SLJ Chats with Chef Ann Cooper About Changing the Way Kids Eat

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 1/23/2008 2:10:00 PM

Ann Cooper is on a mission—to change the unhealthy eating habits of children. SLJ talks to the former gourmet chef to find out why she traded it all in three years ago to take over the lunch program at the Berkeley Unified School District in California—and how she managed to replace Tater Tots and canned fruit cocktail with roasted chicken, low-fat milk, and a salad bar with organic fruit and vegetables.

Why don’t more schools serve kids healthier, organic foods?

What’s easy for one person isn’t necessarily easy for a big industry. We’re doing it, but it’s hard. There are five major issues surrounding it: One, there’s not enough money. It’s a lot more expensive. Tax dollars pay $7 billion to feed 30 million children daily lunch. This comes out to a federal subsidy of $2.49 per lunch per kid. In some states, there are state subsidies. In California, there is a state subsidy of 21 cents. Out here we have less than $3 to spend on a kid’s lunch. In most places, two-thirds of that goes to payroll and overhead, which means that most places have less than $1—most places spend 90 cents—on the food for a kid’s lunch. And of that 90 cents, you have to include milk and fruit. So if I give you four bucks and say, "You need to cook a healthy, delicious, nutritious meal for four people—and it has to include milk and fruit, and it also has to be a minimum of 750 calories"—can you do that? Well, no, you can’t. It costs at least 50 cents more per child in food costs.

What inspired you to take your present job?

I wrote a book called Bitter Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It (Routledge, 2000), and when it was written, but not yet published, I got a call from Courtney Ross at the Ross School in East Hampton asking me if I would apply for the executive chef position. That’s where I was before I came here. I initially wasn’t interested, but I looked into the project and decided that this was something really important, and it was a good way for me to give back and be able to help kids. 

What are your days like?

We’re cooking 7,000 meals a day for 10,000 kids in 16 [K–12] schools. Most days I’m in by 4 a.m. It’s certainly not nine-to-five, but this is my life.

 Is it hard to get kids to eat well?

We’re not trying to make something that kids don’t understand or get. We’re trying to cook food that kids will eat. I certainly try to cook seasonally. I try and make ethnically appropriate, interesting comfort food.

Are you trying to fight the childhood obesity epidemic?

The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has said that of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of two African Americans and Hispanics will have diabetes in their lifetime, most before they graduate high school, which is going to result in that generation being the first in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents.

Can a district with less money than yours and no chef achieve the same results?

Every school district has the money. It’s whether they make it a priority. We’re a small school district and our budget is $110 million.

Tell me about your Web site.

It’s called Lunchlessons.org, and it has a tremendous amount of information there. We have a blog, where I put up articles on these issues that I write or get from other places. We do a podcast almost every week. I’d really like to get schools all over the country to work on these issues, so I’m hoping to inspire more people to fix their national school lunch program so that kids will eat better food.