Good food is a right, not a privilege. It brings children into a positive relationship with their health, community and environment.
I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land...to know how to nourish themselves...and to know how to connect with the community around them.
We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.
I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.
I think Americas food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, its very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.
Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think its important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.
It's about children cooking themselves, growing themselves. When kids grow it and cook it they eat it.
Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives.
If our public school system is a truly democratic institution. It's the place where we can reach every child in this county from kindergarten. What an opportunity to edibly educate them. I don't just mean a glorified cooking class. I've never thought of it that way. I have always thought of it as a way to empower students to learn, to give them confidence, and to nourish them. So, I think the centerpiece has to be a free, sustainable school lunch for every child.
I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair. It's unfair to charge for food in schools, especially to charge for food that is making children sick.
I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free.
