There's been a lot of talk lately, not least from Slow Food USA and the first lady, about improving the quality of the food that our schools are serving to kids. Based on my own experience selling food at farmers' markets, I can't help feeling a bit skeptical. It seems to me that the reason so many places--including schools--serve crap to kids is because kids like eating crap.
My business offers a two-dollar item called the kids' quesadilla: a little white tortilla folded and grilled with melted cheese. We sell nearly 300 of them a week. We tried making them in the tomato tortillas that we use for the veggie quesadillas, but the kids wanted the white tortillas. I don't enjoy making them: they take longer than the veggie quesadillas because the veggies aren't there to help the cheese melt, and I just don't feel like I'm serving quality food when I make them. But the demand is strong so we make them anyway.
Still, I'm not convinced by the argument I keep hearing that if you offer kids better food, they'll learn to tell the difference. I offer plenty of great food, but they consistently choose the crap.
And yet I can't help thinking that school lunches may be the ideal place to start changing the way kids eat, especially for the current generation who have experienced mainstream school lunches. These meals are just so unequivocally awful that kids may even choose healthy food as an alternative.
1 comment:
I think that this isn't a problem with what YOU offer, it's a problem with what parents offer. Kids eat crap because that's what parents serve them. Kids eat crap because that's what they are socialized to like. For them to choose a veggie quesadilla at your booth, change has to start LONG before.
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