The Labor of Lunch aims to spark a progressive movement that will transform food in American schools, and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed. By providing a feminist history of the US National School Lunch Program, Jennifer E. Gaddis recasts the humble school lunch as an important and often overlooked form of public care. Through vivid narration and a dose of much needed imagination, The Labor of Lunch offers a stirring call to action and a blueprint for school lunch reforms capable of delivering a healthier, more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.

Check out the Labor of Lunch YouTube playlist!

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What’s for lunch? If it’s Thursday and you’re a part of Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), it’s a locally-sourced, #CaliforniaThursdays meal.

Focused on dishing out healthier meals, decreasing their carbon footprint, and increasing access to good food for all students, OUSD Nutrition Services is changing school meals for the better. Nutrition Services Director Jennifer LeBarre’s thoughtful and innovative leadership has made OUSD a rising star of the Good Food Purchasing Program–a program that helps institutions source food that supports five values: nutrition, local economies, animal welfare, valued workforce, and environmental sustainability.

Recently, Jennifer led Oakland Food Policy Council members on a tour of kitchens. We started with a brief history of the national school lunch program and a tour of Prescott Elementary’s kitchen—where a small but mighty crew prepare a whopping 20,000 meals a day for distribution to other schools in the district. Next stop was the site of The Center—a central kitchen, farm, and educational center. The Center, set to open in 2020, will be the site of innovative programming which will provide training and education to everyone from elementary-aged children to adults with special needs. This site will even have its own fruit & vegetable and meat processing rooms, which will decrease reliance on frozen, pre-packaged and processed items.

Our last stop was Madison Academy in East Oakland where the smell of chocolate chip cookies greeted us all the way out in the parking lot. I got to enjoy my first school lunch in many years (no need to get specific here), with a #CaliforniaThursday lunch: mixed vegetables, the sweetest apple I’ve had in a while, and no-antibiotics-ever BBQ chicken. It definitely surpassed my expectations.  

Providing over 40,000 healthy meals every day is a challenge when you have to balance budgetary constraints, differences in taste and perception, outdated infrastructure, and limited capacity. But OUSD, in partnership with the Oakland Food Policy Council and the Good Food Purchasing Program, is pushing boundaries, making changes, and engaging the community. Community engagement has been particularly strong thanks to the Oakland Food Policy Council, which has been leading the charge for good food for all in Oakland, from partnering with the school district for better school food, to organizing the community to fight back against Big Soda.

We celebrate the work of the Oakland Food Policy Council, food policy councils all over the world, and #goodfoodchampions like Jennifer LeBarre and the folks at OUSD and the Good Food Purchasing Program who have been pushing the conversation forward.

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When you picture school lunch what comes to mind? Gooey pizza and floppy French fries, or fresh organic produce and chicken raised without routine antibiotics? My guess is the former. But thanks to advocates around the country, someday it may just be the latter.

Every year the National School Lunch Program spends almost $13 billion to feed over 30 million children. For years, school leaders and community activists have been working to improve the food purchased with those public dollars. Now advocates have a new tool to help achieve just such a lofty goal: It’s called the Good Food Purchasing Policy and after its successful passage in 2012 by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the city of LA, school districts and cities across the country are exploring its possibilities for shaping how public food, like school lunch, is procured.

The policy is similar to LEED certification, only for food instead of buildings. It’s a tool for school districts and the city government’s to make purchasing decisions based on a set of core values. Imagine that!

Under the policy, suppliers must meet basic criteria across five values: supporting local economies, promoting health, providing a safe and healthy workplace and fair wages, protecting animal welfare, and promoting environmental sustainability. Like LEED, the policy inspires suppliers to reach higher than the basic minimum, to “score” better and better across these criteria.

“The Good Food Purchasing Program provides institutions with the framework and tools to achieve an alternative vision for the food system,” says Alexa Delwiche, the head of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, a nonprofit launched by the masterminds of the policy to help cities and school districts pass it and evaluate its implementation.

After the City of Los Angeles and LA Unified School District passed the policy, procurement decisions for more than 750,000 meals a day were made with a whole new lens: not just which suppliers are cheapest, but which suppliers best reflect those five values. It’s making a big difference.

Consider the case of Tyson. Two years before the policy was passed, in 2010, the multinational chicken giant was awarded the $60 million, five-year poultry contract with LA Unified. By 2015, when the Tyson contract was up for renewal, the school district had a different set of questions for the company, such as its record on animal welfare, environmental protection, and treatment of workers. Concerns about Tyson’s poor track record on multiple fronts led school board members to question whether Tyson could meet the standards of the Good Food Purchasing Program. Ultimately, Tyson withdrew from the contract process, and the school board awarded Gold Star Foods, which had much better labor and production practices, a contract instead.

It’s not just the source of chicken that’s changed. PolicyLink found that before the policy was in place, only about 10 percent of produce served in LA schools was sourced within 200 miles of the district. Today, that’s grown to 50 to 72 percent, depending on the season, bringing roughly $12 million into the local economy.

Inspired by its neighbor to the south, San Francisco Unified School District became the first institution outside of Los Angeles to formally adopt the policy in 2016. Across the bay, the Oakland school board is poised to pass the policy this year, too. Together, these three cities alone make about $200 million worth of food purchases annually.

Community leaders across the nation are seeing the power and unifying spirit of this policy that brings these five crosscutting values together. Cities across the country – from Chicago to New York City to Minneapolis and Cincinnati are all exploring it.

“The Good Food Purchasing Program has energized food justice activists in Cincinnati,” says Brennan Grayson, director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center. “It brings a bold vision to food justice activism – one that brings people from all parts of the food chain together. And togetherness is what people need to make changes in the food system.”

Policy change at the national level can move at a glacial pace, if at all. So it’s exciting to see communities take action locally: to put our public dollars toward food that’s best for our bodies, for workers, and for the planet.

Originally published in Earth Island Journal

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The Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) is framed by five core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare and nutrition. The Program outlines metrics in these value categories that provide a framework to help public institutions set goals and benchmarks in each of the five value categories that are relevant to their local context. In most cases, these efforts build from efforts already underway to improve local and regional food systems and the GFPP offers a comprehensive way to address many shared goals in one policy.

Real Food Media is proud to be a part of the movement to help expand the reach of the GFPP in partnership with the Food Chain Workers Alliance and the Center for Good Food Purchasing. This amazing victory wouldn’t have been possible without the work of a diverse and robust set of partners including the ASPCA, Bi-Rite Market, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, CUESA, Farm Forward, Friends of the Earth, Humane Society, Mission High School, Roots of Change, Slow Food San Francisco, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SPUR, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, PolicyLink, School Food FOCUS, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and many local partners.

A special thanks to the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 7 who ensured that the voices of workers were central to this process, and who led the local SF coalition in these efforts. For more information on the victory check out this press release from SFUSD and this press release from the Teamsters.

To learn more about GFPP and see the difference it has already made in Los Angeles Unified School District, watch in this short video produced by our talented Real Food Media staff!  

The post A Good Food Victory in San Francisco! appeared first on Real Food Media.

When asked to picture a typical school lunch, most of us think of sad-looking chicken nuggets or soggy french fries. For many of the millions of public school students, that’s not far off mark. To transform what’s on kids’ plates, parents, teachers and administrators have been working for years, battling entrenched industry interests and paltry school budgets. Now advocates have a powerful tool to help them: a new procurement policy that helps put core values at the center of school food purchasing.

On May 24, the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Trustees is poised to pass the Good Food Purchasing policy to help usher in a new era for school meals, expanding on and codifying the transformational work already under way. The district would be, after Los Angeles Unified, only the second in the nation to do so.

Looking at the policy’s effect in Los Angeles, it’s clear to see the changes it has helped spark. When the district passed the policy, one of its largest suppliers, Gold Star Foods Inc., was inspired to ask tougher questions of its of bread, produce and poultry suppliers. As Gold Star CEO Sean Leer explained: “The way most school districts purchase, lowest price wins, but it should be more thoughtful. Buying food isn’t like buying toilet paper.” Leer is now able to attribute real worth to the suppliers who align with five values of sustainability, nutrition, local economies, animal welfare and worker rights.

Leer also started looking with fresh eyes at his supply chain: What could he localize that wasn’t already? How could he improve the food they offered to students? One answer was produce — and sourcing more of it locally: Before the policy, roughly 10 percent of the produce served in L.A. schools was sourced within 200 miles of the district. Today, from 50 to 72 percent is, depending on the season. That works out to a roughly $12 million redirection of resources to the local economy.

Leer found another answer in wheat. Gold Star had been sourcing out-of-state wheat for its 45 million to 55 million annual servings of bread and rolls. Leer discovered Shepherd’s Grain, a company with growers in Central California. “I committed to turning our entire bread and roll line over to Shepherd’s Grain,” he said.

Understandably, the bakery Gold Star worked with was hesitant to change a key ingredient like flour, but the bakery made the leap. Today, nearly all of the L.A. school district’s bread and rolls are made from wheat grown in Central California, milled in downtown Los Angeles. Compare that with pre-policy wheat: grown in the Dakotas, trucked to Denver, milled there and shipped to California. “The policy gave us a chance to make this huge change,” explained Leer. “And it didn’t cost any more. In fact, we’ve kept the prices the same for the last three years.”

The policy, originally developed by the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, also puts workers at the heart of purchasing decisions — from farmers to delivery workers. Shaun Martinez from the Teamsters union, said: “In school food, margins are extremely thin. Having a policy like this creates a market for people who do good things to actually survive.”

The policy has been used to review relationships, too. In 2015, the five-year, $60 million contract with chicken processor Tyson was up for renewal. Before, the contract always went to the lowest bidder. Now the district was seeking poultry suppliers that didn’t employ practices like the unsustainable use of antibiotics. Gold Star received a $20 million contract to provide the district with chicken raised without the routine use of antibiotics.

All this sounds so promising, but what arguably matters most is what the kids think. Perhaps that’s best summed up by Maylin Brunall, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles: “School — it’s my fancy restaurant now,” she said, with a big smile. “It’s local. It’s fresh. Everyone is treated fairly, and everyone is happy.”

San Francisco has a chance to continue to prove itself as a national leader in school-food reform. The school board trustees can pave the way by approving the new policy.

Originally published in The San Francisco Chronicle 

Photo by Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

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In her latest column for The Washington Post, “The surprising truth about the ‘food movement‘,” Tamar Haspel argues that the number of people who really care about where their food comes from, how it is grown and its impact on our health and the environment is surprisingly small.

We think she’s wrong. As two people who talk to consumers, farmers and retailers every day about food buying choices, we can tell you that the level of awareness and concern for the food we are eating is higher than it has ever been — and shows in changing attitudes and in changing habits, too.

But don’t take our word for it. Listen to food industry analysts like Scott Mushkin, who said last year: “To me, the biggest change is what’s going on with eating trends in the U.S. It’s stunning how much food patterns have changed.” His firm’s research found that the No. 1 one message of women surveyed was that they want to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Or look at indicators from the marketplace: Flagging profits at Walmart are a sign of the public’s changing attitudes toward food. The company was seen as a mortal threat to traditional food retailers when it entered the market, more than 15 years ago. Today, Walmart finds itself competing poorly with smaller stores offering fresh, local produce and even with other big-box stores, such as Costco, now the nation’s largest seller of organic food.

Meanwhile, sales of regular soda in the United States have declined a jaw-dropping 25 percent in the past two decades. This, despite Coca-Cola’s spending $3.5 billion on advertising in 2014 alone and dispensing millions in charitable donations to woo the public and deflect concern about its most profitable — and least healthful — products.

Those consumption trends are a reflection that Americans increasingly care about where their food comes from, how it is grown and the health and environmental implications of what they feed their families. Let’s be clear: These changes didn’t just happen. The shifts we are talking about are occurring as a result of the concerted work of dedicated advocates, activists and community-based organizations that are changing the marketplace and the food system. They are doing it not just through purchasing decisions but also by holding their elected officials accountable and demanding better food policy at local, state and national levels — all against the backdrop of billions in marketing by the processed-food and fast-food industries.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a food movement to us.

Yes, conventionally grown food still makes up the vast majority of what Americans buy on a daily basis. But that doesn’t reflect a lack of demand for organic food; it reflects a lack of supply. We’ve heard personally from the people who run large food companies that one of their biggest challenges is meeting the demand for organic fruits, vegetables, dairy and meat. And this brings up a very important point: The staggering gap between supply and demand reflects the regulations, policies, infrastructure — and even financial markets — that greatly favor conventional agriculture through billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies, generous insurance coverage, extensive research, technical help and even marketing assistance that make it difficult for farmers to transition to organic. The reality is the demand for organic is growing by leaps and bounds, limited only by the ability for supply to match it.

The demand for fresh, local and organic is seen clearly in the popularity of the nation’s farmers markets. Haspel argues that this popularity is waning, citing figures of plateauing sales. But other evidence points to a different story. Data from the USDA’s farmers market manager survey conducted last year found a bump in business: Among the more than 8,400 markets nationwide, 61 percent of those surveyed reported increased traffic; more than half reported increases in year-on-year sales. Because the USDA survey she looked at is done only once every five years, Haspel’s data was from 2007 to 2012, which, as you might remember, coincided with the country’s crippling recession, when the number of Americans struggling with hunger shot up by 12.8 million and consumers stopped spending. Sales of lots of things — homes, cars, refrigerators, even food — felt the effects of the economic downturn.

The change in the kind of food we buy isn’t happening just at grocery stores and farmers markets. Between 2006 and 2012, for example, there was a 430 percent increase in farm-to-school programs, reaching more than 4,000 school districts across the country with locally sourced food in school meals. The number of regional food hubs that connect farmers with wholesale, retail, institutional and individual buyers also grew by almost 300 percent during that time. That kind of growth doesn’t just happen. It takes organized, committed parents, teachers, food-service directors and administrators. It takes city planners, business, farmers, restaurateurs and retailers coming together.

These changing attitudes toward food are reflected in public opinion. A poll conducted last fall by bipartisan team Lake Research Partners and Bellwether Strategies for the Plate of the Union campaign found that voters are overwhelmingly concerned that not all Americans have access to healthful, affordable food and want to see policymakers take bold action to remedy it.

The food movement we are part of is a movement made up of farmers and farmworkers, of teachers and public health officials, of policymakers and chefs, and of everyday Americans from all walks of life. Despite what opinion writers such as Haspel say, they care about labeling genetically modified organisms (GMOs), farmworker rights and the effects of chemicals used to grow their food.

Big change never comes easily, and it never happens quickly. Along the way there will always be those who doubt it’s happening at all. But we can see it happening across the country — in grocery stores, in school cafeterias, on family farms. And even in the halls of Congress.

Chellie Pingree is an organic farmer and a member of the House of Representatives (D) from Maine. Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute and director of Real Food Media.

Originally published in The Washington Post

Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post

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Based in Seattle, FEEST creates on-the-spot youth-driven cooking – of ideas and ingredients! – in the kitchen. Decisions are made communally about what will be prepared to create the day’s menu and serve up a delicious, healthy meal followed by a family-style feast – all while learning more about food and its impact on our selves and our communities.

“Through improvisational cooking and dinners, FEEST creates safe and supportive space for young people to be themselves and take leadership of the space. With this environment, our youth leaders build community while simultaneously think critically about the food system and food issues that affect their communities. Our youth interns develop passion based projects and do advocacy that directly affects these issues that they’ve identified.”
-Meng Yu, youth engagement coordinator

Check out the FEEST blog! Entries are written by youth who attend the program and feature photography and articles by the wonderful FEEST interns and staff.

“Everyday we work with folks – every time we cook a meal – we make community.  That breaking of bread – and with it the making of community – is one the thing that can, paradoxically, unmake the oppressive forces in American society. The act of eating together is transformative.  Let us break bread; remake the world.” -Roberto Ascalon, kitchen director

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