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"The final episode of Jamie Oliver&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Food Revolution&amp;quot; aired over the weekend. Probably, more than in any other episode, we saw just how difficult it is \u2013 and will be \u2013 to change how school lunches are made in the United States.  The culprit? Sure, kids&amp;#039; tastes, family preferences, and years of routine each present formidable obstacles in the path of real efforts at reform but, most alarming, is the obstacle presented by the very government agency charged with overseeing the whole school lunch program: the USDA.   From a pure story-telling perspective, &amp;quot;Food Revolution&amp;quot; wasn&amp;#039;t particularly groundbreaking. It was reality television at its most typical. There was sniping and grumbling. There was drama. There were tears and confessions. &amp;quot;Food Revolution&amp;quot; gave us a bright-eyed, optimistic hero, victims, villains, and \u2013 in the end \u2013 redemption. On a possible rating of five stars? I give it two-and-a-half. On a much more profound level, however, there&amp;#039;s little doubt that Jamie Oliver has done something that hundreds of Americans haven&amp;#039;t been able to accomplish as effectively as he. Oliver drew attention, and quite dramatically, to the fact that public schools feed our children crap and that&amp;#039;s because the USDA, through an intricate system of contracts and subsidies, has constructed it to do just that. I have no doubt that well-meaning dieticians and nutritionists in the USDA want better food for the country&amp;#039;s school children, but their primary charge is to use what&amp;#039;s available and what&amp;#039;s available is the garbage the USDA is obligated to promote and distribute.  Jamie Oliver did not start this effort. Well before Oliver turned his well-intentioned attention to the problem here in the United States, and before he recognized the marketing potential for his own brand, there were people working hard to overhaul the school lunch program. Sadly, ABC \u2013 the network that broadcast &amp;quot;Food Revolution&amp;quot; \u2013 did almost nothing to promote that fact. Even Oliver&amp;#039;s own Website gave a relatively small amount of space to those who were working on the issue before he arrived.  What that means, however, is that there are organizations already in place to help you make those changes in your own community. You don&amp;#039;t have to re-invent the wheel. My space is limited I can&amp;#039;t begin to list them all, but solid resources are available through the efforts of people like &amp;quot;the renegade lunch lady&amp;quot; Chef Ann Cooper and the Food Family Farming Foundation, Slow Food, and the Chez Panisse Foundation. They&amp;#039;re just the tip of the iceberg. Do you want to know more? Search for &amp;quot;school lunch reform&amp;quot; along with the name of your state or community, and you may be surprised to see what&amp;#039;s been going on already.  Good for Jamie Oliver for bringing much needed attention to this problem. Now use your knowledge to help those who have been working already to make those changes. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.delish.com/food/news/a37237/food-revolutions-last-episode/>