The Nightmare of School Lunches.

• Position: Essay

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On a Saturday a few weeks ago, I went to the Boulder Farmers' Market to buy food for a friend's baby shower. I love farmers' markets, and Boulder's is one of my favorites.

Walking the market, tasting the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables, nibbling on local artisan cheeses, and having some of the best coffee around, I practically did a "happy-dance."

I bought ten pounds of lovely local peaches for $22, six fragrant local melons for $20, some bits of wonderful local cheese along with a couple of dozen local eggs for $60, and some yummy tamales, tortillas, and salsa for $65, plus much, much more.

The shower was a great success, and everyone raved about the food. The mom (with baby to be "onboard") said it was her dream meal--her baby's first dream meal!

And then I awoke in the night thinking of the nightmare reality of what has become of our National School Lunch Program.

Most school districts in America spend less than $150 on food to feed a child for the entire 180-day school year. Less than $1 per day to feed our children food that is supposed to nourish and care for them, and this in the setting of "education."

The reality of spending more money in one day at the farmers' market than what I have to spend for one child in the Boulder Valley School District for an entire year made me want to cry.

W hat horrible place we've to in this country. We're in the throes of an obesity crisis, and diet-related illness is on the rise. The CDC has stated that of children born in the year 2000--those ten-year-old kids in fourth of fifth grade this year--one out of every three Caucasians and almost one out of every two African American and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime, most before they graduate high school.

This means that one-third--yes, one-third--of all children will become overweight or obese. Not only that, these young children will be the first generation in our country's history to die at a younger age than their parents.

All because of what we feed them!

And what we do feed children in most schools is certainly not the beautiful food of the farmers' markets. In most schools, the fare is a...