Oh yeah, what ever did happen to that school in Huntington, West Virginia where Jamie Oliver tried to overhaul the student lunches? The story, as told in a recent article on Gilt Taste, will warm even the most skeptical and embittered of hearts.
As Jane Black says in her Gilt Taste article, "Times have changed" since Jamie Oliver first rolled into Huntington and started working on Food Revolution. In short, the school made it work.
The lunch room is serving a daily menu of from-scratch meals like chicken quesadillas, brown rice, and a stromboli that Black says she could barely keep from scarfing down whole. These lunches are being used as a model for schools in eight other West Virginia counties. Cooks in those lunch rooms will receive binders of recipes and training to help get them on their feet - with a lot less drama and bureaucratic headache than Huntington suffered.
The biggest surprise are the main players. Rhonda McCoy, who Black points out came off looking like "an aloof bureaucrat" in the TV show, has worked to push these changes through the system and make them work within federal nutrition and cost standards. And that huffy lunch cook Alice Gue, who butted heads with Jamie Oliver, is now one of the people training cooks in the new school districts.
We don't hear a lot of good news about the school lunch system these days. Knowing that this one school district has made it work is definitely cause for some celebration.
Don't you think so?
• Read the Article: The Triumph of Jamie Oliver's Nemesis by Jane Black on Gilt Taste
Related: Jamie Oliver's TED Talk: Teach Kids About Food
(Image: Jedd Flowers / Cabell County Schools via Gilt Taste)
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This post made my morning, thanks. Here's to teaching our kids, and ourselves, to eat better.
Yay, Jamie! And everyone in Huntington who is continuing to provide kiddos with healthy lunches. :-)
So happy to hear this! I grew up in WV and went to Marshall University... my husband and I were just talking about this last week and wondering what the outcome was. Thanks for the follow up.
This post made me happy and angry all at once.
I'm thrilled to know how well things are going in Huntington. At the same time, I'm annoyed with TV shows that seem to think having confrontation and a villain boosts viewership. I'm sure there was probably some butting of heads but not as badly as the show portrayed.
I think a lot more school districts would sign on to a program like this if they knew it worked. As it is, the drama and failure was what most people saw. The success as portrayed by this article is something many will miss.
The food in the Los Angeles Unified School District -- which was the target of the second season of Food Revolution -- has also recently improved. (This LA Times story is so heartening.)
While I was often annoyed by the reality TV tactics used on Jamie Oliver's show, and found it really hard to watch, I'm glad it has led to an improvement in school lunches.
It's so great to hear this had a happy ending; I was rather doubtful during the show.
Now if those kids can just get the hell out of West Virginia the happy-ending will be complete!
DoctorEcks-- not funny.