The renegade lunch lady: an interview with Chef Ann Cooper.

• Author: Burke, Julia
• Position: Interview

They call her the "renegade lunch lady." Chef Ann Cooper, celebrity chef, activist, and author, is leading the charge for better school lunches.

Through her Chef Ann Foundation (launched in 2009 as the Food Family Farming Foundation), Cooper has started multiple initiatives for nutrition education and food justice, including The Lunch Box, an online tool kit designed to support school district food service teams in the transition to fresher ingredients, and Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, an effort to install donated salad bars in every school cafeteria.

In addition to serving as director of food services for Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado, and consulting with school districts on better food practices, Cooper contributes regularly to U.S. News and World Report. She recently touched a nerve with a post called "Opting Out Is Not an Option," which encouraged parents to advocate for better school lunches rather than have their kids brown-bag it.

Cooper spoke to me by phone about her favorite projects, her goals, what parents can do to ensure healthier schools, and how to get kids to eat radishes.

Q: Your post on how "Opting Out Is Not an Option" sparked a lot of controversy. I was struck by the parallels with the contentious testing opt-out movement, as well as the battle over "school choice." Can you talk about why you think your post sparked so much debate?

Chef Ann Cooper: I think that parents felt like I was telling them that they didn't have a choice, that they had to buy school lunch even if they felt like school lunches were bad, and that's not what I was saying.

I think we need to feed all kids healthy food. The lowest-income kids are part of that. I think that they shouldn't be segregated out in any fashion in terms of how we take care of them.

The way to ensure that every kid has access to healthy food in schools is not only to make sure that we have healthy schools that are adequately funded from a government standpoint, but to not make it seem like only poor kids have school lunch.

Not every kid is going to eat school lunch, but if only the poor kids are in the cafeteria then they feel isolated. It feels stigmatizing, and we need to get away from that.

Q: What's the biggest obstacle you come across in your efforts to advocate for healthier school lunches?

Cooper: There are five big issues that all schools deal with: food, finance, facilities, human resources, and marketing.

Food: Where are we going to get it...