When public school kids in Berkeley sit down for lunch, they dig in to a meal made from scratch, with fresh fruits and vegetables, organic milk and whole grains. They are not fed trans fats, or high fructose corn syrup, and almost no refined sugar or flour. Every school boasts a salad bar as well as a universal breakfast program aimed at ensuring that every child, no matter what their income status, is fed a nutritious breakfast before they are expected to sit, listen and learn.

With lunch menu items that include 1% milk, salad, freshly made salsa, and tofu and veggie pizzas, it all sounds light years ahead of the dismal fare most kids are still being served. It’s true that Berkeley Unified provides an enviable example of just how good things can get in the lunch line, but the nutritional program has come a long way in a relatively short period of time.

When Chef Ann Cooper first took the job as Director of Nutrition Services for the Berkeley Unified School District, the breakfast and lunchtime offerings for the 16 public schools and 9,000+ kids who attend them were shocking. Chicken nuggets, tater-tots, corndogs, pizza pockets and chocolate milk were popular items. For the “renegade lunch lady,” as she is now dubbed, nothing short of a complete overhaul would do.

How it all began:

In 1999 Chef Ann was working in a fancy restaurant in Vermont when she got a call from the Ross School in NY to come and be their chef. At first she thought, “Me? A lunch lady? No way!” But after a second call, she reconsidered. She had just finished writing her second book, Bitter Harvest, which explores the connections between food (including bioengineered foods) and our personal health. The book also exposes big business’ impact on what we eat today. This got her interested in what was going on with kids and food, and, as she puts it, “the connection between healthy food and healthy people.”

Her pilot Wellness Policy had proven successful, and schools across the country invited her to work with them, wanting her enthusiasm and expertise to help them redefine the school lunch. Thanks to a grant from The Alice Waters Foundation of Chez Panisse, which pays Ann’s salary, Berkeley schools are now at the forefront of this school food revolution.

Ann’s latest book, Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, gives parents and school staff members alike valuable, basic childhood nutrition facts, including new thoughts on what to feed your baby and diverse breakfast, lunch and snack recipes. The book also offers sage advice on how to motivate kids to eat right. She urges parents to take kids shopping, cook with them, make the mealtime experience special, and—maybe most important—be a good role model!

How can we get lunches like this for our kids?

According to Ann, there are two tacks parents can take to create the kind of system improvements that Berkeley Unified schools have undergone. One is to find your school district’s wellness policy, which should be on their Web site. If it isn’t, Ann urges parents to “call or email [the school district office] and ask why not.” Berkeley started out with a strong wellness policy that set the tone for change. You can compare your school’s policy to an example on Ann’s Web site, www.lunchlessons.org.

Also important, Ann urges, “go eat a lunch in your local school,” to see what is actually being served on that plastic tray. Educate yourself then work with your school’s administrators to make improvements.

The second channel to initiate activism is to press our government for change. The reimbursement rate schools receive needs to be raised and stricter guidelines need to be enforced. “Fruit cocktail should not even be a reimbursed food,” Ann declares. “Big business spends 20 billion dollars every year to market foods like chicken nuggets to make them ‘cool’ foods for kids,” according to Ann, so not buying into this type of marketing is crucial. “Kids don’t need French fries, macaroni and cheese, and pizza to keep them happy,” she says, questioning the government’s reimbursement of schools that serve students such unhealthy fare.

What parents can do at home

Gardening with kids is a vital tool to help them understand the connection between healthy foods, people and, ultimately, the earth. It’s a “visceral learning medium which kids really respond to,” Ann explains. “Hands-on learning guides their food choices and their taste buds,” she says, explaining that kids become engaged in eating healthy when they get excited to grow their own food and then get to cook with it. Ann enthuses, “A light bulb goes off…They taste things their parents would bet they would never put in their mouths!”

Be flexible too. “Research shows it takes a child between 7 to 12 times to try a new food product before they accept it,” Ann points out. Children enjoy having some control over what they eat, so let them pick out a fruit or veggie at the grocery store, encourage them to help select the dinner menu, and hold them up so they can stir a pot of soup or mix a salad. These small, subtle acts all work to define our children’s value systems and show them that growing, cooking and eating wholesome foods, which will ultimately keep them healthy, is easy, delicious and fun.

Chef Ann’s passionate mission “to change the way children are eating” is working in Berkeley. With parents getting involved and a shift in expectations as well as political reform, healthy foods can become the standard for lunches in every school in the country, including Sacramento-area schools.