Cooking Your Way to Public Sector Change

In general, we won’t discuss a lot of television in this blog space. However, I feel the need to take a small departure from this informal rule to discuss a recent television program that, for me, exemplifies the difficult and complex challenges that public leaders face. Over the last few weeks, ABC has been showing Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, a reality-TV program about British Chef Jamie Oliver’s effort to change the way the residents of Huntington, West Virginia eat. His goal is to shift the town away from processed foods and teach them how to cook nutritious meals using real ingredients at a low cost. Many of the recipes he cooks on the show can be found in his cookbook (which I own and absolutely love).

Let me tell you that this television show is an eye opener. Just watching the show makes my wife and I want to go out for a run, no matter how late at night. The primary goal of Chef Oliver’s “Revolution” is to change the food that is being fed to the children in our public schools. He does this by showing the people of Huntington the negative health implications of the processed food that they are eating (including one particular experiment where he shows children how chicken nuggets are made even though chicken nuggets in the U.S. are not prepared this way) and emphasizing how easy the people of the city can switch to cooking with fresh ingredients.

With the help of Ryan Seacrest Productions, the show is, admittedly, a typical reality television show, with villains and foils, and the show would be remiss without some typical controversy, particularly about whether the changes implemented by Chef Oliver are truly lasting .

However, the show switched from a typical reality television show to a show that demonstrates the implications of our public during one particular exchange between Jamie and Rhonda McCoy. Ms McCoy, the Director of Food Services for Huntington Schools, forced Chef Oliver to serve French fries with a vegetable noodle dish because he had an insufficient number of vegetables in his lunch that day and, according to the federal guidelines, potatoes are considered a vegetable.

Setting aside the debate of whether a potato is a vegetable or a supercarb, I scoured the USDA school lunch program regulations to, hopefully, refute this position. But the vaguely written regulations that school districts have to implement are a good example of how public policies have created negative externalities in our school lunch system and how the public leaders charged with implementing those policies have their hands tied. It’s a situation where the schools don’t give the children butter knives to eat with, and we are forced to feed them finger foods (vegetables, potatoes aside, aren’t good finger foods). It is so concerning that some retired military officers consider our current school lunches a threat to national security.

But, the policies also reinforce the challenges with school funding. The crux of the problem is that the USDA has created the regulations for the school lunch program, but Congressional funding for the school lunch program fluctuates, forcing the local school districts to find funding sources to cover the funding gap between what is provided federally and what is provided locally. This is usually results in the use of mass produced processed foods and the sale of “competitive foods” such as soda and candy to supplement their funding.

These rules without the funding (or inverse funding) from Congress is exactly why a Big Mac costs less than a salad. It reinforces the research that has shown that industrial processed foods can contribute to illness and that foods with higher levels of fat and sugar could be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

By, highlighting the negative, the show has helped increase the momentum for changing the system. This is being done in a few ways. First, the attention the show has given to the current state of school lunch programs, in conjunction with the pet projects of the First Lady, has helped push for a change of the policy with the Child Nutrition Act, which is currently making its way through Congress. While not the be all and end all, the bill would provide the first substantial funding for the School Lunch Program in 40 years, while giving the Department of Agriculture more flexibility in setting policy.

Second, in the long run, hopefully, changing the school lunches will also contributed to a decrease in the cost of health care. Finally, whether they play a hero or a heel on the show, the Food Revolution is also starting a dialog about the type of leadership it takes to change eating habits. As one writer highlights, the key elements for getting decent food into schools are:
• A principal who cares about what kids eat
• Teachers who care about what kids eat
• Parents who care about what kids eat
• Food service workers who not only care about what the kids eat but also know their names

Now, if only Alice and her compatriots would come out from behind the lunch counter and get to know the kids in Huntington…