May 12, 2005 | Read Time: 2 minutes
At a typical public school, lunch is an unhealthy and unappetizing combination of government-surplus meat and prepackaged fare, and as a result young people have become “innocent consumers” of what a culture short on time and high on calories puts on their plates, says Vogue magazine (April).
Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., hopes to make youngsters better informed through a program her philanthropy plans to kick off in the fall. The Chez Panisse Foundation is designing a school-lunch program that will involve students in every stage of food preparation — from planting seeds to growing vegetables to consuming meals made solely from fresh ingredients.
“Kids really don’t know anymore where food comes from, and they are taught to think that it doesn’t matter,” says Ms. Waters.
The foundation’s program plans to integrate lessons about food into the academic curriculum at a middle school near Chez Panisse. “The students take their places at family-style wooden tables set for 10,” Ms. Waters tells the magazine, envisioning a scene at the school’s new cafeteria. “Fresh bread and a salad with cucumbers and peppers are already on the table, along with real dishes and real glasses and silverware. … As the kids eat, they’re engaged with a teacher in a conversation. Maybe it’s a conversation about where all this food comes from; maybe it’s a geography class or a California history class. Maybe they’re trying to guess what kind of herbs are on the chicken.”
The goal, the magazine says, is to develop a program that can be expanded to serve all the public schools in the Berkeley school district. Ms. Waters hopes schools around the country will eventually copy the program.
