Status Updates From Lunch Lessons: Changing the...

Whereas, the knowledge and skill-base for farming, gardening, food preservation, cooking, and the ritual of the table are disappearing from American life

In an average gym class, a child is aerobically active for only 3.5 minutes.

In 2004, the associated Press reported that Krispy Kreme stores would give Palm Beach County (Florida) students in kindergarten through 6th grade a free doughnut for every A on their report card.

Pillsbury and General Mills worked with food writers and women’s magazines after World War II to convince American housewives that cooking meals from scratch was arduous old-fashioned, unhygienic, expensive, and generally inferior to prepackaged cake mixes, TV dinners, and frozen scrambled eggs.

Brian Haweil of the Worldwatch Institute reported that every dollar spent with a local food business is worth 2.50 to the community.

In 1980s, under Reagan budget cuts, new foods are added to the permissible list. Ketchup as a vegetable was a shocking one (paraphrased)

Great Depression of 1930s, people were hungry, not because of a shortage of food, but because they didn’t have the money to buy food, and as a result, American farmers were left with enormous agricultural surpluses and were in danger of losing their farms.

About 99% of todays agricultural production depends on only 24 different domesticated plant species. Of those, rice, wheat, and corn account for most of the world’s caloric intake

Children eat 40% of their meals in fast-food restaurants

Every day one and four Americans eats fast food

Most of our food travels, 1500 miles before we eat it

Most research says that it takes an average of 10 to 12 attempts before a child will try new food, unless they are involved and cooking and gardening projects like Alice Water’s edible school yard or after school summer programs like Magic Garden club.

Food is not respected; rather, it is something that must be made and consumed with increasing speed.