Author Archive

Posted by Ed Bruske | March 15th, 2010

By Ed Bruske Contributing Editor For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on–including their own excrement–to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial [...]

Posted by Ed Bruske | February 22nd, 2010

D.C. Schools COO, Anthony Tata

By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor

Anthony Tata, a former brigadier general and career Army officer in charge of procurement in Afghanistan, is the chief operating officer for D.C. Public Schools,  second in rank to chancellor Michelle Rhee. Tata was a close reader of our recent series of articles on the food served in D.C. schools–Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen–which questioned the highly processed and frequently sugary fare being served to children on a daily basis. Tata told The Washington Post that he is considering other options besides the school system’s current food provider, Chartwells. You  won’t find him disparaging Chartwells in this interview with The Slow Cook, except to say that school officials “are working with Chartwells to address concerns.”  Tata does say he is looking for ways to include more local produce in school meals and is considering a switch from highly-sweetened flavored milk. And there’s a new director of school food services on the scene who is particularly keen on school garden.

Posted by Ed Bruske | February 4th, 2010

By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor

Yesterday I stopped by the cafeteria at my daughter’s school here in the District of Columbia–H.D. Cooke Elementary–and this is what many of the kids were having for breakfast: A package of sugar-glazed cookies called Kellogg’s Crunchmania Cinnamon buns; chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk; grape juice.

A 1.76-ounce packet of Crunchmania contains 13 grams of sugar, or 3 tespoons. Chocolate milk packs 26 grams of sugar, somewhat more than 6 teaspoons. And the grape juice delivers 18 grams of sugar in a little four-ounce container, another four-plus teaspoons. Altogether, that’s more than 13 teaspoons of nutritionally worthless sugar first thing in the morning, courtesy of the public school system and its food service provider, Chartwells.

I came across one boy actually dipping the cookies into his chocolate milk. All further proof that you can pack school “foods” with “nutrition” at the factory, and still come up with products that have no business being served to children on a daily basis at school, especially in a city that has the highest concentration of adolescent obesity in the country.

As Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. was recently quoted here as saying children have only a few “discretionary calories” to spend on sugary food. “So, my professional feeling is that discretionary calories (added sugar, fat) should be eaten at home, not at school.  I am in favor of schools focusing on providing key nutrients to children at school and not getting into the business of providing them with ‘treats.’”

Posted by Ed Bruske | February 2nd, 2010

By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor

One of the most disturbing things I saw during the week I spent in the kitchen at my daughter’s elementary school recently was all the sugar being served to children. From the Pop Tarts and Apple Jacks on the breakfast line, to the fruit juice, the chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk on constant display, to the fruit mix in “light syrup” offered with lunch, sugar is ever-present at H.D. Cooke Elementary. So it is in most public schools.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about all the birthdays and other celebrations and even everyday events where cookies and cakes and candy are commonly dished out at school. At a recent “family game night” at H.D. Cooke, every table had bowls of Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses for the taking. Sources for sugar seem to be everywhere, all the time: You can hardly spend an evening with the family without a dose of sugar.

In the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic, is it time to stand up to sugar and the empty calories it represents? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the rate of adolescent obesity in the District is the highest in the nation. Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler–who has battled his own weight issues–argues in a best-selling book embraced by Michelle Obama’s policy team that Americans are fat because they’re addicted to convenience foods laced with fat, salt, sugar. Should schools be enabling an addiction to sugar?

Posted by Ed Bruske | February 1st, 2010

“My bill will see to it that students are eating fresh healthy food in school cafeterias throughout the District”–Mary Cheh By Ed Bruske Contributing Editor D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) has introduced landmark “Healthy Schools” legislation that integrates nutrition standards, locally produced foods, school gardening, broader access to subsidized meals and increased physical exercise [...]

Posted by Ed Bruske | January 26th, 2010

By Ed Bruske

Contributing Editor

When I asked to spend time observing the kitchen operation at my daughter’s elementary school recently, I thought I was going to see people cook. The food service provider for D.C. Public Schools, Chartwell-Thompson, this year ditched the old method of feeding kids with pre-packaged meals from a food factory and replaced it with something they called “fresh cooked.” Being one of those folks who’s trying to return to cooking from scratch with fresh, local ingredients, I was anxious to see how Chartwell’s plan would play out.

Was I ever in for a surprise. As I soon discovered, there wasn’t much “fresh” about the food being served at H.D. Cooke Elementary School. When I passed through the doors of the “Kid’s Stop Cafe,” I walked straight into the maws of the industrial food system, where meals are composed of ingredients out of a food chemist’s lab, where highly processed food is doused with all sorts of additives and preservatives in distant factories, then cooked and shipped frozen so that it can be quickly reheated with minimal skill and placed on a steam table.

Like many of the parents who’ve been reading this series for the last five days, and communicating with me via our school listserv, I was perplexed by the sheer banality of so much processed, canned and sugar-injected food being fed to our children on a daily basis; disappointed that no one seemed to take issue with this sort of food service; chagrined that pizza and Pop Tarts and candied cereals were being served so routinely alongside Mountain Dew masquerading as milk–and all of it here in the nation’s capitol, right outside Michelle Obama’s door.

Are these really the lessons we want our kids to learn about food?

Posted by Ed Bruske | January 13th, 2010

By Ed Bruske Contributing Editor Is it possible to write a hatchet job about something as innocent as school gardens? Apparently so. I would not have believed it, but there it is in the otherwise esteemed Atlantic magazine, a venomous screed that would have you believe that gardening constitutes a sinister scheme to take over our [...]

Posted by Ed Bruske | January 7th, 2010

By Ed Bruske

Contributing Editor

Washington Post garden columnist Adrian Higgins today lends his voice to the growing movement behind backyard chickens in the nation’s capitol with a front-page spread in the paper’s Home section.

Higgins recounts the story of Caryn Ernst and how D.C. police and animal control agents swooped down on her family’s Capitol Hill home in June when they discovered that Ernst and her daughters were raising some chickens in their back yard as part of an elementary school science project. After the chickens were taken away, Ernst started digging into D.C. law and discovered that it is nearly impossible to raise backyard chickens in the District of Columbia. Animal control regulations require that chickens be kept at least 50 feet from the nearest residence.

Ernst took her concerns to local Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who, with Ernst’s assistance, drafted a new law that would ease restrictions on keeping chickens. That bill is now in the hands of Councilmember David Catania (R-At Large), pending a hearing before the Council’s Committee on Health, which Catania chairs.