Sandi Kaplan, Associate Director, Clinical Development & Support:

I printed out my kids’ school supply lists today. That’s a sure sign that the start of the school year is almost here. And for many children, that means back to school lunches. My kids are still young so I can refuse to purchase school lunches for them and I don’t get much whining.

The truth is that I would love to purchase them school lunches. It would save me time and energy that I often don’t have at the end of the day when I am faced with lunchboxes to nutritiously and creatively fill. But the school lunches are fatty, greasy, salty and sugary. And that combo is not what I want to be feeding my growing kids especially when I am expecting them to be focused and well behaved in the classroom.

There has been plenty of research to support the premise that kids who eat more nutritiously behave better in school. One high school in Appleton, Wisconsin replaced their regular poor-quality school lunches with healthy fresh foods at lunch with water as the main beverage. The changes resulted in improved behavior from the students and zero truancies.

So I was excited to read that a great business called Cookus Interruptus is working on improving school lunches. Cookus Interruptus is part of the recently approved King County “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” grant tasked with developing a whole foods certificate program for school nutrition staff in Washington’s King County. The task force has high hopes that the program will eventually expand across the state.

This fall, Cookus Interruptus will be developing curriculum, planning workshop activities (including hands-on cooking!), creating learning materials, and training workshop teachers. The workshops for school staff will begin in 2011.

Cookus Interruptus produces fun and humorous whole foods cooking videos. Their tagline is “how to cook fresh local organic whole foods with life’s interruptions.” We provide several of their videos for our Mind & Body Program participants on Web Coach.

The best part about the videos is that the food is quick and easy to cook. Or maybe the best part is that they make me laugh out loud. Or actually it might be that the food tastes good (which is not the case with every recipe I try). Anyway, these videos in a nutshell are user friendly entertainment.

I must also mention that the videos take budgets into account and emphasize whole foods that are inexpensive to purchase and prepare.

Watch them with your kids. Or your significant other. Or your coworkers. Then cook the food and imagine that wholesome food being in our children’s school cafeterias. That day is coming and I for one am thrilled!