Me talking about food on TV

My University's television program decided to do an interview with me about my school food research. Here it is:

http://www2.und.edu/dept/studio1/videopages/12-01-11/stories12-01-11.html#guest1

Colbert on the Victory of French Fries Uber Alles

The Colbert Report
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Food Day is just around the corner

A coalition of groups are sponsoring Food Day on October 24. Hopefully you'll spend a small part of that day (and eventually lots of others) thinking about the food system and your place in it. Or maybe write your legislators that day and tell them to put in place laws and supports that make a sustainable and healthy food system a reality.

Resistance to healthy food from parents

Debate on whether we should have healthier school food?

If you personally just don't want to have to pay for poor kids to eat, say so. Don't mask your opinion behind the rhetoric of freedom from government. No hungry kid wants to be free from government interference in their diet.

Greenville, SC schools make investment in better food culture

Here's a great example of a school district with a progressive attitude: invest time and training and it will benefit kids. As the accompanying story says:

"The lunch period will now last longer as well, because students will be spending time at salad bars for example. Principals in the program have agreed to extend the lunch period from 20 to 30 minutes. That's time the district says isn't wasted because it's still a learning experience.

'When children come to the cafeteria, they are not coming to lunch, it is not a break in the day, they are coming to a nutrition lab where they are learning to make healthy choices,' said Sharp."

Kudos to these forward-thinking educators from my home state!

School Food Politics is in print!

Sarah Robert and I are proud to announce the publication of our co-edited collection, School Food Politics: The Complex Ecologies of Hunger and Feeding in Schools Around the World. It is available from Peter Lang Publishers.

See information at http://tinyurl.com/3bje9q8

The essays in School Food Politics explore the intersections of food and politics on all six of the inhabited continents of the world. Including electoral fights over universally free school meals in Korea, nutritional reforms to school dinners in England and canteens in Australia, teachers' and doctors' work on school feeding in Argentina, and more, the volume provides key illustrations of the many contexts that have witnessed intense struggles defining which children will eat; why; what and how they are served; and who will pay for and prepare the food. Contributors include reformers writing from their own perspectives, from the farm-to-school program in Burlington, Vermont, to efforts to apply principles of critical pedagogy in cooking programs for urban teens, to animal rights curriculum. Later chapters shift their focus to possibilities and hope for a different future for school food, one that is friendlier to students, "lunch ladies," society, other creatures, and the planet.

What impact does the cafeteria environment have?

Here's a really interesting and fun video from England's School Food Trust showing the results of their recent contest to do "school canteen rescues." It gives a great look at English school food--culturally different in interesting ways. It should give everyone pause, though, to consider issues like environment as well as involving kids in making school food something they want.

Bad news for the flavored milk advocates

Two Video Posts on the Chocolate Milk Wars

The Chocolate Milk Debate

My article on school food politics is out!

I have just had appear my article "Why Education Researchers Should Take School Food Seriously." The piece is in Educational Researcher this month (volume 40, issue 1, pages 11-15). Look for it at your local university library or you can go to your local public library and ask the reference desk to have them do an "interlibrary loan" to have it sent to you.

Here's the summary:

"Food and eating in schools have most often been thought of as utilitarian parts of the day, as distractions, and, for education researchers, as lacking incentives to study or even as objects of derision rather than serious concern. Yet there are good reasons why scholars of education should consider food and food practices. These include the confounding influences of school food’s impact on health and on academics, its effects on teaching and administration, the role schools play in teaching about food, implications for the environment and for other species, the large sums of money involved, the window that food provides into identity and culture, food’s influence on educational policy and politics, and the social justice concerns around food."

Jamie Oliver is taking it to the streets

I have to say, this is pretty cool stuff. I'm impressed with his creativity in getting his message out.

Video is from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12629525