Lunch Wars: How to Start a School Food Revolution and Win the Battle for Our Children's Health

Kalafa, producer and director of the documentary Two Angry Moms, delves more deeply into the subject of school lunch, offering a step-by-step action plan for parents hoping to make changes in their child's school lunch room. The author explains how the project started, revealing that efforts to provide her daughter with healthy food at home were being "undermined" by unhealthy choices at school (according to the author, the school cafeteria may well be "a microcosm of American fake food culture"). Kalafa serves up some scary statistics, noting the link between childhood junk food and obesity, diabetes, and learning, behavioral, and other health problems, and soberly observing that "our children's life expectancy is now shorter than our own." Kids who buy lunch at school, she notes, don't do as well academically; better food means better grades. With plenty of convincing evidence in hand, she then urges parents to visit their children's lunch rooms, create partnerships with teachers, school staff, and the PTO or PTA, conduct surveys, audit the school food environment, create an updated school wellness policy, and take other steps toward change. Kalafa also provides plenty of positive examples of schools that have gone the extra mile, establishing farm to school and other innovative and nourishing programs. This meaty, practical offshoot of Kalafa's film will help parents turn anger into positive action. (Sept.)