by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Attention parents: Paul Finkelstein is mad at you.

The youthful 43-year-old culinary arts teacher-chef blames the parents of his Stratford (Ontario) Northwestern Secondary School students for their lack of interest in healthy eating. “These kids aren’t the lost generation of food,” he says. “Their parents are.”

For the past year and a half, Finkelstein has run the superbly named Screaming Avocado café out of the school’s converted shop classroom. The students cook, clean, prepare and serve the food as a healthy alternative to the high-grease, high-saturated-fat eats served down the hall in the school cafeteria. What’s more, the vegetables are grown and picked from a 3,000-square-foot garden “less than 100 feet away from the classroom,” he says. The point, according to Finkelstein, is to teach the kids “how to cook fresh meals and learn how to survive on their own by eating healthy.” Recently, a local farmer donated five acres of nearby land to Finkelstein’s class project.

Finkelstein, who will be coming to Montreal to speak at a wonk-heavy panel at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada’s conference on Canadian food policy next week, says students have been eating crap for so long because grown-ups have forgotten how to cook. With pre-packaged meals being all the rage, he’s noticed how it affects certain skill sets among students. “They’re really good at spatial geometry,” he says. “They’re experts at putting boxes in the freezer—but they’re not good at cooking.”

He concedes that teaching students how to cook, and cook with good food, isn’t going to change their attitudes overnight. “With 14- or 15-year-olds working as much as they do these days, kids are going to buy whatever they want,” he says. “My hope is that this plants the seeds and becomes cross-generational, and that these kids can go home and cook healthy meals for their families.”

Stratford Northwestern isn’t the only school to take on junk food. Others, including in Montreal’s Lester B. Pearson school board, have tried innovative approaches, including outright bans on school junk food altogether. Last year, Connecticut was the first U.S. state to pass legislation outlawing the sale of sugary drinks, candy bars and other junk food in schools. While Finkelstein believes blanket bans to be a bit over the top, he does see the need to limit junk food availability.

“When you come in here at 7:30 in the morning, what you see are cookies, cinnamon buns covered in sugary icing, hot chocolate and pop machines,” he says. “All these kids are eating are trans and saturated fats.” He suggests “shutting down the deep fryer for at least a couple of days a week.”

That, he feels, would fit in with the mandate schools are given. “I’m pretty sure we’re at least in some part responsible for the health and well-being of these students for the eight hours a day we have them,” he says. “But if you look around any school, you’ll see that the healthy choices they have are minimal, if they have any at all.”

For more information on the “What Are We Eating: Towards a Canadian Food Policy” conference from Feb. 15–17, visit www.misc-iecm.mcgill.ca/conf2006/.