Aurora Commeree
CD 469
Carol West
News Brief
03/31/2014
I watched ‘TED Talks: Whats Wrong with School Lunches?’ with Ann Cooper. She discusses malnutrition in America- specifically what is serve in school. Her audience seems to be parents and educators in a position to advocate for children’s health. She takes a wider look at the entire system of agriculture we have in the U.S.- the amount of pesticides we use and the surplus of big corporations vs the low number of farmers. Cooper renovated the school lunch programs in Berkeley bringing healthy food to schools for lunch. She teaches children cooking classes, teaches about how to grow food and where it comes from and fostering relationships between the kids and food. I thought the topic of pesticide and antibiotic additives was very interesting. I did not know that U.S agriculture uses 1.2 billion lbs of pesticides every year. That is 5 lbs for every single American.
I felt the Cooper did show her bias a few times during her talk by using words like “good food”(opposed to bad food), insisting we are what we eat, labeling processed food as ‘garbage’, and trash talking the USDA.
My feelings towards the topic is that I absolutely agree with what Cooper is saying about the importance of childrens’ nutrition. I do also know however that feeding your children healthy and organic meals is not always a realistic goal for families of lower socioeconomic status. Ann’s program sounds like it is heading us in the right direction making healthy food available to children coming from a variety of families.
Sources
1. Cooper, A., (2007). Whats wrong with school lunches?. TED talks.
amc1348 
Aurora, Thanks for posting this video. After listening to Amy’s’ presentation and watching this video, it is really scary to see the direction school lunches are going in. We should put a lot of value on the way our children eat, they are our future, and their growing bodies need healthy sources of nutrition to stimulate their development. It was hard to hear her talk about the chicken nuggets, cookies, and treats that the government provides these children. We should be putting in a greater effort in feeding our kids healthy sustainable meals, that will support growth and development, instead of creating risks of diabetes and obesity. Thank you for sharing such a pertinent topic, and video.
Thanks for posting this video Aurora! I think Ann Cooper is amazing. Her philosophy really explains the root of the obesity problem here in the United States. She states that we are “feeding our kids to death” because of our food system and how the government oversees food has led us to this obesity epidemic. She talks about how we got here is by big agro-business. There is a huge monopoly of companies that control what is put in grocery stores. I think that she is right on in talking about using regional food and how important local food is. By teaching our children about growing food and eating food that is grown near to where they live helps them to learn about how much healthier this is. Also teaching children that it is better for our planet because of less oil and gas for transporting it. She discusses sustainable food and how important it is to teach children about the amount of antibiotics we pump into these animals is creating a huge problem because our bodies are then learning to become immune to some of these and therefore making it harder to fight off/resist these diseases. If we continue to go on at this rate, the human race is going to be facing a big problem because our bodies are becoming immune due to all of these hormones and antibiotics we are putting into our bodies that are being fed to the livestock. Overall I think that it is great that Ann Cooper is teaching kids about cooking from scratch, eating whole foods, and also learning to cook and helping these younger generations in understanding how important eating nourished foods is and how these foods help our brains function better and the host of other benefits that come along with that.
Wow, those statistics blew me away! It makes me not want to eat! All those pesticides! I feel the only solution is to just start over. Instead of going the way we are headed, we should tear down all these industries, causing pollution and all, and get back connected to nature. We should plant more farms, and teach children how to farm, and grow their own healthy foods. There is little help for our future, seeing how we are headed now, but if we start changing now, there is still hope!
Aurora,
Thank you for sharing this TED talks video. It was pretty astonishing to learn that in one year we roughly consume 5 pounds of pesticides and herbicides found in our food! I had never heard this fact and it makes me feel sick! A lot of the times we do not realize how many chemicals or hormones are in the food we consume. It is important that we realize what we teaching the children. We need to help them learn to eat healthy and take care of their bodies. I feel it is also extremely important to educate the parents on establishing a healthy lifestyle and diet at home. There needs to be something done about the food system and the control it has over America. This topic is a very important topic that everyone should be more educated on.
Aurora, your statistics about the amount of pesticides we eat is mind-blowing. 5lbs of pesticides per person just sounds so bad. I’m concerned about our health and things that these pesticides may promote such as cancer. Sometimes we don’t even know what we are eating and what type of pesticides we are putting in our bodies. I recently read something that linked GMOs to Autism. It is scary to think of all the bad stuff we unknowingly put in our bodies. I also agree that our food system is not best in our schools. I remember eating all the unhealthy food. Even the non-school lunches such as the food carts. I never once saw a fruit being sold but I always saw sodas, chips, nachos, break, cookings, and all sorts of junk food. I don’t think we should take all junk food away but I do think we should sell healthier foods and school lunch provided by school should also be healthier than just pizza and hamburgers.