School Lunches and Cooking Classes

One of my nephews goes to elementary school in another country and they have cooking classes once a week.

What this means is that each class teacher takes her/his kids to the school kitchen and they bake something. At first it is cookies, then they move on to more advanced stuff. The kids learn the value of food and discover vegetables they’ve never seen before. Before long they want to take their own lunches to school and bake at home. A few schools in LA have cooking classes, largely non-curricular and paid for by parents. The theory is: educate the kids about food and cooking and they will educate their parents and they all will want to eat more healthy food. It’s a sound theory.

School lunches here are pretty awful, yet what some parents send with their kids is often worse. There is federal legislation pending that mandates healthier school lunches - a bill just passed in the Senate and it should pass in the House (story here). But will parents reject this by continuing to send their kids to school with junk food snacks as many do now?

Why is this? Do parents who give their kids junk food not understand that it is a time bomb in their kids’ bodies or do they know it, yet resent the fact that other families are investing in healthier lunches and so do the opposite? There is a class distinction here that’s hard to ignore and it’s not driven by family budgets and poor planning. The “but she won’t eat it” excuse is just that – an easy way out. Does “You’re killing your kids with this stuff” seem over the top? Jamie Oliver once used that expression on a parent to devastating effect.

At this time of year – back to school - there are many articles in local newspapers around the country advising parents on how to make nutritious lunches. Many middle class families pay attention to them as well they ought to, given the junk they have been sending with their kids, who mostly have opted out of means-tested school lunches. At the high school level, kids study Nutrition, and it’s somewhat startling that no actual cooking is involved!

The New York Times is reporting that in the U.K. “by 2011, cooking classes will be mandatory for all 11- to 14-year-old students in the nation.” If the U.K. can do that, can’t schools and teachers here at least start discussing a weekly cooking class in the future?