The Back to School Lunches Nightmare - L'incubo del Ritorno a Scuola dei Genitori: Il Pranzo a Scuola!

Summer is not over here but people and the newspapers (Boston Globe) are already talking about school. Parents will soon have to deal with this new reality. Whether they like it or not, it is coming. 

But why so much anxiety about school now that the rain has stopped and that summer has finally brought us some nice sunny days? The Ferragosto mid-summer harvest feast is just about to start in Italy (imagine trays filled with yummy salads, quiches, seafood, fruits, parmigiane and whatever one might fancy - wish I were in Italy now), with the children eating until dusk and later look at the sky to spot a falling star and here people are already talking, in

horror and with panic, about school? This is the root cause of the problem: once again, LUNCHES, SCHOOL LUNCHES, the Boston parents' nightmare.

Why packing lunches for school generates so many anxieties here? I heard moms talking about the dreaded moment of having to prepare their kids' lunchbag twice in one day. Do these parents have leftovers from the day before they can simply put in their kids' lunchboxes like I do? The answer is rarely and when they do, children don't eat them.

PARENTS RARELY COOK

We all eat less when it's hot, sure. My mom used to limit our summer lunches to prosciutto, mozzarella, salads and fruits. But she always cooked dinner, especially when friends were coming over, with the view that we were all going to bed late, so there was enough time to digest the food before bedtime. Eating a home cooked meal with family and friends was always a pleasure in those summer days as a child but also a reminder that I had to eat everything, nicely sat at the table. 

Here in the US, on the contrary, most parents don't cook at all during the summer. Not that they do much more cooking during the rest of the year but in the summer, few Americans can resist the temptation of slamming a couple of frozen hot dogs on the BBQ and to reheat pizza or chinese take out bought the day before.It is easy to skip cooking in the summer but what do parents do the rest of the year? When school restarts in the fall how can they be expected to suddenly figure out lunches and dinners which can meet the needs of their growing kids with super tight schedules? It certainly becomes a tough challenge. 

CHILDREN DON'T EAT

In today's Boston Globe article, the parents are freaked out because their kids are super-picky eaters. The parents struggle to satisfy their little monsters and many of them still keep it in the realm of healthy or at least they believe they do. The parents created this whole mess because they never did the hard work of forcing their kids to eat a wide variety of cooked foods 20-30 times until they actually liked them. But they don't see this, they just myopically see themselves as caught in a situation beyond their control... "My little Jimmy just refuses to eat anything but yogurt with cinammon" "Mine only eats organic peanut butter of XYZ brand". Never-mind that their parents and grandparents somehow managed to grow up not living on such things.

Parents rarely cook and children don't eat. Don't you think these two things are somehow related?

The Boston Globe article talks about this food nightmare in America from different parents' perspectives and quotes me on some of the things I wrote (below), while on vacation in Maine. While I was there, not a single day I failed to pack a different salad for me and for William for our lunch. It would be hard for me not to make an effort to eat well and varied every day.

MY ARLINGTON PARENT GROUP (MENTIONED ON THE BOSTON GLOBE)

Last year, I started APS More time to Eat, a group of parents concerned about their kids' school lunch, because I kept hearing from parents every day the same two complains: (1) children don't have enough time to eat in the public schools in Arlington (2) the lunch bags are still full when they come home. Most parents were blaming both issues to the small amount of time their children have at school for eating their lunches. Others were blaming the open snack station, an area setup by some schools with the children's lunches for them to eat lunch whenever they feel hungry. 

After talking to many parents and teachers, and making my own observations, I have come to several conclusions. First, kids have to be trained to eat.  After about thirty exposures to a food, most kids will eat them without a problem. Yes, vegetables as well. Most Americans, don't get this, however, and throw up their hands after one, two or three tries, without saying "Eat, kid!" once. This leads to kids who eat very narrow diets. There are kids I know who would only eat two or three things for lunch (honey or butter on bread)! Second, schools no longer take any role in compelling kids in eating their lunch (as my husband said they did in his youth). So, the conditions are set in which most kids need to be supervised and/or cajoled into eating, but instead, they are ignored.

Without someone strictly supervising the lunch period, kids become distracted, badly behaved and only want to eat dessert. Parents then see lunches that come home uneaten and the schools become convinced that the kids have plenty of time to eat... This leads to a dysfunctional cycle. Parents start packing sugary, the least healthy things (e.g., Nutella, chips) because they fear their child not eating at all. The schools can see that the kids eat their chocolate and chips in 10 minutes and then become unruly - why not cut the lunch time even shorter so they can go play or do something else?

The truth is, eating well is a learned skill. We immigrant parents really struggle in the US schools because we put the time and effort in to teach our children, but then the schools are almost completely hands-off in the lunch room. Our kids are under peer pressure to eat the sugary, salty things that the other kids bring, and they also are under pressure to eat their more complicated (but nutritious) meals as fast as possible because the school officials want to cut lunch as short as possible. Unfortunately, this often leads to eating disorders or digestion issues (e.g. fermentation).

In Italy, where our 8 year old son attends school part-time, the teachers eat with the children and they enforce strong rules to ensure that the kids learn to eat. Additionally, they educate the children from Infancy about nutrition, for example by giving rewards to kids at the end of the year. As I understand it, in the US schools, this goes untouched until middle school.

I don't have illusions about changing America's food culture, but I think there are three changes that could make a big difference. First, give the kids more time to eat. Second, have more quality supervision of the children while eating and expect them to push the kids into eating the food they have either brought or bought. Third, start serious nutrition education from kindergarten. To the second point, if there were teachers supervising the kids, according to my son William, it wouldn't make a bit of a difference because it is likely they would act like the lunch ladies. I think he made a valid point. I know that many parents would be happy to volunteer to help supervise the kids, but they must feel empowered (and be willing) to compel the kids to eat, something I never saw in the US. 

In short, eating well at school to be able to think and learn is a life skill. Parents play a huge role, but without the active support of the schools, it all comes crashing down.