By Berenice Manzano
When I think about my days in the U.S Public school system, one of the most unpleasant experiences I had was the quality of the food given to us. In the U.S., food quality is not a major priority despite the fact that many processed foods are served to young children as their bodies are developing. Why isn’t this enough to raise concerns in our nation?
It is through Lynne Cherry’s film, Longing for a Local Lunch, we realize it is up to our youngsters to raise awareness of this issue that many adults are still overlooking, and highlight the harm school food has on both our youth and our planet. In Longing for a Local Lunch, four high school students take on the great challenge of creating a long-standing, effective, and nutritious school lunch system for their high school in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
It all begins when the students learn of the lack of nutrition in their school food as well as learning of the harmful levels of CO2 emissions created to transport these far away foods to their school. To tackle these two issues, they decide on implementing a local school lunch system in which fresh foods are collected from local community partners as well as a local school garden they create. As simple as executing an initiative like this may sound, it takes lots of determination and persuasion by the students to identify local partners willing to provide fresh local produce for year round school meals.
Throughout the film, we witness their tiresome process of creating not just a healthy school lunch system, but a long-standing one that can continue to stress the importance of healthy foods and caring for the environment. As a student myself, their determination to persuade adults about the importance of their food resources is very inspirational, and goes to show that our generation has the courage and passion to shift our lives into healthier and safer ways of living.
Overall I give this film a 5/5 for highlighting a nationwide issue that is hardly ever covered, and captures the passions these students have to help their fellow community.
Berenice Manzano is a 2nd year Film and Digital Media major at University of California, Santa Cruz. Apart from being a Film Selection intern for CMRubinWorld, she has also worked on many student made short films with the organization Film Production Coalition at UCSC and is an Alumni Board Member for the high school journalism workshop Mosaic created by The Mercury News.
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