Slow Food USA is an organization dedicated to a healthier way of eating and living. Slow Food USA is promoting better school lunches for K-12 schools nationwide, staring with the Labor Day event of 2009 called “Time for Lunch,” pushing to get real food into schools.

MSN and Slow Food USA both discuss how school lunches establish the foundation for your child’s eating habits for the rest of their lives. This contributes to your child’s overall health and well-being, making it as quintessential as the academics provided by your school. Not surprisingly, good nutrition is a critical component of the best elementary, secondary, and high schools.

How do I know if my school is offering good school lunches?

School lunches are regulated by the USDA every five years. The next revision of the USDA’s school lunch act is September 2009. This gives you the basic standards that you can expect from all schools.

But what if this isn’t enough? You can opt to try the school lunches yourself. Ask the school if they will provide a sample lunch or, at the very least, a menu of what is on your child’s plate.

Your child’s opinion is also important. Ask your child what they think about the food they are eating. You do not want your child to have horror memories of school lunches in their adulthood as they stare at the potatoes at the grocery store and remember potato-and-cheese slop day, or, as MSN writers put it, the shudders from the fish sticks in the frozen section.

Do private school cafeterias differ from public school cafeterias?

Yes and no. Parents of students going to public and non-profit schools can take a look at the National School Lunch Program to learn more about public school lunch systems.

Private schools do private catering, which more often than not, leads to a healthier lunch. However, the Healthy School Lunches Awards were divvied out to a balanced assortment of private and public schools, including Gwinnett County, Georgia’s public school system, the Jewish Community High School in San Francisco and Colorado Springs School in Colorado, two private schools.

School lunches are nationally recognized as important.

Entrepreneurs know just how important school lunches are to parents. Some of them have released a healthy lunch alternative for parents to purchase for their children, if the traditional lunch pail approach is not feasible to families that are sending their children to school with lunch.

The Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine released an ad for the September 2009 reform of the school lunch legislation with the advertisement, “President Obama’s daughters get healthy school lunches. Why don’t I?”

In business, politics, and behind school doors, school lunches are considered just as critical as they are to the parents ushering their children to class. With so much focus placed on school lunches, there has to be some major correlation to this and the health of America.

So, as a parent, ask yourself the question: what is my child eating for lunch today?