The Wild Wild Wild West of School Lunches #4: The $1.74 Challenge

Ahhhhhhhhhh. It's the weekend. You're looking forward to fun with family and friends. Perhaps you're hosting a dinner party. I have a challenge for you. I would like you to create a healthy and nutritious meal that everybody will eat and enjoy for $1.74 per serving. That's what each school that has a lunch program receives from the federal government in order to serve free breakfasts to those who qualify. Here are the requirements:

• Everybody has to finish their meal and enjoy it.
• You have to serve milk.
• You have to serve three servings of fruit and vegetables.
• It's preferable to include beans.
• Eat and serve 30 people within 1/2 hour's time by yourself.
• You will get style points for serving fresh organic locally grown vegetables and fruits.

That's the challenge. If you would like to be more precise in exactly what the USDA requirements are you can visit their website USDA. 

For those of you who want hard data here are the figures:

Breakfast:

Free: $1.74

Reduced: $1.44

Pay: $.26

Lunch

Free: $2.70

Reduced: $2.30

Pay: .$.27

You might be saying yourself if you are following this blog and saw my picture of $5.48 worth of food that it might not be that hard. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. That's why I am challenging my readers to come up with a solution.

But wait there's more! One school I work in with 70 students goes $15,000 in the red to provide school meals. Another school with 120 students goes $45,000 in the red.For you math types here are the figures to work with:

180 days in the school year (x) 70 students (x) $4.44/student (-) !5,000 = 70 healthy, happy and whole children who eat every bite! Good Luck

Rhode Island's Lunch Program

Election Thoughts: Five Simple Problem Solving Steps

Well, I have voted. It wasn't easy. I am embarrassed for my country with this last election. Leaders on both sides are acting like middle schoolers. Hold it! That's an insult to the middle schoolers I work with. In the hope and interest of eventually being part of an enlightened civil democracy where people actually work together to solve problems I am offering these five simple steps to problem solving to all of these politicians who must have been skipping school when somebody tried to teach them this stuff:

1. Ask: What is the Problem?
2. Brainstorm: What are some possible solutions?
3. Choose: Choose one or several solutions to try.
4. Decide: Which solution seems to work best?Look at all the options and pick one.
5. Evaluate:After you have tried one or more solutions evaluate what you have just done 

Sheesh! It seems so easy and simple when I teach this stuff at school. I have to add some other information which politicians might find helpful. Here are some additional tips for problem solving:

1. No Suzy/Bobby,  that you think so and so is a  (choose your favorite slur) is not the problem.
2. We choose options based on the merits of the idea, not the popularity of the person who presented that idea.
3. We try to stay from rigid thinking based upon our own preconceived perceptions and beliefs.

So many people skip right to step 5 which  we all know is a big mistake. Facilitators call this the Ready, Fire, Aim approach. Yep it's simple....Maybe too simple. Well at least I can say I tried. Maybe somebody could forward this to the Democrats and Republicans?

After, and only after you have tried some reasonable solutions

The Heretic's Guide to Working with Kids: Installment #2

After the summer ended and I left Secret Harbor, I took a job at Martin Center, a residential psychiatric treatment unit for adolescents. Martin Center was one of those places where students fresh from college took their first job. The population by diagnosis was conduct disorder if they were boys and developing borderline personality if they were girls. The staff ranged from wise masters to quacks. A popular approach of the quacks was neurolinguistic therapy combined with regression therapy. This gave the unit an Alice in Wonderland feel on some days. I would arrive at the unit to find a 12 year old boy celebrating his first birthday. Shortly afterward he would run away in search of cigarettes and we would have to go look for him.

As is usual in those places, it was hard to distinguish as to who was more disturbed. One biker woman spent her Mondays calling around to see where she had left her truck. I was in my last two years of drinking. One of the senior therapists frequently came so hung-over that he reeked of alcohol on many days. We had a misnamed quiet room where the more disturbed residents howled in anguish. I also began to learn psychobabble. When I first heard it I was confused but I was a quick study.

Adjacent to the facility was a horse pasture. The playful and wise horses provided a contrasting backdrop to the madness across the fence. Whenever we got outside I would take the kids over to pet and sometimes feed the horses. At a staff meeting one day I was informed by a saccharine voiced therapist who always reminded me of a kindergarten teacher on Valium that “the clinical team has decided Terry should no longer interact with the horses.” OK. Welcome to bureaucracy, the rational decisions of those who know better than you.

At the weekly staff meetings we would staff each of the kids in turn. From the various view points we gained a clearer picture of each child until Nurse Distraction had her input.”I want to know what's happening to the towels. Our towels keep disappearing. I think the kids are not returning them to the hampers. When are we going to do something about this?” No matter what was happening. There could have been ten suicide attempts, a dozen runaways but Nurse Distraction wanted to know what was happening with the towels.

Another memorable character was a senior clinician who truly wanted to be an authority figure. His approach was to try and be tough by yelling at a kid while standing nose to nose. He lost three pairs of glasses in three weeks to the same resident who invariably punched him straight in the nose. That kid was frightened by loud noises.

The PTU became an unofficial internship for me.  My college work was in English with a secondary teaching certificate but I was deep in the belly of the mental health industrial complex. In addition to the inept I saw the wise and the future wise. The serene and the wise never lasted long as staff. One gentle Quaker man was no match for the high level of anxiety and machismo. Today he runs his own outdoor school and teaches Aikido.

Inside of and around all the insanity I saw a common thread running through the diagnoses of the residents. Most of them had parents with addictions. Many of them had been horrifically abused. I saw that if this type of work was to be in my future, the true work lay in chemical dependency treatment. This budding viewpoint combined with my early sobriety and my observations of the often toxic mental health counselors led me down the counseling path I walk to this day.

Chemical Dependency Counselors are the red headed step children of the mental health industrial complex. Initially, only two years of college was required while a graduate degree was required for any mental health careers. In addition, in the early years of addictions counseling most chemical dependency counselors did little more than spout an expanded and plagiarized version of the twelve steps. Mental health counselors do not always endorse or support the disease theory of addictions. Doubting the disease theory is heresy for chemical dependency counselors. It's a duality made in nirvana.

Landing and Launching: Installment #3

2 FRUIT

Preparation time: None

Materials Needed: None or a bowl of mixed fruit

Procedure:

1)      Ask students if they were a fruit what sort of fruit they would be today and why.

2)      From a bowl of mixed fruit ask students which fruit looks most like them.

Suggestions:

l  This procedure is best with a bowl of real fruit.

l  It can be all the same fruit but it is best if they are different varieties and shapes.

l  If more concrete thinkers have difficulty with abstractions you can assign a few definitions to get them started:

l  Apples: Knowledge

Grapes: Passion, Excitement

Bananas

Kiwi Fruit

l  Pears

l  Strawberries

Warning: Middle school students may use this an opportunity to use the word “fruit” as a derogatory slur. This can be a teachable moment about put downs.

3 SPORTS TEAMS

Preparation Time: None or up to one hour

Materials Needed: None, cut and paste logo symbols on cards or a variety of sports memorabilia (make sure you cover all the teams within a sport if you choose this option.)

Procedure:

1)      Ask students what sort of sports teams best represents their values.

2)      You may get blank stares when you ask about values and go beyond mere brand loyalty. This is often a teachable moment.

3)      Ask about individuals on the teams and what qualities that person has that students  would like to emulate.

Suggestions:

1)      Although this could seem to be a shallow activity I have had it lead to deeper discussions about loyalty and connections.

2)      Often loyalty to a sports team is connected to a parent present or not who introduced the student to that team and it was a shared activity.

4 SUPER HEROES

Preparation Time: None to considerable but fun. I highly suggest you begin to haunt toy stores and garage sales to accumulate your own collection of super heroes.

Materials Needed: None or a substantial collection of superhero figures or pictures of superheroes or old comic books (although the true comic book aficionado would shudder at the thought of third graders rifling through their collection)

Procedure.

1)      Place a basket full of action figures in the center of your circle.

2)      Ask students to pick a superhero that represents how they are today.

Suggestions:

1)      Although I try to avoid supplying meaning for students some prompts can be helpful:

Batman: guardian of the city

Invisible Man: appears just when you think you're all alone

Cat woman: Haunted sometimes good, sometimes bad

2)      I avoid action figures that are destructive and exist only to wreak mayhem.

Alternatives:

For creative groups ask members to create a superhero that is most like them.

(1)   What special powers would it have?

(2)   What would be its one weakness?

(3)   What would s/he do when not saving the planet?

(4)   What is its alter ego?

Notes: Like movies, superheroes can be a way for you to glimpse the sometimes hidden inner world of children of all ages. The old school superheroes were predominantly male. The new generation seems to be a little more equitable but make sure you have both genders well represented.

Integrated Health Tip #4: Good Yogurt Bad Yogurt

Yogurt is an ancient and well known health food. When people decide to change their diets to try and become healthier, yogurt is often the first thing that shows up at the lunchroom table. Knowing I am all about health, staff will proudly show me their yogurt containers: “Look Jeff, I’m eating yogurt!”

I try to share their excitement and not discourage them but more often than not they are displaying one of the mega brands such as Yoplait, Fred Meyer’s or Darigold. Almost without fail these mega brands are full of everything except yogurt. Yogurt is simply fermented milk. The fermentation process creates beneficial bacteria that your stomach loves. Yogurt that contains just fermented milk and perhaps straight fruit and honey can restore a stomach’s natural acid alkaline balance. Yogurt which contains anything else will lead to even more weight gain and a distressed internal environment. To save you all that label reading I have transcribed the ingredient list from a Yoplait container I retrieved from the trash at school. Yoplait contains the following:

Cultured pasteurized grade A nonfat milk, high fructose corn syrup, strawberries, modified corn starch, nonfat milk, kosher gelatin, citric acid, tricalcium phosphate, aspartame, potassium sorbate added to maintain freshness, natural flavor, red #40, vitamin A, acetate, vitamin D

The Fred Meyer’s brand contains a similar list. They list sugar instead of corn syrup and they also have something called Agar which appears to be a fairly benign thickening substance. To their credit they do include an acidophilus culture. I used to think that all the citric acid I saw in almost every juice came from a lemons, limes and oranges but it’s actually derived from corn. Not only does Yoplait contain the well known obesity culprit called corn syrup it also contains aspartame, a known carcinogen. I’m not really sure what kosher gelatin. It could be anything from horse hooves to seaweed. Let’s summarize: Yoplait contains three corn products, a known carcinogen, red dye and “kosher gelatin.”

 Out here in the great Pacific Northwest the only brands I have found that are just yogurt are Nancy’s and Mountain High. Both of these contain just milk.

What I generally hear from people is that they buy these brands because Nancy’s  and Mountain High don’t offer individual size containers. The mega brands usually offer a variety of flavors but their flavorings often are no healthier than the additives in fast food milkshakes. This is certainly something for the marketing people at those companies to think about but it’s faulty logic on the consumer’s part to think this is a good deal. Time, Time, Time. That’s what I hear: Packaged foods save me Time.

I had never timed it before but today I did. It took me 43 seconds to dump the better part of a small jar of fruit preserves into a gallon of yogurt, swirl it around and dump a lunch sized portion into my stainless steel stacking container lunchbox. So yes, I wasted 43 valuable seconds of my time here on the planet mixing fruit and yogurt but wait! There may be some other benefits and hidden Time savings that we cannot easily see. Because I eat a generally healthy diet and exercise frequently I don’t have to see the doctor very often. It’s hard to say how much Time this might save but I am sure it is considerable. Unlike many males of my vintage (49) I don’t waste valuable time on the commode. I don’t have to buy expensive prescriptions for cholesterol and high blood pressure. I don’t find myself spending Wednesday nights at the local weight loss support group. So I might actually be winning the Time race if I were actually interested.

Yogurt falls into the category of foods that contain beneficial pro-biotics for your innards. These foods include anything containing acidopholius and beneficial bacteria. If you think of your stomach as a garden you might get a better understanding of this. An unfertilized bare garden will sprout seeds but nothing grows very well. It needs compost and fertilizer. Think of pro-biotics as compost and fertilizer for your stomach. Adding yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchee will make this a healthy and fertile environment. This healthy environment allows you to digest food more efficiently. When you digest food efficiently you have more energy and the rest of the systems seem to work better. So you want to eat yogurt.

Adding high fructose corn syrup and products like aspartame completely negates any beneficial aspects of the fermented milk.

I’m not sure why mega yogurt manufacturers feel the need to add all that strange stuff but they do. I don’t have time to contemplate plots and conspiracies. What I do know is that if I want to be healthy in post industrial America I have to be vigilant, I have to take the Time to read labels and become knowledgeable about what Big Food is trying to feed me.

So eat your yogurt. But try to find the real stuff. Eat a spoonful of the real stuff before every meal. Your body will appreciate it.

http://www.mountainhighyoghurt.com/

http://www.nancysyogurt.com/

Why Yoga in the Schools

One Small Success Story

Like most change agents, I periodically question whether any of the stuff I do actually works. These doubts creep in after particularly difficult group sessions or when I see an obese teenager coming out of the local convenience with a 32 ounce soda and a pop tart for breakfast. Every now and then, a small spark comes along and that will feed my fire for a long time.

Last spring, after a session on the high ropes course with 5^th and 6^th graders, one of them approached me after everybody else left.

“Mr. Albin, I just want you to know that I have accomplished all of my personal goals in working with you this year.”

“You did?”

“Yes I did. I climbed to the top of the high ropes course and I started doing yoga at home on my own.”

Now that I’ve been doing yoga for quite a few years in the schools, more than one student has reported to me they do yoga at home. I would love to be a fly on the wall in those homes to see how and what they do but I have to settle for their personal anecdotes. I generally ask them to show me the poses they do. This allows them an easier way to explain it and allows me to make sure they’re doing the asanas in a safe way.

But this girl had a different story when I asked her what poses she did.

She told me she had started arguing and yelling at each other. It was a simple standard argument. She wanted to go over to her friend’s house and her mother said it was too late on a school night: a timeless parent child conflict.

Instead of continuing to yell she went into the bathroom, dimmed the lights and started to do volcano breaths (see integrated school health tips). She told me she would do three or four breaths and then turn the dimmer switch up a little. She continued this process slowly, breathing and turning the lights brighter and brighter until finally she was calm.

Crisis Averted

I thought about this for a long time afterwards because I am curious what skills people retain after I have taught them something. This young girl may or may not go on to include a daily yoga practice in her life but it seems clear she will remember how to breathe. Thank you Sabrina (name changed to preserve anonymity). You gave me just enough hope to continue in this work a little longer. Glad I could help you.

Dinner at the Rock Creek Longhouse

Author’s note: In order to preserve and protect the sacred foods and culture of the first peoples featured in this story I have deliberately left out certain details.

Dinner at the Rock Creek Longhouse

Each spring, usually around Easter time, the first peoples from the Rock Creek Longhouse invite friends and family to the first foods feast. The ceremony, as I understand it, in my limited ability to understand is to celebrate the return of the roots and salmon. The people gather to celebrate the foods which have nourished and sustained them since the beginning of time.

The ceremony stands in stark contrast to how I experience food in other places so thought I would attempt to share the essence. I wanted to add my experiences to the food dialogues.

In the West end of the longhouse singers and drummers beat drums and sing songs which honor the food. Each food has a song. Each food is brought out into the longhouse by a small army of servers and placed on tule mats. The food is placed with deep intention, efficiency, speed and reverence. There are usually several hundred people to feed. The foods are placed on the mats in the order of the time of year that they are gathered. Each food has a song and each food has a special place. In an astonishingly short period of time the mats are overflowing with roots, berries, venison, elk, and salmon. Everything here is organic, nutritious, wild and sustainable.

When all is ready, the people wait for an announcer to shout “choos!” I am unsure of the spelling but the word clearly means water. When the announcement comes everybody in the longhouse (except me of course and the other ADD kids because once again I wasn’t paying attention) raises their small cups full of water in unison and drinks water.

The meal begins with prayer and water.

Each food has a song because each food has a spirit.

When I think about food I have images in my mind of how I have experienced food in other cultures, especially ancient cultures which are still intact. I contrast this with the industrial food supply I encounter at convenience stores. And I generate questions.

      What if we sang a song for every food we ate?

      Should I eat foods for which there is no song or prayer?

      Is there a secret song for Ho Ho’s?

(to be continued)