Kiersten Firquain is an entrepreneur dedicated to bringing wholesome food to school cafeterias in her native Kansas City.
And not a moment too soon, if one considers the latest statistics on children’s health coming out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the agency, the number of overweight children from the ages of six to eleven years old has more than doubled over the past twenty years — and has tripled in the twelve to nineteen age group.
Health experts say that poor dietary habits are also a factor contributing to dramatic rate increases of obesity, type II diabetes, asthma and elevated cholesterol among our children.
Working with a group of private schools in her area, Ms. Firquain and her small food service have taken over school kitchens on a mission to replace the processed foods of typical school fare with the on-site preparation of natural and organic meals both balanced in wholesome nutrients and decidedly lower in fats, salt and sugars. If the concept succeeds, she could become to the world of school cafeterias what YoNaturals already is to the world of food vending.
Of course, she faces some very daunting challenges.
To begin with, few school kitchens are set up or equipped to handle anything other than processed, pre-prepared foods meant to be simply warmed up and distributed to hungry students.
Also, the budgets of public and private schools are barely adequate to cover anything but the mass-marketed, institutional foodstuffs which nutritionists so often abhor. In her region, public school districts are reimbursed only $2.57 per meal by the federal government to provide free meals to needy students. But most districts say a meal actually costs an average of $2.88, not counting the administrative costs which must also be factored in.
And taking her wholesome foods initiative into the broader public school system would of course involve much red tape and delay.
But thankfully, Ms. Firquain hasn’t let such things stand in her way. Making healthy foods a more important part of school meals is something which needs to happen — if better juvenile health is ever to.
