This week I finished Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat – about the origins and history behind the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Disclaimer: I’ve spent the last year in a collaborative effort to bring back a scratch-cooking kitchen at our school. Meanwhile, learning this history seared my own heart a bit. After seeing the painful evidence that we’d been through all this before (ie. school lunches as a remedy to widespread nutrient deficiencies), I was a bit raw inside. Yet for Seared Beef Heart, leaving it largely raw in the middle is also the secret to its tenderness.
School lunch history lesson
Early school lunch efforts were designed to address the serious problem of malnourished children. The School Lunch Committee in New York City, for example, began with three goals: to provide lunches on a self-supporting basis, to provide special observation on children who present evidence of lack of proper nourishment, and to provide classes to mothers. Across the country, these early programs nourished children, and improved access and quality of food at low-cost.
Yet, agricultural protection soon dominated the school lunch efforts. In 1933, the federal government outraged citizens when they disposed of surplus commodities, including 10 million acres of cotton and 6 million hogs. To remedy this, school lunch programs became a convenient vehicle for commodity surpluses.
Sadly, the final 1946 NSLP was simply an agricultural protection measure. In the end, legislators removed the educational component, nutrition standards, and provision for training or supervision. Moreover, they eliminated language to prevent discrimination, at a time when segregation was still in practice.
As Ruis observes in the Epilogue, history seems to be repeating itself. Today overweight (as opposed to underweight) children define the nutrition crisis. (Ironically, agricultural surplus policies contribute to this condition.) Regardless, today’s movements have a ‘striking resemblance’ to early school lunch efforts.
Exposés such as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (2001), Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004), and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) have once again focused national attention on the relationships between food, industry, socioeconomic status, and health, much as Robert Hunter’s Poverty (1904), Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) and John Spargo’s Underfed Schoolchildren (1906) did… Similarly, school gardens, farm-to-school programs, ethnically tailored menus, anti-junk-food policies, and other Progressive Era wheels are being reinvented…
Let’s see how that compares to our school’s efforts. School gardens. Check. Farm-to-school. Check. Ethnically tailored menus. Check. Anti-junk-food policies. Check. Oh my.
Nutrition as health insurance
In defense of the school lunch, and along the lines of reinventing the wheel, I’ll echo the sentiment submitted to Congress in 1946. Pennsylvania Representative Augustine Kelley argued that “[good food] is the best protection we know against infectious diseases…”
This comment is consistent with the nutrition research of Weston A Price, published as Nutrition and Physical Degeneration in 1939. While Price has been forgotten throughout history, Chris Masterjohn puts his credentials into perspective. In an interview on one of my favorite topics, fat-soluble vitamins, Masterjohn notes:
Price was the first research director of the American Dental Association’s Research Institute. He did animal research for 25 years. By 1915, he had published 150 scientific papers and when he began his official position – which he continued for another 10 years… – he had a team of 60 scientists working under him. He had a team of 18 scientific advisers that included famous people from every scientific discipline, including Charles Mayo, the founder of the Mayo Clinic, Victor Vaughan, the President of the American Medical Association, and many others. And by the time he finished this research in the 1920s, he published two volumes that were about 1,200 pages in total in addition to his hundreds of scientific papers. So Weston Price was by no stretch of the imagination an obscure figure.
As Priced observed in the 1930s, chronic micronutrient (vitamin, mineral, electrolyte, phytonutrient, antioxidant) deficiencies do provide opportunity for infection and disease. Robust micronutrient status, especially among the fat-soluble vitamins, is preventative.
Meanwhile, early nutrition-based school lunch efforts were in full effect. These spread from large cities such as Chicago and New York to single-room schoolhouses in rural America.
Seared Beef Heart
In the early 1900s, the terms used to promote lunches also reflected the local values. Urban schools often called these meals “penny lunch” (even when the prices were more than a penny); whereas rural schools used “hot lunch.” Especially in the midwest and northeast, the warmth of the meal was the defining characteristic. As a low-cost organ meat, Seared Beef Heart, qualifies as both.
Moreover, like all the organ meats, heart is rich in nourishing micronutrients. Vitamins and minerals include iron, phosphorus, zinc and selenium, along with B1, B2, B3, B6 and plenty of B12. Note that all of these are essential, meaning that they cannot be produced by the body and must be provided by diet.
As a final (tangential) note: a delicious serving of beef heart at Belcampo in Santa Monica inspired this post. They used a uniform cut of heart, and prevented the toughening of even the outermost meat by cooking at a lower temperature. Yet, what you gain in tenderness, you lose in eye candy as the outer layer is a pale brown. If you go that route, leaving the center largely raw and brilliant red compensates for this deficiency, and ensures smooth digestion. Instead of steak salad, why not Seared Beef Heart with salad for lunch?
Seared Beef Heart
Ingredients
- salt
- 1 lb beef heart, at room temperature
- 1 T ghee, coconut oil, lard, or butter
- sauteed onions and garlic (optional)
Instructions
- Trim any silverskin or connective tubes from the inside of heart. Season well with salt, like you would for a steak.
- Heat ghee or other fat in a pan over medium high heat, when it's melted and shimmering, add the heart outside down. Press down with a spatula around the bottom and edges for even cooking for about 3-5 minutes until it has just a hint of browning. Flip over and cook for just a minute or so on the second side to warm. Heart should be rare in the center.
- Remove from pan, slice thinly. Garnish with optional sauteed onions and garlic.
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