5 Ideas That Would Revolutionize School Food (and Save our Kids)

Yes, you can pack a healthy lunch for your kid, but the only way we are going to see a major shift in childhood obesity levels (currently at about 32 percent) is to change the way schools feed our kids. School lunches are packed with fat and sugar. Soda machines, a source of revenue for many schools, let kids get a sugar rush at the expense of their waistlines. Luckily, there are plenty of inventive ways to make sure our kids eat healthy at school.

- Partner with a Non-Profit: One of the biggest crusaders for healthier school lunches is Alice Waters, chef at Chez Panisse and one of the founders of the organic and locavore movements. Waters founded the Chez Panisse Foundation in 2004 in partnership with the Berkeley Unified School District in order to improve the diets of local schoolchildren. Today, the kitchen at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School provides healthy lunches for 16 different public schools in Berkeley. The result? The school district is now 100 percent trans fat and high fructose corn syrup free. All vegetables are bought fresh and in season from local farms, plus each school has a salad bar and a composting system. Talking to non-profits like the Chez Panisse Foundation is a good way to get advice on the organizational and financial complications of implementing a healthy school lunch program.

- Speak Up: Fed Up With Lunch documents the efforts of an anonymous teacher in the Midwest to eat school lunches every day for a year. What she found was unpleasant: junk food from major potato chip companies, inedible-looking hamburgers, meals not completely thawed out and tater tots served as a main dish. Obviously, food suppliers, school officials and others were not happy, but she did help raise awareness of just how bad our kids

- Hire Actual Cooks: This might not seem so revolutionary, but the truth is most school lunches are just heat-and-serve dishes like chicken nuggets and pizza, bought frozen and stored for long periods of time. Now, the advantages of this way of doing things are clear; it

- Limit Options: As a high school student, I used to spend my money on all types of junk food: sour licorice, donuts, soda. Did I know it was bad for me? Of course I did; I just didn

- Change Suppliers: Lots of schools have longstanding relationships with giant food conglomerates that ship them unhealthy frozen meals. Luckily, programs like Farm to School exist to connect schools with local farms. Farm to School now works in all 50 states, helping bring fresh produce into our schools