things on the school menu. The worst? “cookie dough”, specifically “oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookie dough”. It’s served in a disposable plastic container and is like a tough pudding.
@4
Your average Russet type Potato is excessively high in starch. Fiber is simply a function of the human body being unable to fully process the food. Growing underground they lack many of the nutrients found in other vegetables. Plus they are quite high in the glycemic index and lead to overproduction of insulin by your pancreas and a bad cycle of glucose-insulin-glucose repeat.
Not that a potato every so often is that bad a thing, but they are definitely not good in any form. French fries and chips barely contain any nutrients whatsoever and are coated in vegetable oil.
A better alternative is a sweet potato, which is only distantly related to a potato and contains far more nutrients.
I’ve visited the downtown kitchen for Seattle School districts, their fridge is filled with processed food. BUT, Anita Finch is working hard to get healthier foods into the kitchen, kudos. Seattle should do a fundraiser to get more money for the schools. Let’s help Anita get food back into those kitchens.
“We also serve Somali spaghetti with fresh carrots and potatoes.”
OMFG! Are you effing kidding me? It sounds like the ultimate appetitie suppressant.
Oh well, how about we start the kids on a journey of food education by dropping the cutesy toddler-speak euphamisms; “Veggies” are out, vegetables are in. And “drummies”? Oh Christ, is that simultaneously retarded and disgusting. If it requires an idiotic name, it probably isn’t real food…it’s actually compressed amalgamated processed chicken parts. It’s nauseating AND harmful. Yum.
This mealy-mouthed hack is full of crap. At my kid’s school I watch the kindergarten kids eating soggy brown unidentifiable logs of the sort that you might see on the hot food counter at 7-11, (but scarier and wrapped in more plastic packaging.) Some parents pack lunches for their kids, but the free-lunch kids eat these microwaved-looking brown log things and wash them down with chocolate milk. There is no cook, just a lady who takes things off big trays. It’s awful. This month’s menu includes generic “Hot Pockets”, “Pancake on a stick”, various “Nuggets”, Nachos (as an entree), Mozzarella sticks (entree?!). We’d be better off making a big pot of beans and rice every day like they do in third world countries.
I agree with Anita there is not enough money to purchase better food, we do serve alot of processed food. High schools at one time did alot of cooking from scratch, now it’s coming from the central kitchen. We do serve fresh fruits and veggies daily. Yes the war and recent economy is taking money from our pocket book, hopefully some day our kids will come first. Diabetes and obesity is on the rise, healthy food choices should be taught at home, in alot of situations, the parents lack the money and knowledge to make a differnce. Yes, I am a lunch lady.
“a healthy and delicious lunch for the city’s school-aged youth, which is then prepared in a sparkling, stadium-sized kitchen in Sodo”…
Sounds so wholesome, clean and good, doesn’t it? But does this really mean what it sounds like it means – that the entire city’s school lunches are preapred in one central kitchen and then shipped out (probably frozen, and not daily)? That’s disgusting.
Texas10R, do you really think saying “veggies” is cutesy toddler-speak?? And how is it euphemistic? It doesn’t mask or avoid the proper word, just abbreviate it. I say veggies all the time, I am a grown adult and I don’t think that word implies otherwise. You’re just overreacting.
“we serve them partially because they’re cheap and partially because students enjoy them. They remind students of McDonald’s chicken nuggets. It’s sad but true.”
Good eating habits start in the home. THese kids were fucked over by their parents long before they hit the school system. The only way government can cure stupid parenting is by sterilizing them.
“the parents lack the money”
Bullshit. Cooking and eating fresh food is cheap and can be done cheaper than a meal at a fast food restaurant. What this country has an epidemic of is fucking laziness and unwillingness to cook.
@12 The meals are shipped out of the central kitchen daily, and they’re not frozen. They make the food in the central kitchen in SODO because the kitchens at many of the individual schools are out-of-date.
My child’s Seattle Public school has a beautiful kitchen with a lunch lady who does no cooking — just reheating. A lot of the food IS processed. And really, the food in the end is quite expensive because most of it ends up in the garbage bin. Well, actually, the compost bin.
HEY! There is no ‘c’ in DIETITIAN. A dictionary may think “dietician” is okay to use as an alternate spelling, but the American Dietetic Association does not.