By the time little Antonia was starting kindergarten, her famous dad was beyond fed up with the toxic food environment.
“It was easy to feed my own kid good food and look the other way when she was younger. Putting little Toni into public school was an eye opener for me, I can’t believe the shit that passes for food in these schools. What the hell are they thinking?”
Anthony Bourdain, School Food Activist 2013
And so, the latest high profile school food activist was born. Tony was no stranger to TV, he had many successful food and travel shows and had also gained notoriety as an outspoken critic of the Food Network.
Like any smart parent, Tony knew to look beyond the menu for answers. He staked out the cafeteria and ate lunch there at least once a week. Like the famous Mrs Q, who had rocked the school food world with her photos and best selling book, Fed Up, he used his cell phone to take some choice stealth photos to document the questionable crud being served. While he was at it, he used his celebrity to get back into the kitchen, schmooze with the staff and got some photos of ingredient labels to seal the deal.
Angry beyond belief, he brought those photos to meet with a top TV producer and pitched a show and a ambitious plan that made Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution look like child’s play. With a tip to his highly popular show, No Reservations, his new school food show and the action plan was called No Excuses.
“There is no excuse to be poisoning our kids in our schools. Profit, schmofit! Without good health, nothing really matters!”
Tony could care less about ratings or fame. He’d been there, done that. As a result, he didn’t cave under pressure from the food industry. For Tony, this was about creating a safe and healthy future for his little Antonia and for every other kid as well.
Tony wasn’t about taking “baby steps” which had failed so miserably in the past years. Instead, he partnered with local organizations across the country to get everyone on board growing and preparing food from scratch. Jobs were created in an out of schools. Green jobs. Community gardens and small farms sprouted up wherever there as some sun, supplying food to local schools and child care centers.
Food Corps, which started back in 2011 in just a few states, was bigger and better than the Peace Corps ever was. This was the hot thing for young people to serve after college. After the 2nd stock market crash of 2011, college students understood that the best jobs for grads were in sustainable agriculture. Food Corps offered relevant experience, the competition was keen in all 50 states for these sought after programs.
Now that oil was over $200 a barrel and a gasoline was being rationed like in the 1970’s, the Sysco truck was no longer the major source of food in school cafeterias. Food came from close by. Thanks to Food Corps programs, some of it was grown onsite in teaching gardens.
After the mind boggling billion egg recall and latest wave of deaths from Salmonella contaminated turkey, smart people started to realize that the best food came from smaller sources. Small flocks of hens sprang up in people’s backyards providing eggs and occasional meat. CSAs for eggs grew in popularity across the country modeled on Intergenerate’s Heritage Egg CSA program.
Once Tony hopped into the world of school food, it became more in alignment with the diverse and local food systems that Tony had seen while traveling the world for A Cook’s Tour and No Reservations. Teachers started incorporating food into social studies and history, which made these subjects come alive for the students.
Note: As I played around with writing this fantasy piece about Tony Bourdain and school food, who should appear last night on the Colbert Report? My hero, Tony!
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Anthony Bourdain | ||||
|
||||
