It's time for kids to go back to school, but what are they eating? The foods children consume now can adversely affect their future health, particularly their risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Join the September edition of Health Dialogues as we examine childhood nutrition -- in the busy home, in the lunchroom and in the lunchbox.

Listen to the program
Watch an audio slideshow of Balboa High School's Healthy Food Plan.
View a chart showing what some San Francisco elementary students are eating on a daily basis.
Watch a Sports4Kids Video
Join the Dialogue: Many schools in California ban junk food and sodas from campus. Is it wrong for schools to be enforcing eating habits? Or should they be doing more?

HOST: Scott Shafer

GUESTS:
Dana Woldow, Co-chair of the student nutrition and physical activity committee for the San Francisco Unified School District
Patricia Gray, Principal of Balboa High School, San Francisco
Round table of students from Balboa High School: Kristal Davila, Gisell Jimenez, Corrie Fong, Sylvia Brookback, Nancy Doan
Dr. Francine Kaufman, MD, Director of the Center for Diabetes at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles
Matt Sharp, Senior Advocate at California Food Policy Advocates
Jill Violet, President and Founder of Sports4kids

KQED Public Radio 88.5FM premiere broadcast:
Thursday, September 18, 8:00 PM

Repeat broadcasts:
Friday, September 19, 2:00 AM
Saturday, September 20, 2:00 PM

Listen to The California Report: Health Dialogues -- Junk Food
Reporter: Sarah Varney
It's been a year since California's first-in-the-nation bans on soda and junk food have been phasing in on school campuses. Combating childhood obesity with these prohibitions is proving harder than advocates thought. But how well have the bans worked? Los Angeles was the first district in the state to go soda and junk food-free and provides a glimpse of the challenges other school districts will likely face.

Health Dialogues, a special series from The California Report, engages listeners in an ongoing discussion of California health care issues that are important to the underserved: children, low-income residents, minorities, people with disabilities, immigrants, and rural and migrant worker communities in particular. The series seeks to generate and facilitate dialogue between communities, health care providers and policy-makers.

Monday was the first day of school. Yes, school starts in August in our district, which always seems crazy to me as I used to start school after Labor Day when I was a kid. This means that instead of determining what my kids will eat for lunch at around noon, I am now frantically making lunches at 7:30 in the morning.

Although making a school lunch may seem like a no brainer (PB&J with a banana, anyone?), a lot has changed since my mom threw cellophane-wrapped sandwiches into my childhood Scooby Doo lunch box. For one thing, most lunch boxes are no longer made of tin, but polyester and nylon. For another, people are now starting to take note of how much trash is created during the school lunch hour.

Did you know that a typical American school kid’s lunch generates 67 pounds of trash a year? When I first heard about this statistic, I was amazed. I then did a little math and realized that a class of 20 kids produces 1,340 pounds of trash in the school year, and was horrified when I further calculated that a school with 200 kids (which is a small school), creates 133,400 pounds of school lunch trash a year!

The day-to-day issues of dealing with all this trash, combined with a desire to help students become more environmentally aware, led the administrators and parents club at my children’s school to initiate a No Trash Lunch program. What, you may ask, is a no trash lunch? Well, it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a lunch that doesn’t use anything you would throw away -- no baggies, plastic sporks, juice boxes, or paper napkins. I started making no trash lunches two years ago, and although I sometimes slip and use a baggy in moments of desperation -- usually when the containers aren’t clean -- I’ve found that packing a no trash lunch can be just as convenient as making one that generates piles of trash.

But making a no trash lunch isn’t just about giving up baggies and paper napkins. The fad of toting a disposable water bottle has also thankfully fallen out of vogue. Kids are now being taught that those little plastic bottles of Crystal Geyser and Evian clog up land fills and are bad for the environment. The current trend is to use stainless steel water bottles. I’ve seen these available everywhere from REI and Whole Foods, to the L.L. Bean web site and our school’s parents club. Although the stainless steel bottles cost more than the plastic variety, they will last for years and are not made of plastics that could potentially leach chemicals into your child's water. Many reusable plastic bottles are also great, but be sure to purchase those with a 1, 2, 4 or 5 on them as they are thought to be safer.

So if you’re ready to give up baggies and plastic bottles, here are some tips that might help. Once you invest in the basics, a no trash lunch can be just as fast and easy to make as one full of waste.

Making a No Trash Lunch

1. Buy a reusable lunch box. I like the ones made out of Nylon and Polyester that can be washed.
2. Get some sandwich and snack-sized containers. These are sold everywhere from Target and Longs, to IKEA.
3. Purchase a reusable water container. I like the stainless steel ones, but these can be pricey. If you get a plastic bottle, try to purchase one that does not have the numbers 3, 6, or 7 imprinted on the bottom as these are most likely to leach chemicals. The best choices are those with the numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 (although these are often more difficult to find).
4. Give your child a cloth napkin instead of a paper one.
5. If your child will need a fork or spoon, include a metal one that can be taken home, washed and reused. You can buy inexpensive sets of four at most drug stores.
6. If your child likes warm food, purchase a reusable thermos.

If you have any other ideas for how to create a No Trash Lunch, I’d love to hear them.

On display through the wonderful internets are hundreds upon thousands of photographs of everyday lunches. No soggy PB&J's here, though. One forum, the Mr. Bento Porn Flickr group, posts their collective creative efforts to make mid-day meals visually appealing, healthful, delicious and, yes, a little easier on the wallet. Their cousin site, Diet Bento, includes impressively low calorie counts for those whose 2008 resolutions (for now at least) include trimming down a little of their own belly fat.

Portable meals have been with us for as long as farmers have trudged off to their fields and soldiers have marched on in war. The Japanese took it a little further, of course. Where other countries preferred banana leaves or woven baskets, Japanese al fresco diners preferred compartmentalized boxes. By the 17th century, bento meals became elaborately arranged celebrations of the full moon and cherry blossoms, a leisurely way to enjoy intermission with friends at the theatre or, like the older form of sushi, essential food for travelers in an age before planes and bullet trains.

Fast forward to the 20th century for aluminum tins, insulated containers, microwaveable cups and, last but not least, those brightly colored, plastic Hello Kitty boxes that accompany kids to school. Adult versions abound, too, although Ichiban Kan's bento aisle seems pretty well populated by over-twenty-somethings. For those who want to pack with style, <a href="http://www.plasticashop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=BNTOBX&Category_Code
Designer boxes">Plastica offers a sleek, stackable set in elegant colors.

Japan is not the only country with distinctive lunch boxes. Vietnam has its aluminum ca men that families carry every morning to the market to pick up breakfast, a different soup in each of the layers prepared exactly as each person prefers. The beautifully painted enamel tins of Malaysia are collectors' items, while in India, no-nonsense tiffin boxes show wonder less in their appearance than in their amazing daily travels from home to office and back again.

In Japan, there are nearly 500 magazines dedicated to showing parents (read: mothers) how to pack lunches that will entice and impress. The proper order to place in the elements, the proper balance of color and flavors, the proper container for the right food, the secret to making flowers and hamsters and their favorite manga characters out of edible delights: childrens' meals are no less subject to codification and over-the-top creativity than anything else the Japanese do.

A few English-language books attempt to translate the techniques as well as the art of bento. Some designs would only appeal to an obsessive artist with lots of free time, but many are simple and worth trying. It's a good way to get the kids involved the night before. Lay out some ingredients, flip to a fun photo and suddenly packing lunch becomes a game. Two titles to check out are Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go for a how-to guide and Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes for an aesthetic treatment of the topic.

Another good resource is Biggie's Lunch in A Box site, where parents will find excellent suggestions for getting their kids off to school with good food. She has hints that acknowledge the need for speed in addition to the desire to make lunch and snacks both healthy and fun.

Like with most good habits, packing meals for lunch requires practice and foresight at first, then as the regimen settles into a comfortable part of your day and week, merely some momentary foresight during weekend shopping and prep. Simple tips include washing and cutting your vegetables ahead of time, freezing food in smaller batches and learning to pack more flavor than bulk.

And if you just want to have a cute lunchbox without the work, well, they do make excellent take-out containers. Buy one with straps or handles to carry to your favorite deli counter and do your part to cut back on disposable ware.

MAPPING TACO TRUCKS

The next time that craving for carne asada hits, check out this new taco truck map for the nearest snack stop near you. It's only a couple of days old, and already, the entire state of California is dotted with promising forks-and-spoons. Help the cause and add your own favorite source for tacos. Then, print out a map of a neighborhood near you and venture forth!

KOREAN BBQ TRUCK

For another take on ambulatory eating, keep an eye out for Seoul on Wheels. I first spotted Julia, a friendly princess hailing from "the Province of Yummi," parked near my office in SoMa earlier this summer and, hardly believing the words splashed across her sparkling truck, crossed four lanes of rush hour traffic to see for myself.

Eating the spicy pork later (she starts selling at 6:45 am!) I'd have to say that first rice bowl wasn't the best I've had. But she's been tweaking her recipes, and the long lines now at lunch time attest to a faithful, hungry, and patient following. Her generous servings of kimchee fried rice will keep you alert through the afternoon doldrums; just be sure you have plenty of mints in your desk drawer. Seoul on Wheels' no-nonsense website lists its regular parking locations and times. If you work or play south of Market, it's definitely worth a bite.

We've all heard the latest health advice: Avoid transfats. Eat more fruits and vegetables. You may notice those changes on grocery store shelves, but for many school children, their cafeteria lunch menus haven't caught up. This year, an effort to get healthy foods to the school lunch table is tied up in a much larger debate -- national farm policy.

What do you think should be in a school lunch? School lunch programs face major challenges. In addition to buying food, they must cover overhead and staffing. Often the products that bring most money come from vending machines.

What about demand? Should schools be responsible for changing the way kids eat, replacing the french fries with veggies? Tell us your thoughts by leaving a comment
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Listen to the "What's For Lunch" Radio report on QUEST.

Post by Lauren Sommer who reports for QUEST and Radio News at KQED-FM.