Revolution Foods

“Let’s look at the school lunch program…We are essentially feeding them fast food and teaching them how to eat it quickly… lunch should be educational. Right now the school lunch program is a disposal scheme for surplus agricultural commodities. When they have too much meat, when they have too much cheese, they send it to the schools, and they dispose it through our kids’ digestive systems. Let’s look at it in a different way. This should be about improving the health of our children.”

~ Michael Pollan (in an interview with Bill Moyers, November 28, 2008)

Check out this short video about a company called Revolution Foods, serving a new kind of school lunch:

The founders, Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, came up with the idea while in business school at Berkeley, motivated "by the idea of creating a healthier generation.”

Their company now serves almost 60,000 meals to mostly low-income students in 350 schools across the country!

The criteria for the food they serve:

• No high fructose corn syrup
• No trans fats 
• Antibiotic and hormone free meat and dairy 
• Local and organic foods preferred 
• No fried foods 

The challenge: healthy food is more expensive. These meals are $3-4/meal, while the government currently only reimburses schools up to $2.75 per meal. This is certainly worth the investment though, especially considering how much money this will save in medical bills down the road. 

How about also bringing this idea to hospital cafeterias?