School food and public policy

The new issue of Informed Eating also reproduces Marion Nestle's recent editorial on school food, from the Center for Ecoliteracy website. The highlight:

What particularly disturbs me about commercial intrusions into school meals is that they are so unnecessary. Schools are perfectly capable of producing nutritionally sound foods that taste good and are enthusiastically consumed by students as well as teachers. From my own observations, a healthy school meals program (in every sense of the word) requires just three elements: a committed food service director, a supportive principal, and devoted parents. It just seems so obvious that the future of our nation demands each of these elements to be in place in every one of the 95,000 schools in the country. These are, after all, our children.

See www.foodpolitics.com for Marion's mix of sober analysis, personal reporting, and understated outrage at book length.