There is a definite art to packing school lunches. While we respect the mantra of creating healthy well-balanced meals for our kids, we also want them to enjoy their lunches just as much as the rest of their day. At first it was pretty manageable to create that ‘health-joy’ balance. My then three-year-old was very excited about toting plain whole wheat spaghetti to preschool every day, and he allowed me to throw in a few fruit accompaniments for good measure. By the time he reached age four, plain spaghetti and crunchy fruits were still a staple, but the additional requirement of an afternoon snack became a greater challenge. It wasn’t unheard of to get an evening phone call from a flustered Dad in a supermarket aisle trying to determine the appropriate squeeze tube yogurt flavor or recall the preferred pretzel shape for this month.

I dream of the day when we can say goodbye to our morning lunch packing ritual (and drool over the thought of the extra eight minutes of sleep that I might get from not having to watch a pot of boiling pasta). Soon we’ll be off to kindergarten, where I’ll look forward to handing over the menuplanning honors to the school cafeteria.

In honor of National School Lunch Week (October 11-15, 2010), the New York Post interviewed some students about their view of school lunches¹. One child at a private school was quite pleased with her wide range of menu options, including a choice of having traditional breakfast foods (Canadian Bacon and French Toast) for lunch, while another child in a public school spoke of her meal consisting of mushy burgers, not-so-fresh fruit, and smelly milk. When I visited “Today’s Menu” on the website of one Upper West Side private school, I learned that at this moment, a group of elementary school students will have the option to enjoy: white Miso soup, Kimpira pita, Misoyaki salmon, stewed pumpkin, brown rice and green pea flan. My visits to various New York City public school websites were not quite as revealing.

The New York City Board of Education provides approximately 860,000 meals (breakfast and lunch) to greater than 1600 public school locations. School breakfast is free and lunch is $1.50 per family, which is reduced or eliminated for families in need. While the federal government’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act reimburses New York State $2.68 per child, many are critical of such a small allocation for lunches². Some argue that access to good nutrition is not only critical for child development, but it’s also critical for minimizing future health care costs that can stem from poor nutrition. Furthermore, for some children, a public school lunch may be one of the only options for a regular and reasonably balanced meal.

In addition to the challenge posed to our public schools of providing nutritious meals for our children, we are faced with an additional challenge of managing our children’s choices to attend food outlets near some public schools. Kathryn Neckerman and colleagues from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University recently published a study on the disparities in food environments near public schools³. It was shown that most public schools were within a few hundred meters of fast-food restaurants, bodegas and pizzerias which offered fewer healthy options and more low-priced, high-calorie foods. In addition, low-income students were more likely to attend schools with unhealthy food outlets in closer proximity to their school.

So it remains to be seen whether my son will someday boast of a school lunch that is by far more extravagant than the tuna sandwich in my purse. Or, whether or not he will have stories that rival my nyc public school days of fish sticks, tater tots and canned peaches. But perhaps we will rest easiest by sacrificing the dream of an extra eight minutes of sleep and continuing to pack his lunch for the next fourteen years. Time will tell.

References:

1. http://www.nypost.com/p/lifestyle/food/is_your_school_out_to_lunch_QyKzZEUYRKH3yNpsRNpe5I

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12food.html

3. Kathryn M. Neckerman, Michael D.M. Bader, Catherine A. Richards, Marnie Purciel, James W. Quinn, Juli Simon Thomas, Caitlin Warbelow, Christopher C. Weiss, Gina S. Lovasi, Andrew Rundle. Disparities in the Food Environments of New York City Public Schools. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2010; 39 (3):195