In elementary school one of my favorite lunches was Oscar Mayer bologna on white Wonder Bread with the ends cut off and a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.
Who knew back then that such a lunch also meant ingesting nitrites, sodium phosphates, sodium diacetate, and sodium erythorbate (to name a few). One can of that soup, with its classic red and white label, still has a whopping 2,291 mg of sodium, 95% of the RDA.
Fortunately, nutrition is now analyzed, scrutinized, and proselytized. And companies like Revolution Foods are delivering tasty, healthy meals and nutrition education to schools and programs across the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles metropolitan areas.
They use organic and locally-produced ingredients whenever possible, milk is hormone-free and does not contain rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin, an injection to increase milk production), and meats are hormone and antibiotic-free, as well.
Their food is prepared fresh daily. It is not fried, overly processed, or microwaved. And it does not contain high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, artificial preservatives, colors, flavors or sweeteners.
Every child’s education should include healthy eating and learning about nutritious food, the company says. A sample menu includes spaghetti with all natural, hormone-free beef marinara sauce, steamed broccoli, a fresh apple, and 1% low-fat milk.
A little background: co-founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Toby met at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Tobey began her career as a teacher and coordinator of experiential education programs at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and Amigos de las Americas in Ecuador. In college, she ran children’s garden education programs in California and Rhode Island, and in graduate school she worked with the United Nations Hunger Task Force to evaluate the scalability of school feeding programs in Ghana. Groos Richmond served as the vice president of programs and development at RISE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recruiting and retaining outstanding teachers in public schools nationwide. She also worked at Leadership Public Schools in San Francisco where she redesigned the food service program at four public high schools. She began her career as an investment banker at Citigroup in Manhattan.
Revolution Foods has grown from serving just three schools in 2006 to over 100 education programs in 2008 reaching nearly 25,000 students. Looking for a change in your school district? Maybe it’s time to start a Revolution and say goodbye to institutional fare.
Image: Paul Goyette