‘If you speak before food has been served, you understand how hunger interferes with the ability to concentrate and learn. If you speak after people have eaten, you understand that eating food is about way more than addressing a hunger issue.’

—Wayne Roberts

Field notes this week:

Many people know what it feels like to be slotted in as a presenter at a meeting or conference just before lunch or dinner is served. It’s hard to stir the discussion pot when everyone in front of you is thinking about what’s in the pot cooking. Speakers in that situation often crack a nervous joke about the unenviable situation of standing between people and their food.

Fewer people get to deal with the very different situation of after-dinner speaking, trying to give a speech when people in the audience are finishing their desert and still fully absorbed by chats with their newfound friends seated right beside them.

It’s actually much harder to be an after-dinner speaker than a pre-dinner speaker, and most speakers are too scared to even crack a nervous joke about the unenviable situation of trying to give a speech about a grand theme when everyone would rather talk with the people at their table. 

I had that exact experience a few weeks ago when I gave the after-breakfast speech at an event of 400 super-keen children and adults gathered to raise funds for the inspiring school meal programs put on by Halton Food for Thought in Oakville, Ontario.

There was just no quieting the people who were delighted to give their time and money for the cause, and totally excited about talking with the people around their table. I was talking during their conversation, as much as they were talking during my speech. That’s just the reality of banquets.

I have to say that getting to experience that banquet energy is the best education a food advocate can have to learn about the true and full meaning of food, and especially school meals food.

If you speak before food has been served, you understand how hunger interferes with the ability to concentrate and learn. If you speak after people have eaten, you understand that eating food is about way more than addressing a hunger issue. Eating is also very much about meeting the need to be sociable. That’s our human nature as social animals.

When we fail to take account of and design food experiences to meet both physical and social needs, I believe we are guilty of a terrible form of food waste. We are not just wasting food scraps. When we overlook the opportunities food offers to engage people as thinking and feeling social animals, we are wasting the growth potential of people.

And there’s no worse time to do that than when people are young.

This topic is as local as local food gets. There’s many a slip between the cup and the lips, my mother often warned me when I thought something was bound to happen. Learning to address the whole person when designing food programs is as local as food can get; it’s about the distance between the food and the plate, and what gets lost on the way to the heart and brain, as well as to the tummy and its organs.

I was smart enough to distribute the points of my talk around the room as a print-out to take home, in case anybody missed my points. At the suggestion of Patrick Robinson, one of the staff at Hypenotic who helps with this newsletter, it was titled “Eat to Learn; Learn to Eat.”

The talk had ten points.

There are two reasons for having ten points. First, there have to be at least ten meaningful aspects of food to support and satisfy the needs of a whole person functioning in a whole organization. Secondly, food advocates need to have at least ten good reasons to make the case for their cause — because the only way to weave a coalition that can win a good food cause is to win people with ten different types of goals they can see coming out of a successful food program.

Fortunately, meeting ten goals and providing ten benefits is something food can do quite handily. When it comes to school food programs, I’m just getting started when I get to ten good reasons.

But here come my top ten:                                              

1. School meals strengthen the mind-body connection: The Roman poet, Juvenal, who first said “a sound mind in a sound body,” knew his physiology. From infancy to old age, a good diet supports the mind, every bit as much as the body. The brain is probably the body’s hungriest muscle. The brain accounts for two per cent of the body’s weight, but requires 20 per cent of the body’s energy. It’s not just an energy hog. It also demand high quality fats, B vitamins, D vitamins, carotenoids and complex carbohydrates. Without such fuel, the high performance engine that is the brain can’t be alert and attentive, or store, use and be creative with information. It’s the principle of brain thermodynamics: garbage in/garbage out.
2. School meals let teachers teach: Teachers can only concentrate on teaching when kids can concentrate on learning.  When kids are distracted by stomach cramps, when they have behavior problems caused by sugar blues, when the students get “hangry,” as one school meal worker defined the mix of hunger and anger,  teachers have to deal with discipline issues, not the subject matter. Apart from nutrients that calm edgy nerves, food has a calming and focusing effect that’s recognized by such mental health leaders as John Kabat-Zinn, developer of “mindful meditation.”
3. School meals serve as a gateway to curriculum:  The way to student brains is through the stomach. Food and meals are shared experiences, and give teachers a common and concrete touchstone they can use to link to such varying subject matters as media literacy, plant science, resource management and social studies. Sometimes the link between food and course material is direct, as is the case with soil science and nutrition. Sometimes it is indirect, as is the case with life skills development, alternative education or community engagement. Sometimes food is a subject, and sometimes it is a tool of talented educators, as is the case with experiential learning, participative learning or action learning. Food may or may not be a curriculum subject on any given day, but meals can almost always be a curriculum tool.
4. School meals build social skills: Today’s team-based workplaces demand people with social, emotional and team skills. Kids learn and practice these skills when growing, preparing and eating meals. Grab-and go may fill stomachs, but it doesn’t enrich kids with learning opportunities to cooperate, listen, take turns, share, be courteous, or work through differences. Nor can grab-and-go have the “sunny side up” of a volunteer welcoming a child to school breakfast first thing in the morning.
5. School meals foster lifelong healthy habits: Childhood is when learned skills become lifetime habits. Washing hands before meals, eating slowly so the mind registers that the body has had enough, learning self-regulation in terms of amounts eaten, appreciating food and health as coming from a culture of activity, not a culture of mindless consumerism – all the major habits that help prevent chronic disease can be learned at mealtime. In a marketing and media world that’s tilted toward over-consumption, school meals and school curriculum can provide critical thinking skills that support families in shaping a healthy future, and affordable healthcare system, for their kids.
6. School meals exercise personal competency: The cultivating, preparing and eating of food lets kids practice hands-on learning of practical skills, many of which draw on reservoirs of spatial intelligence — hand-eye coordination, ability to sequence tasks, capacity to persevere, and other self-direction traits. As the old saying has it: inch by inch, row by row, that’s the way our gardens grow. At an early age, kids can learn through experience the mental scaffolding on which continuous learning is built. Food is a way to nourish a “yes, I can” approach to life.  
7. School meals offer employment readiness training:  Many students pay their way through school by working in the food industry, and many graduate to work in food and hospitality industries. Good school meal programs prepare students for both the proactive vocational and  generic skill sets they will need – ability to take instructions, ability to collaborate, ability to self-manage, ability to initiate and complete tasks, as well as food production, food safety, food prep, and food service skills.
8. School meals prepare responsible citizens: Citizenship is no longer just about the right and need to vote intelligently. Modern citizens of all ages can also vote with their forks, green bins and composters. Over the last two decades, animal welfare, packaging, waste reduction, volunteering, and many other topics have become personal and public policy issues — part of meaningful citizenship on a crowded and stressed planet. Mealtime at school is a unique training ground for citizens with a sense of personal responsibility.
9. School meals engage parents and communities:  Meal programs flourish when they draw support from beyond school walls. Some parents can teach about the childhood meals and food cultures they grew up within another country, a way to use food to foster interculturalism– active learning from other cultures and ways of seeing and knowing. Some school neighbors can do volunteer hours with composting. Chefs can give guest presentations about ways to make vegetables and beans delicious. A school-centered sharing economy is ready to come to the table. Food helps schools become community hubs.
10. School meals normalize children’s worth and voice: In April, 2016, an Ontario inquest honored a girl who was beaten to death by establishing “Katelynn’s principle.” The principle promotes a child’s right to be informed of, and part of, decisions about their future. School meal programs offer the chance for children to be seen and heard. They offer opportunities for children to find their voice, and learn to base their views on established principles related to food and childhood rights.

The full course school meal can nourish mind and body with food that’s filling and fulfilling, part of health, experiential learning and personal growth.  

There are at least ten good reasons for local, sustainable, nutritious food to become a standard part of the school day. The full implications of these ten good reasons explain why those who volunteer for and donate to such programs can’t be thanked enough.

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