This Conversation Currents features Chef Kevin Gillespie, owner of Atlanta restaurant Gunshow, contestant on Bravo's "Top Chef Las Vegas" in 2009, and food activist for various organizations. He shares his journey to becoming a chef, ways to integrate healthy foods in schools, and the role of literacy in nutrition.

The essays in "School Food Politics" explore the intersections of food and politics on all six of the inhabited continents of the world. Including electoral fights over universally free school meals in Korea, nutritional reforms to school dinners in England and canteens in Australia, teachers' and doctors' work on school feeding in…

In this article, the author reviews school lunches around Boston. He discusses a significant fact about school lunches today, which is the "free" and "reduced" lunch program. The most promising developments he saw came from two opposite directions: (1) from food conglomerates reformulating snack foods to eliminate transfats,…

Gives a brief report on an experimental program that provided good tasting nutritious food to students during school breaks as an alternative to cafeteria school lunches. Describes program planning, how and where the food supplies were purchased, and how the program gained general acceptance. Includes a sample menu. (AEM)

In a properly designed and implemented central kitchen and commissary, nutrition is retained, student acceptability is high, and cost-effectiveness for the school district is attained. Employee productivity can be increased three or four times the average production rate. (MLF)

Outlines (1) the changes that have occurred in school food service since the National School Lunch Act of 1946, (2) the choices in foods served and in new markets, and (3) an action plan for the challenges facing school food service professionals. (MLF)

Outlines the objectives and responsibilities of state and local education agencies and urges their cooperation so that children will receive adequate nutritional benefits and develop into productive citizens. (MLF)

Among the 10 megatrends that will affect school food service in the future are population changes; computerized and automated kitchens; cost increases; school districts contracting to serve other community groups; fewer federal government controls; and higher teacher salaries, forcing changes in how students are taught. (MLF)

Changing the National School Lunch Program to eliminate funding to the full-price meal would affect the entire program, leading to a drastic increase in the price of these meals, a decrease in program participants, and a loss of the health emphasis of the program. (MLF)