Of the six leading causes of death in the United States today, four are linked to unhealthy diets.ⁱ Alarmingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently stated that: (i) more than a third of today’s eight-year-olds (and as many as half in minority communities) will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetimes,ⁱⁱ and (ii) today’s children will have shorter life expectancies than their parents due to diet-related illness.ⁱⁱⁱ In addition, the American Medical Association has reported that blood pressure has increased over the past decade in children and adolescents, in part because of increasing rates of overweight.^iv Further, Pediatrics Journal reported in April 2008 that more than 20% of the nearly 21 million American children aged 10 to 14 years will become overweight or obese within the next two years.^v

A high school beverage dispenser during lunch hour.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

Studies have shown that a diet consisting of foods high in fats, sugars, food additives and artificial colors, and low in vitamins, minerals and other protective factors such as fiber and phyto-chemicals commonly found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains can negatively impact learning. Moreover, exposure to pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals through our food supply is being increasingly linked to such conditions as ADD, ADHD, antibiotic resistance and early onset of puberty, as well as diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

On a positive note, recent studies have shown that school-based intervention can be effective in preventing the development of overweight among certain children.^vi

In response to a significant increase in funding requests for various projects related to school food and gardens throughout the Tri-County region, and a growing awareness of the alarming increase in rates of diet-related illness and their consequences, the Orfalea Fund held numerous meetings with community members and consultants in late May and June of 2007. During an intensive two-day strategic planning meeting at their foundation headquarters in Santa Barbara, California, in late June 2007, the Orfalea Fund focused on the primary goal of reintroducing fresh, whole, cooked-from-scratch foods into school cafeteria environments, and the secondary goal of procuring as much school food as possible from local growers. Shortly after the strategic planning meeting, the Orfalea Fund committed itself to developing the s’Cool Food Initiative, with the mission of creating a community of healthy children across Santa Barbara County who make educated food choices throughout their lives.

Marion Nestle, Morgan Spurlock and Kate Adamick at “Bringing Ideas to the Table.”
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

A key goal of the s’Cool Food Initiative is to create a wide base of community support for the concept of school food reform. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, supportive parents, students and other community members encourage and sustain the efforts of more progressive school district administrators. If positive changes are met with resistance from those most likely to benefit, school administrators and food service directors will be less likely to focus their passion and energy on the issue. Second, in school districts where the administrators are either unaware that their food service department is jeopardizing the wellbeing of their students or unwilling to take on the task of addressing the issue, community pressure will likely be the only driving force moving school food reform forward.

As a result, s’Cool Food took many steps during its first year to help Santa Barbara County community members understand the links among diet, health and the environment, and to encourage active participation in, and support for, school food reform in local school districts. A website was developed (www.sCoolFood.org), thousands of s’Cool Food canvas bags were distributed to community members, informational brochures were published in both English and Spanish, and a food systems trivia wheel was created and featured at over 60 farmers markets and public events. In addition, a “Student of the Month” photo campaign was launched featuring local students paired with local produce. The resulting photos are featured on the s’Cool Food website and on the sides of local buses and transit vans throughout Santa Barbara County. s’Cool Food also hosted several public events that focused on food systems and school food reform and featured such noted speakers as Morgan Spurlock, Dr. Marion Nestle, and Chef Ann Cooper.

Boot Camp attendees celebrate their “graduation.”
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

s’Cool Food also undertook its first educational initiative designed specifically for school food service workers. During a week-long “culinary boot camp” in August 2008, two dozen enthusiastic participants from Santa Barbara County school districts^vii spent part of their summer vacation sharpening their cooking skills and increasing their culinary knowledge. School food reform experts from around the country provided the participants with training in food safety and sanitation, knife skills, flavor dynamics, culinary math, budgeting and scratch-cooking techniques. At the end of the rigorous but rewarding week, each participant received a chef’s jacket and hat, professional chef knives, digital cooking thermometers and a framed certificate of completion.

During the 2007-08 school year, the Orfalea Fund partnered with Food Systems Solutions, an independent food systems consulting firm specializing in school food reform, to conduct a comprehensive Needs Assessment to determine: (1) the extent to which each Santa Barbara County school district is able to meet the goals of s’Cool Food with existing resources; (2) what additional financial and other resources will be needed by Santa Barbara County school districts to meet said goals; and (3) how those resources may best be obtained and utilized.

Prepackaged “foods” in local school.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

Santa Barbara County includes 22 public school districts, comprising 116 schools that served 66,306 students in kinder-garten through 12th grade during the 2007-08 school year.^viii The demographics of the student body are 58.43% Hispanic, 31.32% White, 2.31% Asian, and 2.05% African American, with the remaining students falling into various other ethnic groups. The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch range among the schools from 0% to 100%.^ix Santa Barbara County school districts have been experiencing a period of slow but steady decline in enrollment since 2004.^x

The school-by-school site visits conducted in connection with the Needs Assessment began in October 2007 and concluded in May 2008. The first two months were devoted largely to introductory meetings with district superintendents and, in some cases, their senior staff members. Follow-up site visits were then scheduled throughout the remainder of the school year during which an extensive assessment of each school facility in each of the districts was conducted. The follow-up visits were generally led by the food service director for the district and, in some cases, lasted several days. By the conclusion of the site visit period, 15 superintendents held introductory meetings, and a total of 110 schools in 20 school districts participated in site visits.

Middle school lunch entrées awaiting students.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

The site visits were designed to assess the many variables directly and indirectly related to a district’s ability to move from a system that currently serves heavily processed foods to one that serves cooked-from-scratch meals. Such variables include, but are not limited to, the size of the district in terms of both number of students and number of schools, the number and skill level of kitchen staff members and whether they are unionized, the type and condition of the kitchen equipment and how the kitchens are physically laid out, numerous budgetary matters including how revenues and expenses are allocated and spent, and whether the district has school gardens. At least as important as such objective factors is the mind-set of the district’s administrators, parents and food service director regarding the issue of school food reform, as it is these individuals who must commit themselves to ensuring that positive change occurs despite the inevitable challenges.

A salad bar is only as good as its ingredients.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

Not unlike typical school districts across America, most school districts in Santa Barbara County do not currently have access to the knowledge and resources necessary to convert their school food programs from processed to cooked-from-scratch food. While a few Santa Barbara County school districts are actively working toward improving the quality of their school food, others seem at a loss for where to begin. Entrées in Santa Barbara County school cafeterias vary from meals lovingly cooked from scratch to plastic bags of pre-fried products not likely to be recognized as food at all by our ancestors. Salad bars throughout the County’s schools range from genuine feasts of local produce to little more than display cases for canned foods. Food service workers in some cafeterias can be found roasting fresh chicken and mashing freshly-boiled potatoes by hand, while in other cafeterias the staff members are expected to do little more than pan up frozen corn dogs.

Prior to the beginning of the Needs Assessment process, there was hope that a single uniform school food system could be created that would meet the ideal and serve all of Santa Barbara County. Once the introductory meetings began, however, it quickly became clear that the districts have historically operated so independently from one another that cooperation on a scale large enough to create a single county-wide school food system is unlikely in the near term. In many districts, the administrators do not really believe there is anything wrong with their current system, while in other districts, the administrators are well aware that dramatic change is essential. The likely result will be that the more progressive districts will make rapid changes over the next one to two years. Other districts are likely to follow suit over the course of the next decade as the progressive districts set a standard that will come to be expected from all.

A fundamental first step in this process of supporting the progressive school districts will be to provide cafeteria workers with proper training in ordering, receiving, storing, handling, and preparing fresh, whole foods. Along with adequate equipment and facilities, these skills are a critical component in cooked-from-scratch meal programs, and will ensure that cafeteria workers are able to safely and confidently perform the tasks attendant to such programs. Furthermore, in order to restore some understanding of ecoliteracy,^xi sustainable food systems, and the link between diet and health, children must be reintroduced to such basic concepts as what real food is and how it grows. Finally, the abundant local agriculture system in Santa Barbara County and neighboring counties must be utilized in such a way as to improve both the diet and health of the local school children, as well as the dignity and prosperity of the local farmers.

A cafeteria worker pans up corn dogs.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

Unfortunately, the school food environments in most American schools today, including those in Santa Barbara County, are far from ideal. Instead, the typical 21st century school lunch is a rushed affair eaten immediately before recess in 15 or 20 minutes with little adult interaction. In temperate climates such as that of Santa Barbara County, students often eat outside, often with insufficient seating for every child and with no available shelter in the event of cold or rain. An average lunch may consist of chicken nuggets, French fries, canned fruit cocktail in heavy syrup, and chocolate milk. Ironically, meals served under such conditions and comprising such items are sanctioned by the United States Department of Agriculture, which regulates and subsidizes the National School Lunch Program.

In an ideal school food environment, recess occurs before lunch so that students are hungrier and eat more when they come into the cafeteria. This results in less food waste and better nourishment of the children, rather than in encouraging them to rush through their meals in order to play. Children are also more likely to be more focused and ready to learn when they return to class if they recess prior to eating.

Once students come in from recess, they should have the opportunity to sit down together with their teachers and staff to eat. At least 30 minutes should be allotted for the children to get their food, sit down and eat in a relaxed manner. If possible, dining tables are round in order to easily facilitate conversation among the diners and make it less likely that some children can be excluded from interacting with their peers. The presence of adults at the tables with the students helps maintain discipline and provides students with an opportunity to engage their teachers in a less structured environment than the classroom.

Local cafeteria cook mashes potatoes from scratch.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

The food itself should be a cooked-from-scratch meal that may include such traditional staples as baked chicken, roasted potatoes, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain bread, and unflavored lowfat milk served from self-serve dispensers. Water should be readily available free of charge at all times for every student. As much of the food as possible should be purchased from local farmers who utilize sustainable agriculture practices.

s’Cool Food and the Orfalea Fund are committed to working with schools and community members to help move Santa Barbara County’s school food environments closer to the ideal.

s’Cool Foods’s “Trivia Wheel” was a popular attraction at farmers markets and community events.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

The site visits of Santa Barbara County school meal programs, conducted during the s’Cool Food Initiative’s Needs Assessment, revealed that the needs among Santa Barbara County school districts run both deep and wide. Cafeteria workers need additional training on professional cook-from-scratch techniques, food service directors need to be connected to local farmers in order to purchase local produce, children need hands-on experiential learning opportunities in cooking and gardening to learn an appreciation for real food, and school kitchens need to be properly designed and equipped to enable cafeteria staff to efficiently and effectively perform their jobs.

In view of these extensive needs, the Orfalea Fund and s’Cool Food will spend the next two to three years focusing on direct actions that will help meet some of these needs. Actions that s’Cool Food will take include the following:

• Culinary Training for Cafeteria Workers s’Cool Food will work with professional chef educators to develop a culinary training program to increase the skill levels and confidence of Santa Barbara County public school cafeteria workers and enable food service directors to add more cooked-from-scratch items to their menus with the confidence that their staff members will be able to successfully perform their jobs.
• Local Procurement s’Cool Food will work to bring together Santa Barbara County school district administrators and local farmers to help create a direct purchasing relationship through which the farmers grow produce specifically for the school districts.
• School Gardens s’Cool Food will work with local nonprofit organizations to create a team of “school garden coordinators” who will assist in developing and maintaining school gardens at Santa Barbara County public schools and become the principal garden instructors at those schools.
• Agriculture Education The Orfalea Fund, through s’Cool Food, will work to create a two-year agriculture education fellowship to be awarded to a young farmer with experience in education who could both transform a Santa Barbara County high school’s unused arable land into working farmland and enlist and teach the high school students to play an active role in planting, maintaining and harvesting the crops to be used in the district’s cafeterias.
• ROP Culinary Training s’Cool Food will work with the Santa Barbara County Education Office to help develop a 21st century culinary curriculum for Santa Barbara County public high school students that could serve as a model for the State of California.
• “Virtual Lunchbox” s’Cool Food will partner with other nonprofits to create a “Virtual Lunchbox” in which the experiences, tools and best practices, amassed in recent years by those who work extensively in the area of school food reform, can be shared with school districts across the country through an interactive web-portal that provides menus, recipes, budgets, cost analysis tools, regional sourcing guides for local foods, classroom curricula, marketing tools and training videos.

Boot Camp attendees practice their new knife skills.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations

In addition to the direct actions listed above in “What We’re Doing to Get There,” the Orfalea Fund, through the s’Cool Food Initiative, will also provide direct funding for school food reform measures in Santa Barbara County public school districts in the following four primary funding areas:

• Food Systems Education Strategies and programs designed to provide students, teachers and families with hands-on experiential learning and academic curricula that link food, health and the environment.
• Infrastructure Facilities and equipment that (i) assist school cafeteria workers in preparing cooked-from-scratch meals, or (ii) help teach students how to grow and cook food.
• Local Procurement Strategies and programs that connect local agriculture to local education, including growing, processing, and distributing local foods for local schools using sustainable methods.
• Public Awareness Strategies, programs and events that help the general public become more knowledgeable about the links among food, health and the environment.

Those eligible for grants will include Santa Barbara County school districts, individual public elementary and secondary schools within Santa Barbara County, and nonprofit organizations that can help address the needs outlined by the primary funding areas.

Beginning in the 1970s, convenience and cost-savings were the driving force behind the nearly universal movement toward serving highly processed school meals. The rate of childhood obesity began its steady and disquieting incline at about the same time. As rates of diet-related illness continue to rise among children at alarming rates, a new paradigm in school food must be created.

Creating this new school food paradigm will require vigilance, participation and unwavering commitment among parents, school administrators and community members alike. Success will depend on whether parents make time to visit their children’s cafeterias, teachers encourage students to try new foods, food service directors step outside of their comfort zone in preparing meals, school boards set aside a small portion of general funds to improve food quality, and superintendents actively lead their districts toward a school meal program that is valued every bit as much as the academic curriculum.

s'Cool Food and the Orfalea Fund are honored to help empower Santa Barbara County’s school districts to meet their goal of serving healthier, whole foods to their students. Together, the adults of Santa Barbara County can recreate a community in which our children will learn to make educated food choices that will keep them healthy throughout their lives.

Our Food, Our Future.
Courtesy of Orfalea Foundations