As adults learn to make inexpensive, easy-toprepare, nutritious meals, children will learn etiquette and how to set the table.

Campbell says the program will start by assessing the skill level and time constraints of each family. Then, Campbell will teach parents how to make simple meals and use their children to help out. “So it becomes a family project to get dinner on the table,” Campbell says. When families leave, they’ll take home recipes and supplies donated by County Market.

Sarraf says any data gleaned from the study could help genH and other organizations compete for grants to support future programs.

Going forward

While the district is making considerable progress in the wellness arena, Sarraf’s ideals for physical education and food service have yet to be reached.

Physical education courses are not a daily activity for Springfield elementary students, despite a state requirement. Having obtained a waiver from the state, the district only provides two half-hour physical education classes to students each week. That waiver expires in two years, and Sanders says that, in order to meet the requirement for kindergarten through high school, the district would need between 25 and 30 more physical education teachers to add to the approximately 40 already employed.

District 186 Superintendent Walter Milton says expanding physical education courses is a great idea, but he adds that the district must also consider “the fiscal reality of our state and our country.”

Sarraf says funding physical education is a matter of priorities and that it’s genH’s role to educate the public and those in the district who set those priorities on the documented academic benefits of physical activity. “It’s a leap of faith … but when you live in the fourth heaviest state in the country, regarding your children, we have to begin doing something different.” She says the studies genH and its partners are conducting with programs like JumpStart should make that leap a little easier.

The district has already changed much of its cafeteria offerings to healthy versions of old standards (corn dogs are still a staple, but breaded with whole wheat) and introduced raw produce on a daily basis as an alternative to canned fruits and vegetables, says Jan Miller, District 186 food services director. Comparing this month’s lunch menu to a menu from about 10 years ago, pizza is relatively rare. And while the old menu offers zero opportunity to eat a real salad, it’s a Wednesday standard for at least the first four weeks of this school year.

Sarraf, as well as the LLCC chefs working with genH, would like to see more fromscratch cooking, but she acknowledges that schools no longer have the resources they did when, 30 or more years ago, school cooks made everything from raw ingredients.

“From-scratch cooking is labor intensive.

… So while it is absolutely possible to deliver a lunch to the children made from scratch at school for what is budgeted per child, it’s difficult to do that without hiring additional staff to help, and that’s where we end up with the problems,” Sarraf says, adding that school lunches – regulated and paid for through complex laws and bureaucratic systems – is the “hardest piece” of the wellness puzzle.

Even if the resources were available right now, Miller says that sudden changes aren’t necessarily going to be successful. “I know everyone wants to change everything right away, but I’ve been in this long enough to know that you can’t. It’s a slow process. We’ve been trying to put the fresh fruits and vegetables out, and I have seen … more and more kids taking more produce, it’s just taking time.”

She says she’s seen the most success in getting students to eat healthier foods in the youngest grades. “You get the little kids coming in – they have nothing to compare it to.”

In the meantime, Sarraf says Springfield and the nation must focus on changing the current culture of food, both in schools and in homes. “We need a paradigm shift in this country with regards to the way we approach food. We need to again begin to view food as fuel, as nutrition, rather than as entertainment. … We get really, really hung up on the idea that my kid’s breakfast needs to make his eyes pop open and rainbows to shoot out of his head and butterflies to sing. … We need to move away from that and towards the idea that food is designed to nourish the body.”

Contact Rachel Wells at rwells@illinoistimes.com.