Cooking up Change National Honorary Co-chair Karen Duncan: Speaking Up for Student Health & Learning

Today we have a guest blog from Karen Duncan, National Honorary Co-chair of Cooking up Change 2010 and wife of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Tomorrow, March 2, Karen will speak at a Capitol Hill briefing on the future of school food along with Cooking up Change National Honorary Co-Chair Christie Vilsack, HSC founding executive director Rochelle Davis and the student chefs of Tilden Career Community High School, winners of the Cooking up Change healthy cooking contest. Attendees at the briefing will have the chance to try the healthy, tasty school lunch that the students created. The meal will also be served in the House of Representatives cafeteria that same day. You can send a letter urging your Congressional leaders to try the healthy school lunch and attend the briefing!

I'm very happy to serve as the National Honorary Co-Chair of Cooking up Change and be part of this national effort to change the kind of food we feed our children in school.

As a mother, I know how vital it is to give our kids nutritious food and help them learn about healthy eating so that they will be prepared to make good decisions about what they eat for the rest of their lives.

As an educator, I know how vital good nutrition is to students' learning. A piece of their academic success is the simple question of how well nourished they are. As we look to students to achieve academic outcomes at school, we can't overlook the question of whether we are feeding them food that provides the fuel to succeed. I love that with Cooking up Change, we are looking to the students themselves for inspiration and solutions to the challenges schools face in serving fresh, nutritious meals that support students' readiness to excel in the classroom.

Schools have some very formidable obstacles to serving the lunches that we might like to see. I hope that through Cooking up Change, we can help remove some of those obstacles.

I've had the chance to visit schools while learning about this issue and have seen some remarkable programs -- some schools, for example, that make tasty local produce a regular part of the school day and directly connect lessons about healthy eating with the food kids are served in school. I'd like to see children in all of our schools have the opportunity to eat school food that exemplifies the ideas we tell them are important about eating well. There's often a real disconnect between what we feed children at school and what we tell them they should eat. We need to address that discrepancy. We talk to kids about eating fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains -- now we need to serve those foods for lunch in the cafeteria. I'd like to see choices in the lunchroom that match up with the nutrition education piece.

The really interesting thing about Cooking up Change is that it asks students to take that nutrition education component and translate it into a great meal that appeals to them and to their peers. The meals they create are just terrific. I am really proud of the students who are taking on this challenge.

Everybody finds something they care about doing in life, something that empowers them and brings out their talent. I completely admire that these students have found such passion, creativity and vision for making good food. I thank them for focusing this talent on school food in particular. I am happy to be working with these students in Cooking up Change to help make their vision for school food a reality in their schools and in schools across the nation.

Comments

[Peter Charalambos]

This should be continued in culinary schools and not end when school is over.

We strongly promote healthy nutritious food and future generations will benefit.

[Patrick S]

I think anything that's done to promote healthier eating in schools should be applauded! I read that somewhere around 30% of meals in the National School Lunch Program don't even meet federal nutritional standards! Ridiculous...it's 2010!