Thousands of students are eating locally today thanks to
California Thursdays, a new initiative that provides students with healthy lunches made with California-grown fruits and vegetables. Fifteen school districts throughout the state are participating in the program, including San Francisco United and Oakland United.
These kids are being served things like chicken fajita rice bowls, Asian noodles with bok choy, and penne with chorizo and kale — a far cry from the rubbery pizzas, nacho cheese sauce, and mysterious and disgusting turkey tetrazzini from school lunches of yore.
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Our school lunches never looked like this.
This whole initiative is to get kids excited about fresh fruits and vegetables, but it could also be a boon to California farmers and the local economy. Schools in the state serve more than 887 million meals annually; the 15 districts in the program serve a combined 190 million meals a year, which is a lot of kale and bok choy.
The initiative is due to a collaboration between the nonprofit Center for Ecoliteracy and the participating school districts and allied organizations. The program has been successful in Oakland Unified for more than a year; it started as a monthly thing but soon spread to weekly. In a world that counts ketchup and French fries as vegetables, this is a win.
