When I used to live in Olympia, we would occasionally go north to Seattle or Tacoma.
Always, one of the curious highlights of the trip was a sign plastered on the back of a dodgy stripmall just south of Lakewood that boldly offered “$1 Chinese Food.”
Eventually, our friend, Pat, after years of driving by the sign, stopped in to have a sample. Of course, it wasn’t great.
Why do I tell this story?
Well, it’s an awfully long way of letting you know the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently posted an excellent story on why it’s so hard to get locally grown food into schools.
Reporter Jennifer Langston learned that most Seattle school lunches, after labor costs are removed, must be assembled with a budget of — wait for it — $1.
“Schools have roughly one dollar per student to spend on food for a nutritious lunch of protein, fruit, vegetables, milk and bread — less than the cost of a single tomato bought at a farmers market,” Langston wrote, adding that the food miles involved in a typical September school lunch, nachos, did not total 1,500 miles (the average you typically hear quoted), but 7,500 miles with beef from California, tomatoes from the San Joaquin Valley and beans from either North Dakota or Minnesota.
“Those items could have been bought from farms in our backyard, but weren’t,” Langston wrote. “In the Puget Sound region, consumers increasingly want local food — for the fresh taste, to curb carbon emissions or because of concerns about the safety of food grown overseas. While schools are offering healthier menu choices, what seems like a no-brainer — feeding local kids locally grown food — is surprisingly hard to do.”
Why?
Give it a read. It’s fascinating.
This dilemma in public schools, it seems to me, is the ultimate microcosm of what’s gone wrong with America’s over-centralized food systems.
America’s expectation of paying next to nothing for food, even for kids, reveals the depth of denial we all have about what it really takes to put together a truly wholesome meal.
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