Foreword by Dr. Mehmet Oz.

It's the biggest public health crisis in America, the daily headache for millions of parents, and the challenge we can't fail to meet. If the eating habits of America's children don't change now, they'll soon be on the wrong end of the statistics. The percentage of obese children in America today has more than doubled since 1970. Over 35% of our nation's children are overweight, 25% are obese, and 14% have Type II Diabetes, a condition previously seen primarily in adults. Processed foods favored by schools and busy parents for their convenience not only contribute to obesity; they also contain additives and preservatives and are tainted with herbicide and pesticide residues that are believed to cause a variety of illnesses, including cancer. People in America today simply do not know how to eat properly and they don't seem to have time to figure out how, so fast food, home meal replacements, and processed foods take the place of good, healthy cooking, and there couldn't be a worse alternative.

Many parents rely on the USDA approved National School Lunch program to be providing their children with nutritionally balanced, healthful meals. The trouble is, they're not. While most schools continue to try to meet better nutritional guidelines, they're still not measuring up, and many are actually contributing to the crisis we've seen emerging over the last decade. A good 78% of the schools in America do not actually meet the USDA's nutritional guidelines, which is no surprise considering the fact that schools keep the cost of lunch to between $1 and $1.50 per child. School lunch menus have undergone some changes in recent years and are marginally improved, but still nearly all our schools continue to operate under the misguided notion that kids actually prefer to eat frozen, processed, fried, sugary foods.

Chef Ann Cooper has emerged as one of the nation's leading, most influential, and most respected advocates for changing how our kids eat. In Lunch Lessons, she offers a better way.

Lunch Lessons is a recipeandndash;filled guide that inspires us to reconnect with the origins and importance of good food in our lives. It is divided into seven chapters. An introduction gives readers a brief history of the origins of the national school lunch program. Chapter One is a primer on basic childhood nutrition. The middle chapters offer healthful homeandndash;tested recipes arranged by season according to the school year (Fall, Winter, Spring, and finally, Summer), and recipes will be further categorized in Breakfast, Snacks, and Lunch sections to reflect seasonal availability. Chapter VII, Beyond the Lunch Pail, is a jumping off point for starting and maintaining organic gardens as well as composting and will address what parents can do in and around their homes to reduce their children's exposure to harmful chemicals. Chapter VIII, A Season for Change, will be full of information on how parents can begin to affect change in their local school l

Is your child being fed well at school? 78 percent of school lunch programs in America do not meet USDA's nutritional guidelines. In fact, most school cafeterias still serve a veritable buffet of processed, fried, and sugary foods. So, where can concerned parents turn for help in providing healthful, delicious lunches?

Chef Ann Cooper has emerged as one of the nation's most influential and respected advocates for changing how our kids eat, working to turn school cafeterias into culinary classrooms. In Lunch Lessons, she and Lisa Holmes spell out how parents and school employees can help instill healthy habits in children, by providing a variety of invaluable information such as:

• An explanation of the basics of good childhood nutrition
• Dozens of tasty, home-tested recipes for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
• Tips for how to support businesses that provide local, organic food
• Ways to spark widespread change throughout a community

With inspirational examples and valuable advice, Lunch Lessonsis more than just a recipe bookand#8212;it gives readers the tools to transform the way children everywhere interact with food.

Remember how simple school lunches used to be? You'd have something from every major food group, run around the playground for a while, and you looked and felt fine. But today it's not so simple. Schools are actually feeding the American crisis of childhood obesity and malnutrition. Most cafeterias serve a veritable buffet of processed, fried, and sugary foods, and although many schools have attempted to improve, they are still not measuring up: 78 percent of the school lunch programs in America do not meet the USDA's nutritional guidelines.

Chef Ann Cooper has emerged as one of the nation's most influential and most respected advocates for changing how our kids eat. In fact, she is something of a renegade lunch lady, minus the hairnet and scooper of mashed potatoes. Ann has worked to transform cafeterias into culinary classrooms. In Lunch Lessons, she and Lisa Holmes spell out how parents and school employees can help instill healthy habits in children.

They explain the basics of good childhood nutrition and suggest dozens of tasty, home-tested recipes for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. The pages are also packed with recommendations on how to eliminate potential hazards from the home, bring gardening and composting into daily life, and how to support businesses that provide local, organic food.

Yet learning about nutrition and changing the way you run your home will not cure the plague of obesity and poor health for this generation of children. Only parental activism can spark widespread change. With inspirational examples and analysis, Lunch Lessons is more than just a recipe book—it gives readers the tools to transform the way children everywhere interact with food.

Chef Ann Cooper, a former Executive Chef of the Ross School in East Hampton, New York, and the Putney Inn in Vermont is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She has turned her commitment to sustainable, delicious, nutritious food toward education in order to help children. Chef Cooper is the author of A Woman's Place Is in the Kitchen and coauthor of In Mother's Kitchen and Bitter Harvest.