Alice Waters – chef and restaurant owner – is sitting
in the kitchen garden of the Martin Luther King School
in Berkeley, California. The kitchen garden is called the
Edible Schoolyard, and students at this public school
are preparing a vegetable bed as part of a lesson. Later,
they will cook what they pick as part of their school
lunch. Each student receives between 18 and 40
hours’ tuition a year in the Schoolyard, and as a result,
what they eat at school has changed. A good part of the
food grown here is used in the school’s daily meals.
Waters has been fi ghting to improve children’s diets for
a decade, and in 1996 she started a campaign to raise
funds for the Edible Schoolyard and the School Lunch
Initiative. And Waters hopes that they will set an
example for other parts of the country as well. “We
have such a huge problem of bad eating habits in the
United States that teaching about food cannot be left
to parents,” she says. “So many children generally are
eating fast, cheap, easy food that something has to be
done.”
Marsha Guerrero, director of the School Lunch Initiative,
explains how it all works. “This is mainly a teaching
garden,” she says. ” Nearby farms therefore
also supply food as part of the regular lunches at
the school. These are prepared using fresh organic
ingredients when possible.
Typical classes in the Edible Schoolyard involve plenty
of gardening activity. However, they are not a break
from normal school work, as academic projects are
always attached. In one lesson, the students are asked
to choose one part of the garden as their personal spot
for the entire year. They then observe and record in a
journal what happens in this spot as time progresses.
They record their observations of insect life, the soil and
changes to the plants.
Classes in the kitchen involve cooking lunch, but also
link into classroom academic subjects. The food cooked
here includes a range of dishes from pasta to stuffed
vine leaves and delicious Italian omelettes fi lled with
herbs and vegetables. The recipes are dictated by what
vegetables are available. Science is taught through
nutrition and cooking technique; geography through
the effects of the seasons and eating habits around the
world.
Today’s midday meal consists of homemade pesto
and tomato sandwiches, with a big vegetable salad.
Everyone is eating. Teo Hernandez, 13, says he has
changed the way he eats. “I can now cook and grow
things,” he says. “I don’t know yet if I will continue
doing so in the future, but I know I can. I have changed
my attitude to food; I like some herbs and lettuce and I
use less salt. It’s been fun, the teachers are nice – and
there’s no homework.” Teo has been in the US for only
three years, but his teachers say he has learned to
speak perfect English in such a short time because he
is so happy at school.
But has Alice Waters succeeded? Is the Edible
Schoolyard model the way forward? “When
kids become unhealthy due to bad diet, they become
isolated,” says Waters. “But eating such good food and
picking, smelling and cooking the vegetables and fruit
in this garden makes them care about
what they eat – and it shows them that
we care about them. Just seeing a
child saying to another, ‘Would you like
some?’ – that is the essential thing.”

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