But Will Mikey Like It?

Though the federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on nutritional education—including posters promoting healthy snacks and videos starring dancing fruit—last summer an Associated Press review of fifty-seven such programs found they had almost no effect on what kids ate (in one federal pilot program, students who were given fruit and veggies became less willing to eat them as the year wore on). Among the hurdles to healthier eating are the twenty-one TV commercials for candy, snacks, sweetened cereal, and fast food the average elementary school student will see every day and the fact that a lot of us parents aren’t great role models when it comes to eating right. The average American eats only three servings of fruit and vegetables a day; the latest dietary guidelines recommend we get two to four times that amount. This is why schools, overburdened as they are, may be our best hope in fighting the country’s escalating battle of the bulge.

“It’s not a question of if schools will have an influence, but whether that influence will stick when youth are surrounded by environments, both inside and outside the school, that are incompatible with making good choices,” says Ruth Bowman, who recently evaluated several experiential nutrition-education curricula as part of her doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota. Bowman points out that Americans will spend $118 billion annually (other estimates range from $75 billion to $129 billion) on obesity-related conditions and illnesses that are largely preventable. “We can’t afford to ignore or abandon the issue,” she says.

Still, that’s a lot to expect from school nutrition staffs who have to craft menus with meager budgets—the average elementary school lunch costs approximately $2.50 and must contain a federally mandated minimum of 664 calories. In the face of official indifference (remember when the Reagan administration classified ketchup as a vegetable?) and a student population prone to pitching healthy food in the garbage, school lunch workers have received unexpected support from famous foodies who recognize the role they play in shaping kids’ tastes. Three years ago, renowned Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters persuaded the Berkeley, California, school district to offer academic credit for lunch, making good eating part of the district’s core curriculum. Two years ago, “Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver gave Britain’s school menus a healthy makeover. And here at home, Seth Bixby Daugherty, named by Food and Wine as one of the country’s best new chefs in 2005, gave up his gig at Minneapolis’s Cosmos restaurant last winter to, among other things, help figure out how low-income single moms working with the Wilder Foundation can manage to make seven healthy family meals with an average of $70 worth of food stamps.

“It isn’t easy,” says Bixby Daugherty. “Eating poorly, with high fat and processed foods, is definitely cheaper. It’s why obesity has become a problem of poverty.” He compares the obesity crisis to illiteracy, with life consequences just as dire. “That’s why, when I turned forty, I figured I’m half done—what am I going to do the other forty years to really make a difference?” he says. The answer, he and his wife, Karen, decided, was to create a kind of nonprofit consulting group, Real Food Initiatives, to help schools and other organizations change the way kids eat. 

When Bixby Daugherty quit his high-profile job at Cosmos, a local radio station asked him to “go up against” Jean Ronnei from the St. Paul schools. “I guess they expected us to be combative and for me to be really critical of what the schools are doing,” he says. Instead, the two turned out to be kindred spirits, with the chef praising Ronnei and others like her for the “miracles” they’re able to accomplish for pennies a day. Ronnei rewarded him with a homework assignment—to remake the district’s 600-pound recipe for meat lasagna.

“So far, I’ve taken out sixty-five pounds of sugar, and I cut the seventy pounds of salt in half,” reports Bixby Daugherty, whose new and improved recipe is expected to get a test run this month. Though he created the menu at Cosmos, his experience feeding his own kids, Emma and Cole, has taught him that the crowd at Como Park High may be harder to please than paying customers. “It’s not hard to make things healthier, but you have to make them appealing too,” he says. “That’s always the question you have to consider. Will they eat it?”