I don't have kids, but I do remember what it was like to be one. Fluffernutter sandwiches and YooHoo chocolate drink were the forbidden fruit of my youth, and I longed for them daily. I should probably send my mother a thank-you card.

Healthy habits are formed young, and are best invested and cultivated in the young. Children's successful educational performance is linked to a proper diet — but kids are neither known nor responsible for making conscientious diet decisions when left to their own devices. If schools are to provide any food at all, then does the onus fall on these institutions to ensure that it is wholesome food?

How and what children are eating is something that should concern all of us, whether or not we have an immediate connection to a school cafeteria. Child obesity is on the rise, as is child hunger. Our public policies are failing us, and our government still isn't doing enough to ensure nutritious school lunches or to make meals available to children whose families cannot afford to pay for school lunches.

This year, Slow Food USA launched a nationwide campaign called Time for Lunch. On Labor Day, 305 "Eat-Ins," or potlucks, across America were organized in the spirit of a shared concern: getting better food into our schools. "There is no believable reason why the richest nation on earth can't afford to feed school children properly," writes Santa Fean Slow Food member Ellen Lampert, who hosted a local Eat-In this week. "If we don't nourish our children well in school, we pull the rug out from under them at the very place they should be supported."

More than 12 million children in the U.S. are "food insecure," which means that they are deprived adequate nutrition for good health and development. The Child Nutrition Act of 2004 is a federal law that expires, and will be up for reauthorization, on the last day of this month. It governs the National School Lunch Program, which determines what 30 million children are eating every day for lunch. As their budgets have been curtailed, our schools are struggling to feed children the real meals they need so badly. What will the next five years look like? How much worse will it get?

Some schools are making efforts to move in a positive direction despite being challenged by a scarcity of funding, equipment, staff resources and raw materials. "Truly, school lunch is one of our country's greatest shames," writes Slow Food Santa Fe founder and local-food advocate Deborah Madison in her online column at www.culinate.com, "especially given that we know it is harmful and that we also know what kids need to be well-nourished."

Madison, along with a number of other impassioned movers and shakers, has written extensively on the topic of school lunches in France, where parents and local governments share costs so that schools can spend almost three times as much money on meals per child as we spend here. Children are allotted a two-hour lunch and recess in schools where vending machines are banned and dining rooms are decorated with artwork; the whole experience seems marked by undercurrents of associating respect and pleasure with the act of eating.

Farm to Table New Mexico is a nonprofit organization that promotes locally based agriculture through education. It established Farm to School after receiving grant funds through the USDA Community Food Projects Grant Program. That money went to Santa Fe Public Schools to help purchase local produce for school lunches. The New Mexico Department of Agriculture then provided additional funds for focused projects, some of which involve the efforts of Cooking with Kids — a local nonprofit program that teaches elementary school children to appreciate a hands-on, culturally conscious approach to food.

Slow Food Santa Fe co-leader Kim Muller writes, "Children are naturally curious ... and they should know that foods come from a farm, not a box. When they are exposed to new foods, to cooking, they discover a whole new world of tangible results."

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Cooking with Kids, which works with over 4,400 pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade students, will receive a 2009 Piñon Award in Education at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234. There is no charge to attend this public event.

Nouf Al-Qasimi is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe. Send e-mail to food@q.com.

For more information on the programs mentioned, visit the following:
• Slow Food USA: slowfoodusa.com
• Farm to School: farmtoschool.org
• Field to Plate: fieldtoplate.com
• Farm to Table: farmtotablenm.org
• Healthy Schools Campaign: healthyschoolscampaign.typepad.com
• School Nutrition Association: schoolnutrition.org
• Cooking With Kids: cookingwithkids.net