National Culinary Review

Telepan got involved with New York’s Wellness in the Schools, a grassroots organization similar to Chicago’s Healthy Schools Campaign. They decided to go up the ladder to top New York school district food officials, and presented two goals: changing what they called the “Top 10 Bad Foods” (peanut butter, jelly, breaded chicken products, cereals, french fries, burgers, meat sauces, Jamaican beef patties, canned ravioli and cold cuts with nitrates); and introducing a training model to help staff do more actual cooking.

Wellness in the Schools works with New York City Department of Education’s

SchoolFood through its Wellness Café, promoting lunches that reduce the use of frozen items in school lunch and focus on fresh local produce whenever possible.

“Other than Bill, no chef in this city has taken on this issue from a grassroots, bottom-up level,” says Shannon Park, a parent liaison at one of the schools served by the Wellness Café program. “He’s a child advocate. He believes that you don’t need to dumb down to children. They deserve to have their palates inspired, and they understand good-quality food. He was also able to answer questions about policy, school-food politics, calories, sodium—all the things that we really didn’t

know. He could communicate effectively with the school food people.”

Next year, Wellness in the Schools, working with Telepan, plans to have programs in eight schools. Students from The Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, N.Y., the French Culinary Institute, New York, and the New York City Careers in the Culinary Arts program will “intern” in school cafeterias, following Telepan’s example.