Food Truth: Unplug From the Matrix

When dealing with the food industry in this country, I sometimes feel like I'm living in "The Matrix." In the film, people believe they lead happy, healthy lives in a world as normal as our own. But that world is an illusion created by mysterious controllers. Each person actually lives in miserable slavery, remaining blissfully ignorant of the controllers' power over their lives.

"The Matrix" is science fiction, but it raises a really important idea: When our happiness is based on ignorance, it's bound to be an illusion.

Food Illusions

The food industry, and especially the junk and fast-food industries, has invested billions of dollars creating the illusion that unhealthy food is nourishing, convenient, delicious and fun. Watch any junk-food commercial (the bulk of which target children), and the kids are cool, having a great time and attractive, thin, healthy and active. Watch most processed-food commercials (the bulk of which target parents), and smart, witty, attractive moms and dads are adored by their healthy, thin, precocious kids.

The food industry also invests billions into lobbying efforts to ensure that we remain ignorant. They fight every effort to improve the transparency of food labels. Ever wonder why there's no Percent Daily Value listed for sugar on food labels like there is for fat? The food industry lobbied hard against it to make it more difficult for consumers to determine how much sugar is too much.

It's easy to tell adults to wise up, read labels, get educated and not believe everything they see in commercials. But the food industry is onto the increasing awareness among adults regarding the relationship between their health and the food they eat. They are now co-opting the language and imagery of traditionally healthy foods to trick folks into thinking their products are "green," "healthy" or "natural." Instead of giving people healthy food, they're giving them the illusion of healthy food, which is cheaper and more profitable.

What's worse is that they also invest more than $6 billion a year to make sure children grow into loyal junk food customers. Establish dependence and a taste for processed, fast and junk food at an age when kids don't know better, and those eating habits will follow them into adulthood.

Food Truth

This is why I've partnered with Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters to create the Food Truth Coalition. Pooling the resources of our three foundations -- the Chef Ann Foundation, the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation (USA) and The Edible School Yard Project -- we launched Food Truth on January 7, speaking with legislators, educators, activists and even Jimmy Kimmel to share our message: food education for all children.

We live in a fast food world. Children's understanding of and access to food is manipulated by big food companies that prize profit above all else. As a result, many kids believe food is a packaged product that comes off a shelf or out of a drive-thru window, and most don't understand the impact these foods have on their health. It's time to teach kids from the earliest ages how to know the difference between real-food truths and fast-food falsehoods.

What is food truth? It's a commitment to food education and to the garden and kitchen classrooms where these transformational lessons come to life. Schools must also coordinate food education with cafeterias that serve nutritious, delicious, sustainable meals to give children the opportunity to experience what they learn.

One of the schools we visited was Pacific Elementary School in Sacramento. Each of the 75 schools in the district has a salad bar in its cafeteria, providing students with access to fresh fruits and vegetables. As school board member Jessie Ryan said: "We have a vision that every one of our schools boast a school garden, so each and every one of our kids can make that connection to their food."

Reading, Writing, Math ... and Food

With the increasing focus on standardized tests and academic achievement, many important subjects have been dropped from schools' curriculum, including nutrition education and home economics. And while reading, writing, math and science are important, so is the basic understanding of nutrition to ensure healthy people and a healthy planet.

As Jamie said in his interview with Jimmy Kimmel, no one is going to die an early death from forgetting to do geography homework. This generation of children, however, is projected to have shorter life expectancies than their parents, primarily because of diet-related diseases. In other words, they will die young because they eat too much unhealthy food.

Some critics say children are going to eat junk food because it tastes good and that's what they like, but I say they don't give kids enough credit. What choices will they make if they understand that too much sugar and fat can lead to obesity and make them sick? What food choices will kids make when they experience the joy of growing their own salad greens or cooking their own fajitas?

"I just know that when children grow food themselves and they cook it, that they always eat it," Alice said in an interview with the Sacramento Bee. "And I'm talking about kale and collard greens and things we assume children don't love. On the contrary, they do."

Children deserve the opportunity to have real life experiences with delicious, healthy food. Only then will they understand that the pleasures of junk food are just an illusion.

Chef Ann Cooper is a celebrated author, chef, educator and enduring advocate for better food for all children. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Ann has been a chef for more than 30 years, over 15 of those in school food programs. Known as the Renegade Lunch Lady, Ann has been honored by The National Resources Defense Council, selected as a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and awarded an honorary doctorate from SUNY Cobleskill for her work on sustainable agriculture. In 2009, Ann founded Food Family Farming Foundation (F3) as a nonprofit focusing on solutions to the school food crisis. On the foundation's fifth anniversary, F3 transitioned to the Chef Ann Foundation (CAF), in honor of the woman who did not give up and did not give in. CAF's pivotal project is The Lunch Box -- a web portal that provides free and accessible tools, recipes and community connections to support school food reform.