Education Controls Lunches

     When you think of the phrase "school lunch" images of a lunch lady slopping down an unhealthy meal onto a plastic tray usually comes to mind to most people. Why does not an image of fresh vegetables and fruit from an organic garden pop into our mind immediately?  Many schools around the country are using education of gardening to make the idea of going through the lunch line and grabbing a tossed salad a reality. 
       In Berkeley, California a middle school Martin Luther King Jr  has based their curriculum around teaching their students to eat healthy by creating a program called The Edible Schoolyard Project. The kids at this middle school have classes to learn how to grow their own food and then classes to learn how to prepare the food for their lunches.  The founder of the program is a chef and food activist Alice Waters. Waters realized the importance of a healthy lunch for a child and education would be the first step in solving the problem. "We're in the middle of a health epidemic," says Waters. "If we could somehow bring in a curriculum around school lunch, we could begin to change the way kids think about eating." The program has one acre of garden and a fully equipped kitchen for the students to gain a seed to table experience.

       In the book "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv, Louv states that children have grown separate from nature to a degree that their emotional development is being significantly hindered. Louv's work links this "nature deficit disorder" with alarming trends, such as a rise in obesity, attention deficit disorder and depression among children. More and more schools around the country are realizing that they must educate their students about where their food is coming from to stop these trends. Another example of a school teaching their students about the importance of fresh produce is Rothenberg Preparatory Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio. At Rothenberg each classroom is given a garden bed which is located on top of the roof of the school. Through gardening the students will learn science, math, patience, sustainability and healthier food options. In a neighborhood where many children had never seen a garden before are now able to go to school everyday and get their hands dirty and learn about the Earth.

         If we want to stop seeing children bringing huge bags of chips and bottles of pop to lunch or have to go through a lunch line of only unhealthy options we must educate the world that there is a problem.

http://www.edutopia.org/garden-of-eating-middle-schoolers-grow-lunch

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2014/06/25/rooftop-garden-shines-otr-
pride/11385713/

http://www.soapboxmedia.com/features/0111rothenberggreenroof.aspx