Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children | Ann Cooper | Talks at Google

But Ann. He just wanted me to make sure to talk about Ann and let you know that a lot of Ann's philosophies are already incorporated in our cafes across Google. You wouldn't believe how much of her philosophies are incorporated in it. I just found out even more. So. So right now, Ann is doing a. Is the executive chef for the Berkeley School Systems, and. And she feeds about 4,000 kids a day. Amazing woman. And she also has got a new book out. It's called Lunch Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. So it is my pleasure and honor to introduce Ann Cooper. Chef Ann Cooper, or as everybody else knows her, as the Renegade Lunch Lady.

Thank you. Well, I'm really excited to be here. I've never been to Google before, and I've always wanted to come because I've heard the food is really great.

So.

So I really feel like I'm going to stand here and talk for a while so that I can have lunch afterwards. I think somebody said they could turn the lights down a little. I don't know if that's still a possibility because the pictures are pretty. It'd be nice if we could see them a little better.

So what I'm going to do is.

Talk for about half an hour. And this thing goes by itself, kind of keeps me online here. So if you have questions, you'll have to kind of hold them a little bit because I get very confused if it's going and I'm stopping. And I just heard also that if you do have questions, since this is being taped, than if you would go to the mic. And if you don't, I guess I'll repeat the question, but it'd be good if you did.

So, as you heard, I am the.

Director of nutrition services, the chef for the Berkeley Unified School District. In that capacity, I'm in charge of all of the food in all of the 16 schools. I'm in charge of all the cooking and gardening classes. So I have about 90 employees in 17 locations. We feed the kids. We teach them about cooking, we teach them about gardening. I'm a very unlikely candidate to be a school lunch Advocate. Up until 1999, I almost prided myself in saying I never fed a child. I was a white tablecloth chef, and there was nothing worse to me on.

A Saturday night than somebody coming in and going, there's screaming children on table 19. What do we do? And my answer was, always, ask them to leave.

So I never really knew about feeding kids, and I never really thought about.

It, and I've written this is my fourth book.

And my second book was called Bitter Harvest. And when I wrote Bitter Harvest, I started really thinking about sustainability issues. I had become friends with Alice Waters and Nora Poulon and Odessa Piper and a lot of women chefs who were really working on these issues. And I started really thinking about it. And when I wrote Bitter Harvest, I started to understand how our food makes us sick, why food supplies are owned and why we all need to care because we all eat. And I really started thinking about it as it relates to children.

And one day I got a call.

From Mrs. Courtney Ross asking if I would become the chef of the Ross school.

And all I heard was school.

I literally looked at the phone and.

Went, me lunch lady, click. Well, I got over myself. They called me back and I went and visited this school.

And I eventually decided to sort of drop out of the celebrity chef world to become a lunch lady and really see if I could make a difference changing how kids eat and their relationship to food.

So, so that's what we're going to.

Talk about a little bit here and.

That'S what I'll tell you about and.

Then we'll go into Q and A. And I hope you all have a lot of questions too, because I talk a lot.

I started out with a vision. What would it really be like?

I mean, what do we want to do as advocates, as people who are feeding kids? What is it that I really wanted to do?

And what I really want to do.

Is change children's relationship to food.

I really want to provide an environment.

Where they can think about food, where.

They can make good choices, where they.

Learn about hands on experiential learning. And this is what we came up with as a vision between the cooking and gardening program and also all the cafeterias.

When I start thinking about what these.

Issues mean to me, I really always start with regional food.

It has to start here.

Most food travels 1,500 miles before we eat it. Most food well, and you guys have.

A restaurant here that only is 150 miles. So you kind of know about those issues.

But we can't continue to always bring food from other places. First of all, it doesn't even taste good when we do that. But second of all, you know, it's really, really bad for the environment. The industrial agriculture uses more fossil fuels than any other part of our economy. Who knew that growing food and fossil fuels. The reason we have this paradigm, the reason we have this issue is we have something in America called agribusiness. Monsanto and dupont, who brought us Agent Orange and stain resistant carpet control 90% of the commercially produced seeds in this country now. Okay, Agent Orange stain resistant carpet.

But these really huge chemical companies are.

In the food business. And 10 companies and the boards of.

Those companies under 150 people really decide.

What we eat and really decide what our children eat.

And these big corporations don't care about.

Us or our kids. These big corporations care about profit, and they are deciding what our kids eat.

And so unless we retool and really.

Rethink about our food supply, it's these really big companies that are in charge. Now. Research says that most kids know all the icons. You know, of course they know the.

Google icon and Nike and McDonald's and all the golden arches. But do kids really know where food.

Comes from in our country? And I think indeed they don't.

And we really have to teach them about that.

It's really, really important.

You know, the antithesis of this big.

Agribusiness that I was talking about is family farmers. Farmers traditionally get 9 cents for every dollar in a grocery store. And Philip Morris, which is the largest food company in America, who knew they changed their name so we wouldn't gets 10 cents.

So when we live in a world where 10 cents of every dollar that.

We spend in a grocery store goes to Philip Morris, 9 cents goes to a farmer. It's no wonder we're having the problems we are. And we're sick like we are. And those are the things we really need to change.

So when I start on this vision.

I start with regional food because food has to have a place.

To me, regional is even more important than organic. And I really believe in organic. But if there's no food grown locally.

I'm going to be a chef cooking plastic peanut butter from Taiwan.

Now, I know I'm talking to a.

Lot of the converted here, and I know how wonderful the food is at Google.

But, you know, the idea around organic.

Food to me is not, oh, that it's organic because it has a name.

But it's that we're growing and producing.

Food in a way that doesn't make us sick.

And the opposite of organic food is food that's grown with a lot of.

Chemicals, a lot of herbicides, and it's food that really does make us sick. Things like foot and mouth and mad cow and salmonella. Listen, area really only got in our food supply after we started mass producing it. Before we were mass producing it the way we are now. It really wasn't a problem. And you know, if we were in a chicken house.

I don't know if any of you.

Have ever gone to see where chickens live, regular, mass produced chickens.

But if we were in a room this size with those chickens, there would.

Be 5,000 chickens in it, stacked on top of each other or crowded right together. And so it's no wonder when we take animals and start to grow them that way, that they make us sick. Antibiotics and hormones. This is a really, really big deal for me, especially with kids. 70% of all antibiotics consumed in this country, 70% are consumed in animal husbandry. That means we all eat and drink our antibiotics, okay?

And we feed them to our kids.

Through beef and in water. And this is really a big deal.

I mean, we probably all either have children or know children or work with children that have gotten sick in the.

Last couple years and they just never.

Seem to get better.

And antibiotics aren't working. And much of the reason that antibiotics.

Don'T work is because so much of.

It is in animal feed. Some genius figured out that if we feed cows antibiotics every day, they grow weight faster, they gain weight faster. Well, that's all about somebody making money. And it's not about health of our kids.

Genetically modified organisms, I'm sure a lot.

Of you around here know about them.

And the reason you ought to care is because GMOs are not.

There's no real policies around them. There's no real reason, there's no labeling around it. There's no mandatory testing or labeling. So it's something that we really want to know about.

One of my favorite facts, something I.

Hope you remember, there's a few things I'll tell you I want you to remember, but here's one of my favorite facts. U.S. agriculture uses 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides each year in conventional agriculture.

So all of us and all of our kids, if I had a five pound bag of flour or sugar here.

And I ripped it open and I.

Poured it on the floor and made that mess. But that big five pound pile is how much all of us consume and feed our children every single year in this country because of our industrial agriculture paradigm. And even those of us who might.

Eat organic most of the time are still, you know, still eat a lot of it just because it's out there.

Irradiation. Another genius said, oh, what are we going to do with all those spent fuel rods? Well, why don't we start irradiating food.

Because then it'll get rid of the salmonella.

So instead of having a safe food.

Supply, they decided, and the Government supported irradiating food.

Now I want you to know when I thoroughly believe that we should not.

Believe most of what the government tells us. DDT was good for me. This is a 1947 advertisement in time.

Magazine paid for in part by the government. We could have a long discussion about.

Rachel Carson and ddt, but I guess we all could agree that the government should not have been advertising mothers to.

Sprinkle it over kids heads, which is.

What a lot of the advertisements were.

It's the same government that's telling us.

It'S okay to have irradiated food.

It's this same government who says, oh, GMOs are safe. Oh, and by the way, some of our scientists helped develop it and are.

Making royalties from it.

It's the same government. For some reason, with all of us.

Who know that we really shouldn't believe.

The government all the time, somehow we.

Believe the government with food. And I'm here to tell you we shouldn't. And especially with children and school food, by and large, the USDA are the bad guys as far as I'm concerned. And I'll talk more about that.

So sort of when I think about.

This, when I try and get my.

Arms around how we're going to change children's relationship with food, it's regional food.

Organic food, seasonal food, and sustainable food. And this is just my definition of sustainable.

But it's really producing and consuming food in a way that isn't detrimental, isn't.

Detrimental to the earth, to, to the children, to ourselves. Farmers, farm workers, restaurants, restaurant workers.

We can't continue to deplete.

We don't get another chance here. And agriculture is one of the most depleting parts of our economy. It uses more fossil fuels and it uses more chemicals. Well, sustainable food is relatively new. You know, we used to be even 100 years ago, which is now almost one generation, but two generations, we were 95% farmers. And now less than 2% of us grow all the food.

We're a country that has 2.1 million.

Prisoners, 1.9 million farmers. We spend more money in this state.

I heard a fact recently that California.

Spends $9 billion on its prison system. America spends 7 billion on school lunch for every child in the country.

Now I'm not saying that everybody that's.

In jail shouldn't be, but 51% of people in jail are in jail for drug crimes, many of them misdemeanor, you know, not a lot of stuff. And what happens here, what's happening with this kind of system is food is making us sick.

There's two things I want you to.

Remember if you remember nothing else. Here's the two facts. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control has said two things in the past two years.

One, that of the children born in.

The year 2000, those are the six and seven year olds in first and second grade.

This year, those little babies, one out.

Of every three Caucasians, one out of.

Every three Caucasicans and one out of.

Every two African American and Hispanics will have diabetes in their lifetime.

Most before they graduate high school. Within a decade we could have 40.

To 45% of all school age children insulin dependent.

And it's because of what we feed them, because make no bones about it, 7 year olds don't get to choose. And if they do, you should be in therapy. These are children.

They don't get to decide. We're the adults, we're the caregivers.

And if we don't decide, these guys decide. $20 billion a year they spend on.

Advertising non nutrient foods to kids.

So if we don't work with kids.

If we don't tell kids what to eat, be sure that McDonald's and Kraft and Coke are going to, you know.

We have a choice.

And the diabetes academic is going, it's growing exponentially. Two thirds of everyone in our country is overweight now.

Two thirds, fully a third of children. What is that? And why? Because these advertisements tell us to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. And even though we are part of.

A world that has so many hungry.

People, in America we produce 3,600 calories for every one of us. And most of us shouldn't be eating.

More than half of that, you know, so all these calories are here and the government supports this and the USDA subsidy program support it.

And what happens is we have really cheap bad food. Coke.

Coke is really cheap bad food.

And why? Because the government price support support things like corn.

And then it's corn that we don't.

Eat and it's made into sugar.

So high fructose corn syrup makes these things really cheap. And high fructose corn syrup is in.

Everything from hamburgers to hot dog rolls to soda. I was in a grocery store this week and I was looking for any juice on the shelf that didn't have high fructose corn syrup and couldn't find.

One regular kind of juice without going to an organic specialty juice without high fructose corn syrup.

I love this.

And then there's portion control. So over there is what the USDA says we should eat.

For a portion. And this one that's bigger than my.

Head is what McDonald's and Burger King say we should eat. And when we teach kids that supersizing that this is, you know, that we.

Bring out these huge plates of food.

And set them down and, you know, put them in front of kids or even ourselves, you know, what are we doing?

You know, the other thing that the.

CDC said, if all that wasn't bad.

Enough, is those same babies, those same 7, 6 and 6, 7 year olds.

Born in the year 2000, they will be our first generation in our country's history to die at a younger age than their parents. So we as a nation have found a way to make ourselves extinct. And that's by feeding our children to death. Now, you might think I've had it easy in Berkeley, and I've got to tell you, this is the hardest job I've ever had. And I, you know, used to cater for 20,000 on tops of mountains. I thought that was easier.

But this is the food. Food.

When I took over 18 months ago in Berkeley, pizza pockets, Extremo burritos, corn dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches, they all came frozen in those plastic bags. And we opened the boxes and we.

Took the plastic bags and put the plastic bags in the ovens and then.

In the heating boxes, and then it.

Went to the kids plate and the.

Kids ripped this thing open. I won't even call it food. But that is what most kids are eating in America. That is what we're feeding children. That's stuff, you know, we've taught children that food comes out of these plastic bags.

And the government's absolutely complicit. I went to a commodity food show.

And all these things, those corn nuts and doodles, snicker thingies and chocolate cupcakes.

And all of this stuff is stuff.

That the government says it's okay to feed kids.

And then the government obviously doesn't think.

That, you know, kids should eat chicken.

Because who invented a chicken now? Why is it we think a chicken needs to look like a giraffe, a heart, a star, you know, whatever? Well, you know, who decided this is these big companies because there's no chicken in the chicken, you know, so they can put all kinds of fillers and.

Soy products and chemicals in these things.

Then we've taught kids that this is food. And the government will reimburse us.

The government will pay me to feed.

A child chicken nuggets, tater tots, chocolate milk and fruit cocktail with high fructose corn syrup.

That is a Reimbursable meal. That's what the government, the USDA says is okay, well, my kids in Berkeley don't get to eat any of that stuff. And originally they didn't like that very much.

I'm not going to tell you that.

It'S been easy to wean kids off of all of that high sugar, high fat, high salt food that we've been feeding them.

But you can now. I guess by now you know that.

There'S no law of loss between the USDA and I. And I really hate their pyramid.

I don't get it at all.

It's, you know, I don't know. Now they took the pyramid, turned it on its side, put a rainbow on it.

I don't know. I don't know how you teach kids about food with that.

So I came up with a healthy kids meal. Well, this is downloadable in English and Spanish on my website and it's in my book.

And it's a way to visually teach kids about food. Like you can see how little the.

Hamburger is and how big the vegetables are.

And the other thing I started doing when I got to Berkeley besides trying.

To retrain how kids think about food is make these calendars. And you have, I think everybody has, but if somebody's missing, you can email me and I'll send you one or I'll send a case down here to look at. But these calendars were my foray into social marketing.

And the calendars include the district's wellness policy.

These are actually the menus that the kids are eating in school this week.

And so I went and I actually.

Wrote the menu for the entire year. And oops, I forgot to put April here. I was on vacation last week. But you have the calendar. I usually am better prepared and I'm in the right month, but this is actually what the kids were eating.

And because I'm in charge of all the cafeterias and the cooking and gardening.

Programs, we're actually teaching the kids these recipes in the cooking programs, tasting them on the ingredients in the gardening programs. And then we make these recipes in the cafeteria so they get to eat it.

And we sent these home to all.

The parents in English and Spanish asking them to cook with their kids.

One of the things I know for.

Sure is if we're going to change.

Children'S relationship to food, we have to talk to them about it and we have to educate them. And the way I characterize it in Berkeley is a three legged stool, Delicious.

Nutritious food in the cafeterias. Hands on, experiential Learning and cooking and gardening programs. Those are some of the kids at Malcolm X in the Garden.

And then we have core curriculum linked.

To the four or five science classes in all the schools.

So we try and touch the kids.

Numerous ways over and over and over.

The education piece is so important. You know, I can be the best.

Chef in the world and think up.

The best chef food in the world.

And I can dream of this amazing stuff.

But you know, what if the kids don't eat it?

You know, it's a chef's wet dream.

And so what we really need to.

Do is work with the kids and.

Talk to the kids about food and taste the kids about food. Because, again, if we don't do that.

McDonald's and Burger King do.

One out of every four meals in.

America is eaten in fast food, and.

One of every four meals in America.

Is eaten in a car.

We have now taught an entire generation of children that they're riding in the car. You drive up to a window, you. You stick your hand out, Somebody you've never met hands you a bag of food, and you consume it in the backseat of a car.

We have taught a generation of children that that's dining. We've taught a generation of children that that's what food is about, and we have to relearn that, and we have to rethink that. So one of the ways we fund the cooking and gardening programs is something called the California Nutrition Network. This is available to all schools in California. It's funded through food stamp money and the WIP program. And we actually get, in Berkeley $1.2 million to run. I'm running 10 cooking and gardening programs under this program. And I will have gardens in all of my schools by the end of this year and cooking in 13. So we're really working with kids, really trying to get the kids to think.

About food, to talk about food, to taste food. And when you see kids cooking and.

You see kids in the garden, they really do get it. Now, one of the things when I talk about this and I say, this is the hardest job I ever had, it's because school districts have three really big problems.

One is that the National School Lunch.

Program is a little more than 50 years old.

And when it was built, all kitchens.

Were built and people were trained to do stuff.

But what happened is when all Those.

Kitchens about 25 years ago started to deteriorate was really at the rise of heavily processed food. And so a lot of big processed food companies stood up to the point and went, oh, don't Rebuild your kitchens. Don't turn your staff. Here's this frozen stuff. You can just serve it all. You know, you don't have to worry about sanitation. You don't have to worry about cooking.

And all of that stuff. So I don't even have a stove.

In my central kitchen. In the kitchen, where I personally have my hands on 2,500 lunches a day, I don't have a stove. And that's typical in schools across America.

Now, not only don't I have a stove, but because all that frozen stuff.

I won't even deem it. Calling it food is what's been in the system I had, when I got to the district, 55 employees, none of which could cook, and they're giving food to kids. And so we don't have facilities. We don't have those kind of resources. We don't have human resources.

They don't know how to cook, and we have no money. The National School Lunch Program is funded.

Under the usda, which is part of the farm bill, which is coming up for reauthorization this year.

And the USDA spends $7 billion a.

Year to feed 30 million children a day. Seven billion. Thirty million might sound like big numbers.

A lot.

It's teeny.

What that means is the federal government.

Gives me $2.42 per child per day.

Of that $2.42 that the government gives.

Me now, the state of California gives.

Me a little extra, but so the.

Government gives me $2.42, and California gives.

Me another 30 cents.

And there's commodity, but so say $2.75 total.

I have to pay all the payroll, all the benefits, all the. All the food costs, the delivery trucks.

The electricity and everything. And for any of you in business, you can imagine why we have such bad food on the plate.

When I inherited in Berkeley, was a very strong union.

And not that I'm against unions, but I like people to at least come to work occasionally.

And so of these, I was running.

And I'm running a 64% payroll cost, because what unions and what the school.

Districts have done is put a lot.

Of employees in there. It meant that my food cost was 25%.

And how that works out on the plate for us in the best world.

Let'S just say in the best world.

I had a dollar for food costs. So let's say I gave all of.

You $4 and sent you to the grocery store. And by the way, you don't even have to go to Whole Foods and.

Give you those $4 and say, go to the grocery store and buy food for of four people.

Delicious, nutritious, 700 calories. And day after day after day.

Well, I'm a chef.

I think I know stuff. I can't do it. It's impossible.

Oh, and the government says you have.

To serve kids milk. I guess they don't know that there are lactose intolerant people in the world. And they won't reimburse for soy milk or rice milk or anything else.

So you have to serve milk, you.

Have to serve fruit, and you have this 80 cents per kid. So it's just this herculean task to change the system without more money.

And so, you know, we spend 7.

Billion and I think we need to.

Double or triple it. And people say, well, we're going to.

Add another 7 billion or 14 billion.

Well, it's all a matter of priorities. You know, in this country, we spend.

$200 billion a year on diet related illness. 200 billion.

We spend 110 billion on diet aids, 7 billion on school lunch, 110 billion.

On trying to lose weight, 200 billion.

On diet related illness, 200 billion on the war.

I heard on NPR yesterday that the president just asked for an extra hundred billion this week.

You know, so it's not that we.

Don'T have the money to change the system. It's that it's a matter of priorities.

And, you know, we're in a very.

Unique time right now. We're in what seems to be an amazingly extended presidential campaign.

We're also right before the farm bill.

Is going to be reauthorized and next year is the school lunch reauthorization. So we as parents and caregivers and people in a democratic society really can do something. I mean, we can write people, we can write letters to the editor, we.

Can put up websites. You know, we can ask our Congress.

People and our presidential, you know, the people who want to become president, how come we're not making our children's health a priority.

And I want to tell you how.

Little it would take.

Now I run and I ride.

So, you know, I buy good running shoes and biking shoes. And, you know, if I buy one pair of running shoes and one pair of biking shoes a year, I spend more than the government says I have to spend on a child's weight lunch for an entire year.

We spend less than $150 feeding children for an entire year.

180 school days.

So it's just priorities. It's all of us caring enough to go, you know, What?

That's not right.

It doesn't matter whether you have kids. It doesn't matter even if, you know, any kids. You know, if we think there's going to be a future to the world, it's got to start with people.

And there's no more people if we kill all the kids.

And it's just a matter of stepping.

Up to the plate. You know, it's just a matter of.

Saying, you know, that's not how we.

Want it to be anymore.

And I'm not saying we're never going.

To have, you know, go to McDonald's.

Or Burger King or nobody's ever going to have a soda.

I'm not saying any of that. But what I am saying is we got to make a difference and we have to teach children and ourselves, you.

Know, that there's everyday food and there's.

Special occasion food and you would Google with all your wonderful restaurants and all the great snacks and stuff you have, you know, you know, the difference. And we need to bring that difference home to our children and children all across America, because I don't think we have a choice. You know, I'm going to leave you with one story and then ask you if you have any questions. I was speaking in Washington, D.C. with a doctor named Alan Green. And we were speaking with Tom Harkin. You know, we were all on the panel, Tom Harkin and I And Alan.

And Dr. Green said, you know, for.

Many, many years, research said that the.

Children with the lowest quality of life.

In America were children with cancer in active chemo.

These are the children who have the.

Worst quality of life. But this year, the association of Pediatric Whatever said finally, or just newly, research shows that the children with the worst quality of life are not children with cancer and active chemo, but obese children. That those children are the children with the worst quality of life. And we don't have obese children unless we are complicit in that. Children don't become obese all on their own. It doesn't happen. Children have parents and caregivers and advocates. So we need a care. Thank you very much. So I'd love to answer questions or else I'll have to make up new stories.

So.

And I think you're supposed to go to the microphone. Sorry. Because I think we're taping it. Yes, sir.

So thank you for coming and for everything you're doing. As someone who spent seven years in the Berkeley Unified School District eating those pizza pockets and corn dogs, I can always say I wish you had been there 20 years earlier, but so be it. So my question is for some practical advice to us. And it's a question my wife and I face a lot. When we go shopping, we're at Whole Foods, we've got the clear organic choice, but then where do we find the local choice? We go to the farmer's market, it may not be organic. So then we have kind of this trade off of we can buy local or we can buy organic, but it's hard to find both.

It's a trade off.

I think that my priority is know your farmer and buy local.

The more you know and can put.

A face on the food, just my personal opinion, the less organic is important, the further the food comes for me, the absolute more important it is. And if we don't keep farmers farming.

You know, if anybody believes that we're.

At war, at least partially because of.

Fossil fuels, what's going to happen when.

We export the growing of all foods for our country?

I mean, if we don't keep foods.

Being grown in our country, you know, God knows what kind of wars we can be in.

So I think that it's a mix of both.

I shop at the Berkeley Farmers market every week and, and buy stuff there.

And I also go to Berkeley bowl.

And I also go to Whole Foods. So I try and make choices.

There's a really good thing.

And there's a link on my website.

But it's a Pesticide Action network.

And on the Pesticide Action Network, they'll say that the 12 vegetables and fruits that have the most pesticides and the 12 vegetables and fruits that have the least, you know, in my buying practices, I actually use that because there's no way we can afford all organic in a, you know, on my $2.42.

So I think you make a choice.

And do some of both. And I think it depends on your budget.

And.

Yeah.

So being a California resident for most of my life, I think I sort of take it for granted that we live in a valid whole country. You know, I live In Santa Cruz, 50 miles away from Salinas, which is.

Where.

Diverse number of crops growing. And you promote regional produce. And how do you propose we get regional produce into the middle states, say, where corn is grown way too much because it's so heavily subsidized.

One of the things we have to do, and we were talking about this, you know, as far as the farm bill is we have to stop subsidizing these food that we don't eat, you know, corn and soy, which are the two most subsidized foods or crops aren't really food. Most of it's grown for, you know, something else. You know, the corn goes into high fructose corn syrup and the soy goes into trans fats and, or other kinds of fats. I think we really need to look at the farm bill and see ways to help subsidize food instead of exported crops. And I think, you know, this is the time to do that.

There is a lot of talk about that, but, you know, I've been a.

Chef in New York and Vermont and all kinds of other places.

And almost no matter where you live, if you there are farmers growing stuff.

And if you can support them and grow that market, you know, supply will meet demand.

I'm Canadian. I moved here about five years ago. And one of the things that really struck me in California was that there seems to be a growing divide between people who, who can afford good food and people who cannot. I have the option of going to the farmers market because I work at Google and I make a good salary, but there are people who live not very far from me who don't have those choices. And I wonder if you could speak a little about the economic distinctions.

Yeah, well, you know, I think that, I mean, we could have this whole discussion about politics in America.

There are, you know, on a good.

Note, you know, most farmers markets now actually take food stamps or, you know, there's no more food stamps, but they take the debit cards. I think that the more all of.

Us try, we don't, in our country.

Spend enough money on food. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, we spend the least percentage. We spend between 9 and 11% of our annual income on food. In Europe, it's 25 to 30. In most Asian countries, countries, it's more than that.

So we have this idea that we.

Should have a cheap food system. And because we have that idea, what happens is we have food that makes us sick.

And if we could really, as a.

Country, start to understand that if we.

Want a safe food supply, a healthy.

Food supply, that we're going to have to pay more money.

But that's all about the usda. The way the USDA commodifies food. It means that if you're working on a really low budget and you're trying.

To live on not a lot of money.

The most calories are for the food.

Of the least nutritional value. One ounce of potato chips is 150 calories. One whole potato, you know, is 30. So that's really what happens.

And I think that it's all about politics. It's why I really dislike the usda, because if our government wanted to really.

Take care of people in a healthy.

Way, we wouldn't subsidize food that nobody eats.

You know, we would subsidize food that.

People actually ate, fruits and vegetables, and.

Then the prices would come down. But it's a government thing.

They're the bad guys. Hi.

I have a three and a half.

Year old son and today I gave.

Him dinosaur shaped chicken that is burnt lunch. I'm really bad about that.

So hopefully to get some more medical advice. I don't like being.

I don't have time.

I think I don't have time.

Do you know of any services that.

Would provide like a week's worth of prepared, healthy lunches?

You know, there's a lot. There's a number of.

And you at Google can Google this. There's a lot of people doing that in the Bay Area now. And I don't know enough about exactly this area, but there are definitely companies that are doing it now and there are options for you out there and there are ones who do organic and there are ones who do healthy. And so there are a lot of options out there.

I just had a couple quick questions. First of all, there's always a debate about nature, nurture, as far as, like how much is your diet, how much is your genetics, as far as the other part of it is you're teaching about nutrition in the school system, are they also altering the way they teach, like fitness to go along with that? As far as more, you know, just not just simple sports, it's just about physiology, flexibility, all that kind of stuff as well.

You know, Berkeley is not on the leading edge in that. Where I was before in New York at the Ross School, we really were.

At the Ross School.

The kids get an hour and a half of physical activity a day. Most schools in America are now giving kids 45 minutes a week. At the last school, there was regular, you know, traditional sports and we also had mountain biking as a class and yoga as a class and, you know, meditation. And so we're seeing some pockets of schools doing different things and.

But it's not enough.

It's interesting that, you know, certainly people of my age, I mean, we actually had to go to gym class and there was the President's Council on Physical Fitness and they were building gyms and everybody was.

And then that kind of went by.

The wayside and it all got forgotten. And so we're not doing that anymore. But it's really important. I mean, the best, healthiest, nutritious food in the world isn't going to get us anything if we're all only sitting in front of our computer screen. As much as you guys might want people sitting in front of computer screens.

We got to get people out from.

Under the computer screens and kids have to go out and play. I mean, when I was growing up.

We went outside and played. That's what we did.

You know, and in the summertime, you know, they kicked you out of the house in the morning and maybe let you in at night and threw the food out the window.

I mean, you know, so we.

And it's a bigger issue, you know, I mean, it's communities that aren't walking friendly and you know, it's communities that aren't biking friendly and that there's no place for kids to play and the playgrounds have gone by the wayside.

So there's a lot of social issues.

Here and it has to be changed.

Did I answer your question?

Sure. Yeah.

I was also wondering, I don't know, I've dealt with a lot of people trying to lose weight. It's like, how much realistically, in your experience can people expect to change their body type just on their diet? I mean, how much do you think if they have big parents that they're going to be exposed to that?

Okay, well, there's a social thing. Fat parents usually breed fat kids. Alcoholic parents often breathe alcohol kids. I mean, I think that we learn.

There'S a bunch of it.

We learn.

But we didn't used to be a.

Country of fat people.

And we still have the same genes. We used to have this obesity crisis with 2/3 of US overweight has happened.

In 30 years, you know, and so.

50 years ago we didn't have this problem.

Now there's a couple of reasons.

One is that certainly 100 years ago we were doing physically active work all the time.

So the amount we ate was very different given, you know, calories in, calories out. So that's one thing. Another thing is the types of food we ate because there's so many hidden calories in things like high fructose corn syrup and you know, A Coke has 200 calories, chocolate milk has 200 calories, you know, and those are the small 12 ounce sodas, you know, and now.

You go into the stores and you see, see these kids with 24 ounce sodas and they've got as many calories.

As they should be eating in a day.

You know, you go to Burger King, McDonald's you have a Big Mac and fries and a large soda.

It's 2,000 calories.

You know, so the way calories have.

Been supersized with these very, very cheap ingredients has really, really changed.

That aside, anyone who wants to lose.

Weight can, or 98% of the people in the world, there are very, very small percent that have biological problems that they have to deal with. But again, if you look at picture.

Books, even 75 years ago, there weren't fat people.

And we're not a different race. We didn't come from somewhere else. It is about what we're eating.

And at the end of the day.

It'S calories in and calories out. And then there's better calories than not calories.

But if you eat more than you.

Expend, you're going to get fat. And if you want to lose weight, you got to eat less. And you want to do it healthfully and have a balanced diet.

But it's not magic.

Berkeley's lucky to have you.

But do you have any ideas on.

How you might expand this sort of thing, extend the scope of it? And is there any way that we as individuals and Googlers could help that?

I'm glad you asked.

Thanks, Jerry. There's a couple of things.

Every school district in America is mandated.

By law to have a wellness policy in place. It had to be in place last September.

Most maybe have them.

Most have not implemented them.

And the ones that have them usually.

Haven'T written them, written the bar high enough. The first page of our calendar is an abridged version of the Berkeley Unified School District wellness policy. I helped write a model wellness policy which is up on my website, lunchlessons.org and@ecoliteracy's website, ecoliteracy.org so if you have kids in schools or want to deal with this on a school basis, find out what their wellness policy is and find out why they haven't implemented it.

And hold their feet to the fire. You know, they have to be board approved. That means by law the school district.

Had to approve these policies. And if they're not following them, and.

I guarantee you they're not, then you.

Gotta make them do it. And if they won't, go to the.

Press or Google it and, you know.

Get it out there in the world.

One of the things that I'm working.

On right now is something called I'm.

Trying to build a virtual lunchbox.

And I'm trying to get funding from Kellogg foundation and Robert Wood Johnson for the content.

But the content for the lunchbox would.

Be cycle menus, cycle recipes, procurement policies.

Exploitable recipes.

So if I wrote the recipes for 500, it could go down to 2 or up to 1000, that the recipes would be linked to some generic costing, costing by region, that it would be linked to the USDA database so it would have nutritionals. Most school districts don't have all those pieces. The number one request, and I get numerous requests every day, people ask me, is, how do I change in my school? What are your recipes? You know, what are your menus? How do I do it?

But handing somebody my menu, this is this.

And even if I handed them the recipe that I was using doesn't mean that anybody can use it.

And all of these school districts are.

Under the auspices of the usda, which demands all of this paperwork.

And so most of them can't deal with that either.

So there's this paperwork. So what I want to do in the world, what I want to give to the world, is a website that has the virtual lunchbox that every school district of America can log in and use as a resource that would have recipes, manuals, costings, nutritional analysis, all of that, and I'm prepared to provide the content. I need somebody to build me a website.

So if any of you out there.

Here we are in Google, want to help me build a website, that's what I think really needs.

Because if it's not out there in.

The public domain, some smart company, there's going to be somebody out there is going to build this and start charging schools, and there will be just one more way that there's less money in the system. So I think that there should be a place in a way in the public domain where schools all across the country can access this type of food for their kids in a way that's easily understandable for them. It's somewhat complicated to do. Probably not for you guys, but when I think about building a website, it's somewhat complicated because you have to be linking the nutritionals and you have to link the costings, and it has to be automatically explodable, but it needs to be virtual. Originally, I thought I'd actually build the lunchbox and hand it to people. But if it's not virtual and it's not exploitable, you know, a wide swath of people can't really use it. So anybody who wants to help me do that, I'm looking for volunteers or Google can help me do that. But that's what I want to do. And I'm trying to amass A little pile of. I guess they didn't want to play money and talent to put something like that together. So. All right.

Yes.

Oh, no. And if there are no last questions, then.

I'll sign Brooks.

And if anybody just has questions and didn't want to get up in front of the microphone and ask me, I'll sign Brooks.

And can I ask one more?

Yeah, you can ask a question. The question I wanted to ask is.

When you talk about these things, it's all very well to have the virtual lunchbox and the garden and this and that, but there's a lot of resistance that the children and the parents to doing this.

I know.

I read about one school, I think.

In Colorado or Denlo park, where they tried to do something like what you're doing, and it didn't go. And it sounds like you're making go in Berkeley. But can you talk a little bit about the resistance to that? Because I think when you do all the positive things, you must also. One must also address the negatives and answer those.

Yeah. So I've got a couple of good kids stories.

When I was at the Ross school, When I first started at the Ross.

School, they were fifth graders, fifth and up.

And so the little.

And it was all girls in the fifth grade at that point.

So the first day of school or.

The first week of school, a whole bunch of fifth graders come in. You know, they're this high, and even with me short, they're shorter than me.

So they all come in, hands on the hips and going, we're going on a hunger strike.

Ms. Cooper, we hate your food. I loved that. I wanted to cheer, but I thought that was inappropriate.

So I said, what's the matter?

And they said, we hate your grilled cheese sandwiches. Well, of course, I use, you know.

Grafton cheddar cheese, which I loved.

And we baked our own bread and, you know, a little butter, and, you.

Know, they thought that it was American.

Cheese and Wonder Bread was a grilled cheese sandwich.

So we worked with the kids and.

We got these group of girls and we baked bread with them and talked about bread and did cheese tastings and, you know, came up with a, you know, a sandwich they would eat and that I could live with. And the next year, these kids were. They were coming into the cafeteria, and one of my managers came over and.

Said, you'll never guess what those fifth graders are doing.

And they're now sixth graders.

I said, what are they doing? They said, I just heard them come in, and they were leading the fifth graders and telling the Fifth graders. Oh, you guys are so lucky you started this year. We've changed all the food and fixed it.

You know, big children tend to be less of a problem over time than the adults. But here's the thing.

All of us are tired. We work hard, we're two income households.

Nobody's got enough time. And who wants to fight with kids?

It's really about power. What's one of the first five words a child learns? No.

What's the first thing they say no to? Whatever you're trying to put in their mouth. It's a lesson they never forget. It's the first place they have power.

And when we make food about power to the kids, I mean, I have parents tell me all the time, oh.

My kid won't eat. Fill in the blank.

Well, your kid won't eat that with you. But that doesn't mean that if you have an environment where that thing is cool food and you really work with.

The kids that you can make changes.

But it is not easy. It is hard. And that's why I have this three.

Legged stool and why I think it's so important that we have hands on experiential learning, that we have these cooking and gardening classes, that we have science curriculum and that we have good food. And it definitely takes time.

And you start with the little ones. I mean this, you know, the kindergarten and first grade kids who got my food this year, by the time they get to high school, I'm not going.

To be fighting with them anymore.

Probably by the time they get to.

Middle school, I'm not going to be.

And so it just really takes time.

And it is hard. It is hard, but I don't see.

That we have a choice and we.

Just have to really work at it and really care.

And parents, you know, I don't have a problem with the parents in Berkeley.

By and large, but I think parents can be difficult because parents, you know, depending on the, you know, depending on the demographic they come from and who they are, you know, they don't want you telling them what to feed their kids. And they don't particularly believe that their.

Kids are getting sick from the food.

And things like that.

But I think these staggering statistics coming.

Out of the CDC really are changing, you know, how we think about it. And I think the government's even starting to change how we think about it.

Because we cannot support what are we going to do.

Right now in America we have about 9 or 11, 10% of our kids.

Have diabetes and we're already spending $200.

Billion a year on diet related illness?

What's going to happen when that doubles.

And triples and quadruples?

Who's going to support this? I mean, what's going to happen to all of us who actually work hard and pay in our tax dollars? Who's going to support a world when 45%? And what's going to happen to these kids? I mean, we all know, I mean.

Diabetes has been an old people's disease.

Usually get it when you're older. What's going to happen when kids have it when they're 16, 17, 18? What's their life expectancy?

What's that cost going to be? So, you know, we have to make this change. And, you know, just because it's hard doesn't mean we can't do it. We just got to just got to do it. So.

Okay, thank you. I'll sign books or answer more questions or whatever.