Parents, Students Fed Up with School Lunches

By Jami Brinton, Reporter

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By Jami Brinton

Story Created: Sep 7, 2009 at 3:08 PM CST

Story Updated: Sep 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM CST

IOWA CITY – Dozens gathered at a pavilion in Lower City Park in Iowa City this morning to talk food politics. The event was one of 300 or so “eat-in's” held throughout the nation today encouraging lawmakers to give schools more money to improve their lunch programs.

Parents and children attending the event do not believe lunches currently served at local schools are healthy; instead, the lunches are only contributing to an increase in child obesity.

Three year old Nina Jakob has yet to try a traditional school lunch, and her dad Nik hopes she doesn't have to.

"I want her to grow up healthy,” said Nik. “I think eating fast food contributes to being overweight. I want her to have the best food.”

That's why Nik brought Nina to this untraditional holiday picnic. He’s supporting a national campaign called Time for Lunch launched by Slow Food USA to urge schools to use better ingredients to make lunches.

Eleven-year-old Emmett Adamson has tried school lunch before. He refuses to eat it.

"No vegetarian option,” explained Adamson. “They're always extremely greasy.”

Slow Food supporters say the lunches lack proper nutrition, and are teaching children poor eating habits.

That's why they're urging federal lawmakers to authorize spending a dollar more per meal per student.

"It sounds like not much when you say a dollar but multiply that out across 30 million meals a day and across a whole school year and it comes out to about $5.4 billion,” explained Kurt Friese, a national member of the Slow Food USA board of directors.

"It's really kind of a down payment on future healthcare,” said Kelcey Brackett, co-leader of Slow Food Iowa City.

Adamson thinks the federal government should make the investment for him, and other sixth-graders like him. He also believes his mom could benefit from schools providing better, lunches, too. She’s currently getting up early to make him a healthy, homemade meal to take to school.

"She's just like why don't they have healthy lunches so I don't have to do this,” explained Adamson. “So if they had better lunches it would be really nice for me and her.”

Supporters of this initiative know altering how schools prepare foods won't be easy. They believe it will take a lot of money, and time to train school cooks how to prepare more nutritious meals, but it's a change they hope happens.

Congress is expected to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act this November.

Iowa's Congressman Dave Loebsack sits on the Committee on Education and Labor that could provide more funding for the school lunch program.

Loebsack attended today's event and told TV-9 this is an important issue, but finding five billion dollars this year might not happen.

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