| 加利福尼亚学校帮助学生选择健康饮食-2 Much to everyone's surprise, the most popular menu item is the all-organic salad bar. "When I first put in that salad bar, everyone said 'oh, kids won't eat salad! And now kids line up for salad. It's amazing, kids love the salad bar." And Cooper is the director of Nutritional Services at Berkeley's public schools. She calls herself "The Renegade Lunch Lady". Cooper was a celebrity chef who's cooked for clients like the Grateful Dead band and New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. "When I came to Berkeley, my goal was to really change the food will serve the kids. I wanted to segue from a system where we had almost all processed foods to one where we're serving fresh foods. We wanted to reduce and eliminate where possible refined sugars and refined flours, eliminate trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup , eliminate desserts, fried foods. And really try and increase fresh fruits and vegetables, whole foods, with an eye in the long run towards more locally produced foods and more organic foods." Winning the hearts, minds, and palettes of students is easier said than done. “It's disgusting… They try to be too healthy… I think the salad bar is really good, and it's good quality and good prices… More people would go there by having food that we like… Probably like pizza, nachos , French fries... McDonald's is cheaper and you can get what you want.” "Most days, my head is going like this: 'boom, boom, boom.' Like if my head was a caricature, you can see my head about to explode." Ann Cooper admits that steering kids away from McDonald's and fast food will not happen overnight, but she insists it's a goal worth pursuing. "It's really making sure that our children's health and wellness is just as much a priority as whether they can read and write. Because they need all of those things. Reading, writing, math, trigonometry… all that is going to do our children no good if they all have diabetes by the time they're 17 years old and are sick and insulin -dependent by the time they're 22. We have to put as much priority on their health and good food and nutrition as we do on everything else." The new cafeteria menu has been in place for over a year. Although the menu is more expensive and labor intensive, the Berkeley school administration is fully behind the program. It's too soon to tell whether the change has made a difference in student health and obesity. But if it does, Berkeley's new cafeteria menu could serve as an important role model for other schools around the country |
