Latest Inside school food Podcast Episodes

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Episode 42: Cafeteria (not!) of the Future

Inside School Food - June 15, 2015 15:33 - 39 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
First off, stop calling it a “cafeteria.” And don’t just re-configure the physical space and the equipment, but the entire dining experience. San Francisco Unified School District is doing just that, in partnership with one of the world’s sharpest, most sought-after design firms. More than 1,300...

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Episode 41: Learnings from West Virginia

Inside School Food - June 08, 2015 19:59 - 46 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
In West Virginia, many children suffer from levels childhood poverty, hunger, and obesity well above the national average. To meet this troubling challenge, the state’s Department of Education has been exceptionally energetic in its top-down efforts to win student acceptance of healthier menus w...

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Episode 40: Tales from the trenches with Chef Cyndie

Inside School Food - June 01, 2015 15:29 - 36 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Cyndie Story has consulted in school kitchens in 37 states, where she has spread a gospel of work simplification that can transform the lives of food service staff. The humility and humor with which she approaches the job makes her an inspirational figure. “I love to laugh,” she says, “and once ...

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Episode 39: Locavore Mayor Takes on Lunch

Inside School Food - May 18, 2015 15:40 - 36 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Where do you set your goal for local food purchasing? How about 50 percent of your total food budget? How about trying to do this in Maine? In Portland, ME, Mayor Michael Brennan believes it can be done; and the school district’s food service director, Ron Adams, is getting close. No, they don’t...

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Episode 38: El Monte Magic Explained

Inside School Food - April 27, 2015 17:18 - 38 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
El Monte City School District is celebrated as a leading edge reformer well beyond the cafeteria. Over the years, this high-needs district has established a rigorous, comprehensive approach to student wellness that attempts to touch every aspect of their lives in and out of school. The exuberant...

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Episode 37: Are Smart Snacks Half Baked?

Inside School Food - April 20, 2015 16:33 - 39 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Since July 2014, an interim USDA regulation on foods sold outside the reimbursable meals program requires healthier offerings nationwide. But questions remain. Many of the new “Smart Snacks” are reformulated copycats of highly processed stuff sold outside school. In some states, liberal waivers ...

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Episode 36: Reading Plate Waste

Inside School Food - April 06, 2015 14:46 - 27 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Amid widespread complaints about discarded school food, enter a new study that tells us things may be not as bad as they seem. Careful measurements of plate waste taken in twelve Connecticut schools in 2012, 2013, and 2014 tell a different story, of students eating better and wasting less as the...

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Episode 35: Good Food Measures Up

Inside School Food - March 30, 2015 16:48 - 36 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Of course students eat better when healthy food is prepared with care and skill. We all knew that. Now we have important new research to back us up, the result of a year-long collaboration between the Harvard School of Public Health and Project Bread’s Chefs in Schools program. The study’s two l...

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Episode 34: More about food processing (“Have it your way,” part 2)

Inside School Food - March 23, 2015 15:27 - 39 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Processed foods: Whether you need them oven-ready or as components for speed scratch, you probably want them without additives you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce. You want fresh and vivid flavors kids will go for, and you would prefer to know where and how the ingredients were grown. Possibl...

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Episode 33: Feeding Summer

Inside School Food - March 16, 2015 15:35 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
It’s planning season for USDA summer meals sponsors–the people who know that, for children from food-insecure homes, the last day of school isn’t necessarily a happy occasion. Currently, only a small fraction of students eligible for federally funded summer meals actually get them. Today’s guest...

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Episode 32: Florida (school) Food Truck Sizzle

Inside School Food - March 02, 2015 21:16 - 33 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Food trucks are rolling statements about some the values Americans hold dearest: independence, entrepreneurship, and mobility. Authenticity. Creativity. Affordability. With the movement growing so fast across the nation, it was only a matter of time before school food innovators started getting ...

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Episode 31: Participation: What’s really going on?

Inside School Food - February 16, 2015 16:55 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Whether your sales up or down, there has to be a reason. So what’s behind the participation slump among students who don’t qualify for free or reduced-priced meals? Some school nutrition professionals say it’s a clear case of cause and effect: paying kids don’t like the new menus, so they’re not...

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Episode 30: Making FoodCorps Work

Inside School Food - February 09, 2015 20:49 - 40 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
It’s been more than five years since the inception of FoodCorps, the AmeriCorps division that sends young service members into school gardens, classrooms, cafeterias, and kitchens, where they’re tasked with generating excitement and support for healthy whole food. Today’s guests describe how it’...

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Episode 29: Kitchen Workhorses

Inside School Food - January 26, 2015 19:46 - 39 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
What’s behind the “True Food” revolution in Minneapolis Public Schools? Ambitious purchasing of industrial-strength gadgets—cook-chill tanks, vacuum baggers, a meat shredder, a “gentle mixer,” and a 30-foot-long sous vide cooker—may be costly, but food costs are down, participation is up, an...

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Episode 28: Serving Food Justice at School: A Conversation with Audrey Rowe

Inside School Food - January 19, 2015 16:35 - 37 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
This week on Inside School Food, for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, join Audrey Rowe, Administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service at USDA, in reflection on socioeconomic justice in school nutrition programs–historically, currently, and going forward as we approach Child Nutrition Reauthorizati...

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Episode 27: “Bay to Tray” in Monterey

Inside School Food - January 12, 2015 19:49 - 36 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
There is perhaps no city in the nation more strongly associated with fish than Monterey, CA, home to the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium and the setting for John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. But most of the seafood harvested from local waters is processed in China and sold to international market...

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Episode 26: School Food Social Media That Rocks

Inside School Food - January 05, 2015 16:09 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
We kick off the new year with Dayle Hayes, the activist blogger behind “School Meals That Rock,” a multi-platform social media campaign that draws attention to news of healthy, delicious, sustainable progress in K-12 food service. Last year there was plenty of that kind of news. And there’s lots...

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Episode 25: Mastering the Art of School Cooking

Inside School Food - December 15, 2014 16:55 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
It took a village to produce New School Cuisine: Nutritional and Seasonal Recipes for School Cooks by School Cooks. This pioneering new book features 78 rigorously tested, fully reimbursable dishes that Vermont children have enthusiastically voted for with their sporks. “The final ingredients ad...

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Episode 24: Top Chefs

Inside School Food - November 24, 2014 20:28 - 47 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Big districts have long employed chefs, and smaller ones are increasingly relying on them as consultants. But what happens when a mid-size district hires a classically trained restaurant industry veteran as food service director? In this episode, we talk to two CIA alumni who love the job, and w...

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Episode 23: New Menus = New Price Tags?

Inside School Food - November 17, 2014 19:53 - 38 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
What’s really behind the controversy over Healthy Hunger Free Kids 2010? According to today’s guests, it’s dollars that don’t make sense. Join Gitta Grether-Sweeney of Portland (OR) Public Schools Nutrition Services and Gary Vonck, a national leader in K-12 food service sales, for their take on ...

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Episode 22: The Urban School Food Alliance travels to France. Vive la révolution?

Inside School Food - November 03, 2014 20:11 - 45 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Food service leaders from six of the nation’s very largest districts–New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Orlando–have joined together over shared reform goals: lower prices, more sustainable production practice, and a pronounced shift in not just what’s served, but how–including h...

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Episode 21: Sustainable California Chicken for California Kids

Inside School Food - October 27, 2014 15:23 - 40 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Three very big districts—Riverside, San Diego, and Oakland—are taking farm to school to the next level with an enormous, year-round commitment to sustainably grown California chicken. Their ambitious purchasing initiative, which has been several years in the making, is designed to send a cle...

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Episode 20: This Radish is Golden

Inside School Food - October 20, 2014 15:45 - 37 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
What community isn’t proud of its school trophies? Across Georgia, there’s a new kind of prize that recognizes exemplary work in farm-to-school, named after a tasty local vegetable. And winning at any level—gold, silver, or bronze—can generate the kind of excitement and support that a good s...

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Episode 19: Farm To School Program Evaluation

Inside School Food - October 13, 2014 23:32 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Farm to school purchasing pursues social, environmental, economic, and public health goals. How to evaluate progress in reaching them, and how to share ideas and learning across a diverse, national community of practice? In this episode, learn about two new resources that are designed to help. T...

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Episode 18: A Visit to Traverse City, MI: “Space Broccoli” & Other Adventures in Farm to School

Inside School Food - October 06, 2014 16:21 - 34 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Family farms dominate the agricultural landscape of the Lower Michigan Peninsula, growing lots more than those celebrated sour cherries. Romanesco and kohlrabi, for instance, which the children of Traverse City Area Public Schools have come to enjoy are grown there. Learn how the district is dra...

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Episode 17: Charting a Farm to School Course? Don’t Leave Without this Roadmap

Inside School Food - September 29, 2014 19:39 - 34 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
We’re so excited about Farm to School Month 2014 that we’re starting two days early. Join us for a walk through USDA’s totally indispensable, very user-friendly guide to launching, bidding, and buying farm to school. Author Christina Conell talks about what’s in it, including best practice examp...

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Episode 16: Lunch Lessons from Teenage Chefs

Inside School Food - September 22, 2014 19:52 - 34 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Want fresh, USDA-compliant meals that kids will get excited about? How about putting kids in charge? Cooking Up Change does just that. Subjected to the same tight budgets, strict nutrition standards, and logistical challenges that adult school menu planners face every day, teams of high school c...

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Episode 15: How Smart Are Your Lunchrooms?

Inside School Food - September 15, 2014 20:06 - 32 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
A school cafeteria can be a highly charged environment. Crowds of students press into the line, eager to zip through so they can get to their friends and recess. They’re hungry. It’s very loud. And they’re only children. Can we really expect them to focus on healthy choices? Experts from the Cor...

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Episode 14: Let’s Talk Nutrition Standards

Inside School Food - September 08, 2014 16:32 - 31 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Inside School Food kicks off the new school year with a discussion of the nutrition standards mandated by the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. This school year, SFAs are being asked to do even more–more fruit, more whole grain, and less sodium, along with new, very strict guidelines on a la...

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Episode 13: School Lunch Around the World

Inside School Food - August 11, 2014 22:35 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 7 ratings
Explore school lunch around the world on the season finale of Inside School Food. Why are we so riveted by pictures of school meals in other countries? Perhaps because it’s a shared experience the world over, and perhaps because these images are so rich in information. “Unpack a school lunch,” w...

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