It seems pretty easy to make the case against lunch room food, and I think few would argue that it couldn’t be improved, its just the very difficult matter of “how”. But if Berkeley can bring in a chef to reform its kids’ lunch menu and Decatur is Roy Blunt’s Berkeley…perhaps we could someday follow in their footsteps. The movement would probably pay for itself with press.

Thanks also for the book recommendation…from the Amazon blurb it sounds like Patel comes to many of Pollan’s same conclusions, through a slightly different and more opinionated lens. I’ll check it out!

And, if you’re interested in overhauling the food system, especially the subsidies you might want to fuel the fire by Google’ing: Distributional effects of WTO agricultural reforms in rich and poor countries.

The punch line of that study is this: The authors simulated what would happen if one could get rid of the (often unfair) subsidies and barriers on global prices and trade volumes. They then mapped the outcomes onto household surveys in 15 different and mostly poor countries. The result: Free trade (in the real sense of the term) in farm goods would reduce poverty in 13 countries while raising it in two.

The global food systems is a mess and its not just bc of oil. Read _Stuffed and Starved_ by Raj Patel for a full account of how messed up it is.

I need to learn more about where funding for lunches comes from…