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September 23, 2010

Connecting schoolchildren to healthier food

Nancy Ettenheim

One of the many outrages perpetrated under the Reagan administration was the proposal to classify ketchup as a vegetable for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's subsidized school lunch program. If it weren't so sad for the kids who depended on school lunches for an integral part of their daily meals, it would have been funny.

The truth is, school-provided lunches have never been great. Who can forget overcooked canned vegetables and gray mystery meat?

As pendulums swing, that stuff was supplanted by fried and greasy hamburgers, pizza and tons of fattening junk food for our already overweight kids to consume. Well, there's a movement afoot to change all of that, and one of the epicenters of that movement is here in Wisconsin, in the small, southwestern city of Viroqua. A consortium of farmers, educators and high school kids is out to change the way students connect to food and the sourcing of food.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 23, 2010 1:42 AM
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