It’s hard to believe that it was just a week ago that a film crew from HBO came into my living room and set up shop. It’s even harder to believe that world-class documentarians were here in Madison, getting the scoop on our school lunch. And caring so much that they are using MMSD’s School Lunch fiasco as their focus for highlighting how bad School Lunch contributes to Childhood Obesity.
A woman named Kate from HBO called a few us from Madison Families for Better Nutrition just a few weeks ago with interesting news about a four part series that they were doing. This wasn’t just some side project. This was a full fledged documentary, with the backing of the NIH, the CDC and others, similar to another amazing project that they had done in the past. This documentary was being led by an award winning director and they heard that here in Madison – the progressive, local-food loving city of Madison – there were kids who couldn’t identify a pear. Was that true, they asked? Is school lunch that bad? And then they started asking us our stories. Why did we care? What are we doing about it?
Fast forward only a few weeks, and there is a full film crew in my living room – a sound technician, videographer, lighting people, the project manager, the director, and a few other folks that seemed busy but I couldn’t tell you their exact expertise. (Can we change these lights bulbs to a lower wattage? Do you have somewhere we could set up this computer? How is your electrical - it seems to be surging a little. I turned your refrigerator off, it was making too much noise – but don’t worry, we put keys in there so we’ll be sure to put it back on. Can we film a little footage of you all hanging out in the kitchen? DRAT – I DIDN’T GIVE THE KITCHEN AN HBO WORTHY CLEANING!)
So what did they want to know from us, three busy moms who write some blog and facebook posts here and there, attend board meetings with disgusting factoids about the lunches they are serving our kids, plan small actions to get people’s attention, and write letters to the editor?
Well, they wanted to know why school lunch mattered so much to us. So we spoke for you – parents who don’t get the kind of attention one gets when they have HBO at the ends of their names – but do have something that the school should care about – kids. We have our own kids and we care about your kids and other people’s kids that we don’t even know. We care about what every child is being fed and what they are all learning about what it means to feed your brain and your body. We care that they all understand the importance of real food. So that is what we told them. And then we told mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and community members and people we’ll never meet that it was important that they stand up and do something to – or we will continue to poison our children with too much sugar and a bad relationship with the food that we need to take care of ourselves. This is truly a matter of life or death.
Until now, the school district hasn’t been entirely forthright with their plans on the future of school lunch and often it feels like they aren’t even listening. Turns out that if you ask the right questions and if you Also happen to have the right credentials after your name (I think the letters H-B-O were enough), the School District will start letting you in on their plans.
The folks from HBO told us after our shoot that the school district has gotten rid of slushie machines from all of the schools. They also said that they have been amazingly helpful during there few days of filming in town, being completely transparent about what they are doing to make change.
Have we seen it yet? I don’t think so. While the removal of chocolate milk on a trial basis was certainly reason for hope (and for three cheers!), it is just a very meager beginning to the change that needs to happen. We are so thankful and grateful that John and Kate and the rest of the crew that they came, and that they care. Stay tuned for MMSD’s turn being in the national spotlight to be aired by HBO in May…..
And hopefully followed with big change to come.
-EC
Tags: childhood obesity, documentary, HBO
On Monday, March 12, MFBN members had the chance to attend a lecture by Marion Nestle entitled, “Obesity Wars: The Food Industry vs. Public Health”.
