Following up on yesterday’s post on Baltimore’s K-12 culinary reforms, here’s a look at the types of “food” that Baltimore students presumably were ingesting before the changes.

The website of one of the leading education trade journals, Gourmet magazine, has a feature on Tony Geraci, who’s been charged with making Baltimore’s school lunches more nourishing. Replacing sugary snacks and processed entrees will be whole grains and fresh fruits and veggies. Geraci has even promised that within a year students will be munching on Maryland-grown produce at least three times a week.

“I just had two first-graders tell me that they had never had a fresh peach,” Geraci said. “And that’s my point. Kids need to know what real food is.” Pointing to a second-grader who was digging in, he added: “When I see this kid right here with a face full of peach juice, it brings joy to my heart. Look at that smile. Look at that face. That’s why I’m here.”

Geraci also plans to involve students in designing menus and helping farm a 33-acre plot of land in East Baltimore, à la Alice Waters.

Greg Toppo has a thorough piece in USA Today about school lunches. Long story short: They’re disgusting. A little competition in this arena would do a body good, but the politics (yes, messing with the school lunch program is political) are such that allowing schools to do the smart thing—i.e., find local purveyors to supply their cafeterias with decent food—isn’t currently feasible.

Plus, as long as students are responsible for paying only about a dollar or two of their daily lunch costs, they’re going to eat preprocessed garbage.

Less-than-humble Liam isn’t willing to acknowledge the significance of the recent Philadelphia healthy-eating study. He goes so far as to say that it “has nothing to do with education; it’s about whether kids who eat healthful foods for several hours a day will be healthier. Of course they will!”

Of course they will? The last several decades of education research are littered with examples of promising initiatives that take “several hours a day” and don’t get any results. In fact, there’s a serious debate among reformers and apologists about whether it’s fair to expect schools to have any impact on children’s well-being—academic or otherwise—since the kiddies spend most of their days outside of school and since home factors play such a large role in determining children’s fate. (Even the original Education Gadfly, Checker Finn, once estimated that children only spend nine percent of their lives in schools from age zero to eighteen.)

So here you have an initiative whereby schools serve children healthier lunches, keep them from accessing junk food and sugary drinks for seven hours a day, and teach them the basics about balanced eating. The schools have no direct control over anything else—the junk the kids might eat for breakfast, the junk they might eat for dinner, the junk they might eat for snacks, their lethargic after-school lifestyles. You might say the schools have even less control over kids’ diet and exercise than over their academic development. And yet this study finds that the intervention worked to measurably decrease the incidence of kids getting fat.

This little study is big news, Liam, no matter how you slice it. And it shows that schools can have a big impact on kids’ lives. If we can make their butts smaller, surely we can make their brains bigger.

Mike wants me to eat humble pie. I’d like to, but his arguments haven’t convinced me. He writes:

In a field where few research studies ever make any conclusions with real-world value, this particular study deserves praise, not pique.

He is, of course, conflating two fields: the education field, in which “few research studies ever make any conclusions with real-world value,” and the nutrition science field, in which studies often give us worthwhile conclusions (when their conclusions are tempered by common sense, of course). The two-year Philadelphia food study has nothing to do with education; it’s about whether kids who eat healthful foods for several hours a day will be healthier. Of course they will! 

Mike presumes that schools require studies like Philadelphia’s before they’ll spend more money on better cafeteria-food options. Sadly, he’s probably right. My point is, and has always been, that such studies are in reality unnecessary and simply convolute that which should be clear as day: don’t feed students garbage.

We don’t study whether exposing kids to less mold makes them healthier—we know it does, which is why schools invest money in keeping up their facilities and are attacked when they allow classrooms to deteriorate. School district leaders and Mike Petrilli may require longitudinal data to tell them that, for example, exercise is important, healthful food makes healthy people, and the less anthrax one ingests the better. But they shouldn’t.

Just last week, Liam expressed skepticism about a scrupulous research study that found that serving kids healthier food and drink led to fewer of them getting fat:

Isn’t it odd that a school embraces healthy food alternatives only after a two-year research study? It reminds one of the humorous dig at think tanks: that they study reality to see if it conforms to theory. In Philadelphia’s schools, it seems, common sense has truly been vindicated. It is, in fact, correct that replacing soda and potato chips with healthful alternatives will make students healthier!

Chuckle all you want, Liam, but schools have limited resources and, as you say yourself, “schools are turning to unhealthier cafeteria-food options because of rising food prices.” (So reports the Washington Post—on its front page, no less.) Why not admit that this well-designed research study could actually perform a worthwhile public service by stemming the rush from tofu to tater tots? In a field where few research studies ever make any conclusions with real-world value, this particular study deserves praise, not pique.

Schools are turning to unhealthier cafeteria-food options because of rising food prices, reports the Washington Post. Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to have the right idea: allow private contractors to supply lunches. One assumes that, for what schools currently spend, probably they could get more healthful and more varied food than is currently on offer.

Promise Academy in Harlem spends more per student, per day (in 2005, $5.87 at Promise covered costs for a pupil’s breakfast, lunch, and snacks) than most public schools—but not that much more. And it is able to staff its kitchen with a Johnson and Wales University culinary school grad who churns out meals like whole wheat penne with fresh vegetables.

Thanks to scrupulous research, we now know that when kids eat healthful foods they grow healthier. Isn’t it time schools exercised a little creativity and moved away from the chicken nuggets?