School Lunches: From Mystery Meat to Healthier Fare
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Hour 1
What’s for lunch? Frozen pizza, French fries, burgers and chicken fingers. That’s the menu in most school cafeterias. But recently, these fast food-style offerings have come under fire. First lady Michelle Obama, chef Jamie Oliver, even some military generals, have singled out school lunches as a major contributor to the obesity epidemic. Congress is also debating a proposal to increase funding and set federal nutritional standards for school lunches. This hour, we’ll look at how school lunches became so unhealthy, the challenges schools face to making them more nutritious, and their effect on children’s health. Our guests are Virginia Stallings, a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Chair of an Institute of Medicine report on school lunches, and Jan Poppendieck, a sociologist at Hunter College and author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America.
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[audio: 051010_100630.mp3]
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