Maverick chef Ann Cooper aims to spark a nationwide school-lunch revolution. Currently, 78 percent of schools in America do not meet USDA nutritional guidelines.

Food Becomes Curriculum in School Lunch Revolution
By Tom Philpott

Even the most intractable pathology can disappear, sometimes relatively quickly. A sign above a water fountain proclaiming “no coloreds” would cause any American to flinch today. Just half a century ago throughout the South, such abominations formed a banal part of the built landscape.

I got to thinking about deep-rooted problems and rapid change a few days ago while talking with Ann Cooper, a former star chef who now proudly styles herself a “renegade lunch lady.”

Cooper is on a mission to transform the nation’s abysmal school-lunch system. I met her for a cup of coffee in Asheville, N.C., where she was promoting her new book Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. After our conversation, I began to wonder if the idea of pumping kids full of flavorless, nutritionally suspect convenience food at school might soon become as socially unacceptable as Jim Crow-style racism.

Cooper has certainly taken on a daunting task. She currently serves as nutrition director of the Berkeley Unified School System, a 16-school, 9,000-student outfit in California. When she took the job in 2005, she found that the district’s food-service system had completely retreated from actual cooking. “When I arrived, 100 percent of the food arrived in plastic, was reheated in plastic, and served to the kids in plastic,” she says.

Overcoming an absurdly stringent budget and severely limited cooking infrastructure within school cafeterias, she has already eliminated what she calls “plastic food” and is now serving fresh, made-from-scratch meals.

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Wal-Mart is making over its image to cater to a more affluent crowd. But behind its increasingly upscale image are the same lowbrow business tactics.

Wal-Mart’s New Marketing Strategy Hides Dirty Practices
By Jim Hightower

You know that our world has turned totally topsy-turvy when Wal-Mart — the low-price, bare-knuckle retailing behemoth known far and wide as the Bully of Bentonville for its ruthless corporate practices — is suddenly putting on airs and positioning itself as (dare I say it?) metrosexual.

Yes, the world’s largest and meanest merchandiser — stung in the last few years by a grassroots rebellion of employees, small businesses, unions, neighborhood groups, environmentalists, and others that it has been so arrogantly stiffing — is now straining to project a kinder and gentler image: urbane, upscale, green, socially responsible … even sensitive, for goodness sake. The image spiff-up comes as Wal-Mart executives have made a marketing decision to move from their suburban/rural base into cities, reaching out to a clientele that wants finer goods … and a more refined company.

But has the beast really changed? Inside the stores, and you can see a Nouveau Wal-Martique emerging. To appeal to more affluent customers (this advanced Wally-World calls them “selective shoppers”), Wal-Mart is upgrading its merchandise to include $500 bottles of wine, organic foods, $2,000 plasma TVs, 400-thread-count sheets, imported balsamic vinegar, organic-cotton baby clothes, microbrewed beers, and a new “Metro 7″ line of designer fashions. Never mind that the average Wal-Mart shopper lives in the suburbs, is female, stands 5-foot-2, wears a size 14, and is looking for sensible skirts and durable go-to-work clothing — the reinvented retailing giant is proffering skinny-legged, fur-trimmed jeans for the stylish set. It has even run an 8-page fashion spread in Vogue magazine.

Last March, this high-toned Wal-Martique opened a model store in the well-to-do corporate haven of Plano, Texas. No downscale blue-and-gray, concrete-block facade for this baby. It features two tone brick walls, wood floors, wide aisles, uncluttered shelves with cherry finish, halogen lights, and discrete fitting rooms for a hoity toity clientele. Also, forget the usual in-store McDonald’s. There’s an espresso bar with free wi-fi and — Holy Sam Walton! — a sushi bar to enhance what cosmopolitan retail consultants call “the shopping experience.”

For the rest of the story, click here.

Yesterday, Jermaine Jackson told Reuters that he thought his brother Michael should become Muslim in order to protect him “from all the things that he’s been attacked with.” I can’t put my finger on it, but something tells me that Michael Jackson won’t be converting any time soon.

Let’s come up with 10 good reasons why Michael won’t become Muslim. I’ll start it off:
1) Black veils can only be worn by women
2) Eating “the other White meat” is strictly forbidden

YOUR TURN!!!!

Today’s song of the day is “Up Jumps The Boogie” from Foxy Brown. After resolving her legal problems and regaining her hearing, it looks like Fox Boogie is ready for a comeback. Unfortuately, I’m not crazy about this track…

To hear it for yourself, click here.