Philanthropist And Filmmaker Talk Healthy Lunches And Functional Kitchens For Boston Public Schools

BOSTON (CBS) - In Boston, 78% of students are food insecure.

The My Way Café Lunch by the Boston Public Schools, with the Shah Family Foundation, is working to make sure that every student is getting healthy food as School.

Jill Shah, of the Shah Family Foundation, said she became interested in school lunches when she was invited into a cafeteria at the Mason School in Roxbury and saw the school's kitchen consisted of a warming oven and a freezer. In fact, 75 percent of the schools don't have a kitchen. The meals are made in Long Island or New Jersey, frozen, shipped in black boxes, which are heated and given to schoolchildren.

"I didn't feel like that was the best way to feed kids," Shah said. She realized that school lunches could only be improved if the schools had kitchens. "These kitchens are key, so that was the first thing we went after - is how you build small kitchens in every school."

Every student in Boston Public Schools gets breakfast and lunch at school. However, some of the schools have no kitchens; others have kitchens with facilities dating before World War II.

Fiona Turner, a documentary filmmaker who directed "Eat Up," a new documentary about school lunches in Boston, also delved into Boston's school lunches. She discovered Boston is actually a leader in the field of school lunch nutrition.

"I think there was a program back in the 1890s - which was the first program ever - where a nutritionist was exploring the science of nutrition and she did a test program at the Boston Latin School," Turner said.

So Shah began to talk to Mayor Marty Walsh and they started looking at a pilot program for four schools to see if kitchens could be put in schools.

They went to fast-casual restaurants to see how restaurants served large numbers of people with small kitchens and began to emulate the setup. Shah said revamping the kitchens isn't that expensive.

"Even though the schools are very old and sometimes you have to really dig for the electrical, which Fiona does an amazing job of documenting in the film – it kind of becomes this comedy of errors – it's still just not that expensive."

The Shah Family Foundation has bought the equipment and put kitchens in 60 schools. The goal is to make sure all 125 Boston schools have a kitchen.

Turner's documentary also looks at the challenges those who prepare school lunches face as they meet nutritional regulations.

"The rules are pretty stringent and, you know, complicated – so many half cups of greens, so many half cups of red and orange vegetables, so many whole grains. There are no regulations on sugar, so that was kind of a little bit of a surprise to me." Turner said.

"Eat Up" will be shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from June 5-9. Tickets can be purchased on the museum's website.