Metro Jacksonville

On Monday, September 7th, Labor Day, Slow Food First Coast will be joining almost 300 other Slow Food chapters across the country in hosting an Eat In, or community potluck, as part of the Time for Lunch campaign to call on Congress to update the National School Lunch Programs standards, which govern what food millions of school children are served daily, where it comes from, and how it gets there.

Our local event will take place at the Florida Agricultural Museum in Flagler County just south of the St. Johns County line on US1 from Noon to 2PM.   We have invited elected officials and school board members and we are hoping for a big turnout from parents and children from across the community.  We will share a meal and ask those attending (including children) to sign petitions asking Congress to increase funding for better school food.  We will also have some fun activities planned for the children in attendance.

We need you to step up and help out at this event because this is a golden opportunity to truly make a difference in our children's lives.  The time is right for Congress to act and they need to hear from us that we believe the next generation deserves food that is good, clean, and fair.

Can you help the day of the event?  We are looking for people to help setup, serve food, and cleanup afterwards. 

Spread the word and promote the event to neighbors, church members, civic groups, anyone in the community that might be interested.   We need to demonstrate that this is an issue that affects everyone and that the community supports it. 

Please read the recent article below about what a great opportunity this is to bring about change in our school lunch program.

August 19, 2009
Stars Aligning on School Lunches
By KIM SEVERSON

ANN COOPER has made a career out of hammering on the poor quality of public school food. The School Nutrition Association, with 55,000 members, represents the people who prepare it.

Imagine Ms. Cooper’s surprise when she was invited to the association’s upcoming conference to discuss the Lunch Box, a system she developed to help school districts wean themselves from packaged, heavily processed food and begin cooking mostly local food from scratch.

“All of a sudden I am not the fringe idiot trying to get everyone to serve peas and carrots that don’t come out of a can, like that’s the most radical idea they have ever heard of,” she said.

The invitation is a small sign of larger changes happening in public school cafeterias. For the first time since a new wave of school food reform efforts began a decade ago, once-warring camps are sharing strategies to improve what kids eat. The Department of Agriculture is welcoming ideas from community groups and more money than ever is about to flow into school cafeterias, from Washington and from private providers.

“The window’s open,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the deputy secretary of agriculture. “We are in the zone when a whole lot of exciting ideas are being put on the table. I have been working in the field of sustainable agriculture and nutrition all my professional life, and I really have never seen such opportunity before.”

Congress, which will take up the Child Nutrition Act as soon as October, has much to do with this year’s focus on school food. The act, which is reauthorized every five years, provides $12 billion to pay for lunch and breakfast for 31 million schoolchildren.

That the nutritional state of America’s children is a priority for President Obama doesn’t hurt, either. Mr. Obama put an extra $1 billion for child nutrition programs, including school food, in his 2010 budget proposal.

Michelle Obama has made better nutrition for schoolchildren part of her agenda, too, using the White House garden to promote healthier eating and often speaking about the importance of good diets for children, her own included.

Rochelle Davis, who founded the Healthy Schools Campaign in Chicago almost eight years ago, said having support from the White House has made her work easier.

“This is not a nice little niche issue anymore,” she said. “When I talk to people at U.S.D.A., they talk about what the president and first lady want. It matters.”

The Department of Agriculture is expected to upgrade school food nutrition standards this year, many of which haven’t been changed for nearly 15 years. And because many Obama U.S.D.A. appointees are focusing on improving student health through better food, the department has started an aggressive effort to study reform efforts big and small. These include the national farm-to-school program, which is in nearly 9,000 schools, and Food Options for Children in Urban Schools, a nonprofit based in New York that helps the nation’s largest districts change how they buy and prepare food.

Congress seems likely to spend more on school food this year, but just how much is uncertain. Under newly released reimbursement rates for the coming school year, most districts receive $2.68 for each free lunch served to a child who is poor enough to qualify. The rates vary depending on poverty level and region.
That money is the core of most school food budgets. But it does not cover the cost of the lunch, nutrition directors say, so they cannot afford to serve higher-quality food.

As a result, districts rely on processed commodity food from the Department of Agriculture and on extra income from the sale of popular foods like chips, pizza and burritos in what are commonly called à la carte programs.
The first step toward healthier school food is to increase that free-lunch subsidy by at least 70 cents, said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. Others want more and say it should be spent largely on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. But some observers argue that even 70 cents is unrealistically high, given other pressures on the federal budget.

“After bank bailouts and health reform, I worry about there being money left over for child nutrition,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who has helped write some of the legislation Congress will be considering. Still, the burdens of obesity and diabetes on the health care system make it easier to argue that schools should serve less processed food, advocates argue.

[b]“If you feed a kid chicken nuggets and canned peas and Doritos and canned fruit as a school lunch or you feed him grilled chicken, steamed broccoli and fresh fruits and a whole grain roll, the difference is night and day,” Senator Gillibrand said[/b].

As part of this year’s work on the Child Nutrition Act, Senator Gillibrand is co-sponsoring legislation that would ban trans fat in cafeteria kitchens and give the Department of Agriculture more power to set tougher federal nutrition requirements for the lightly regulated à la carte program in schools.

If Congress approves the changes, the agency would be empowered to change rules it set in the 1970s, when nutritionists worried more about dental decay and nutrient deficiencies than obesity. Cavity-causing jelly beans and Popsicles were banned, but not calorie-rich food like Snickers and ice cream bars.

But the federal government needs to address other issues, said Katie Wilson, the recent president of the School Nutrition Association and a Wisconsin food service director with 30 years of experience.

School nutrition directors should have to meet national standards to qualify for the job, she said. Complex nutritional regulations need to be streamlined. And kitchens need to be re-equipped so workers can actually cook healthier food. A recent School Nutrition Association study showed that over 80 percent of schools cook fewer than half of their entrees from scratch..

“If they don’t give me a steamer, I can’t steam a vegetable,” she said. “I have to deep fry it.”
Others say reform will require deeper surgery, arguing that the U.S.D.A. has a conflict of interest it must resolve: One part of the agency is charged with feeding children nutritious food and another helps large agricultural companies sell surplus food like beef and chicken that is usually processed into packaged products like taco meat or nuggets.

Ms. Merrigan said the federal government was adding more fruits and vegetables to the commodity foods list, but said that districts and parents needed to keep pushing to make meals healthier.

To that end, raising money for school food projects is in vogue this fall. Slow Food USA introduced Time for Lunch to lobby Congress for more school food funding, a new priority for an organization once focused solely on artisanal, not institutional, food. The effort will culminate in hundreds of Labor Day fund-raisers called “eat ins.”

This month, Whole Foods began a national “school food revolution” campaign starring Ms. Cooper, who will offer tips for better school lunches in store publications, on-line videos and a series of public appearances. The company is also asking shoppers to donate at the register to pay for Ms. Cooper’s work.

And the W. K. Kellogg Foundation recently narrowed its mission to pay for programs that help children eat better and exercise more. Over the next three years, the foundation will give out $32 million, about a third of which will go to school food programs. Ricardo Salvador, the program director, thinks that at last, momentum is building toward a better school lunch.

“If you can’t get this transformation going with all that lined up, then you’re never going to get it going,” he said.

Florida Agricultural Museum Edit
1850 Princess Place Rd
Palm Coast, FL 32137
(386) 446-7630

Take US 1 past I-95
Make a left on Old Kings Rd
After the I-95 overpass, make a left on Princess Place Rd.

YES!

The event was terrific! About 75 people showed up,........after all, who could be against better school lunches?!?!

Well apparently school board members didn't think good nutrition for our school age children is all that important: Not one School board member showed up!!!!!!!!

Maybe next year.

(http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z276/fayeforcure/slowfood2.jpg)



Daily Dish
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Labor Day potluck highlights slow-food movement

September 8, 2009 |  5:32 pm
Yesterday, more than 300 Eat-Ins were hosted across the country to rally for a redesign of the Child Nutrition Act, which is up for reauthorization by Congress on Sept. 30.

There were seven official public potlucks held here in Los Angeles, where eaters and activists converged to voice a call for major reform of the way our nation's children are fed at school.

"We were blown away by the response," said Jerusha Klemperer, program manager for Slow Food USA. According to Klemperer, an estimated 20,000 eaters showed up for the Labor Day events.

The Eat-Ins were an act of support for the Slow Food USA Time for Lunch policy platform, which suggests that the government make some crucial changes to the National School Lunch Program, which is governed by the Child Nutrition Act.

The reform calls for: 

-- $1 more per child per day to help pay for more fruits, vegetables and whole grains

-- funding grants for educational initiatives such as school garden projects that encourage healthy eating habits

-- establishing higher standards in all facets of student's daytime diets, including elimination of fast food and unhealthy vending machine items

-- incentives to encourage schools to buy local produce

According to Slow Food LA's Twitter, the Time for Lunch petition has reached 20,000 signatures online and 10,000 more on paper. The petition is here.



-- Krista Simmons

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2009/09/slow-foodies-rally-for-.html


LESS FAST FOOD, MORE SLOW FOOD!!!!

Better School Lunch Petition for YOU to Sign:

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch/

More Info:

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/in_schools/

The importance of Good Food to bring down healthcare costs:

QuoteSeptember 10, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Big Food vs. Big Insurance
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Berkeley, Calif.
TO listen to President Obama’s speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself â€" perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.
No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three-quarters of health care spending now goes to treat “preventable chronic diseases.” Not all of these diseases are linked to diet â€" there’s smoking, for instance â€" but many, if not most, of them are.
We’re spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.
The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about putting a farmers’ market in front of the White House, and building new distribution networks to connect local farmers to public schools so that student lunches might offer more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots. He’s even floated the idea of taxing soda.
But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America’s fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.
Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system. At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some powerful corporate interests on its side â€" like the large segment of the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.
That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness. Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
The market for prescription drugs and medical devices to manage Type 2 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control estimates will afflict one in three Americans born after 2000, is one of the brighter spots in the American economy. As things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. There’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.
As for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it’s much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill.
But these rules may well be about to change â€" and, when it comes to reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like “pre-existing conditions” and “underwriting” would vanish from the health insurance rulebook â€" and, when they do, the relationship between the health insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.
The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.
When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system â€" everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches â€" will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.
AGRIBUSINESS dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and has swatted away most efforts at reform. But what happens when the health insurance industry realizes that our system of farm subsidies makes junk food cheap, and fresh produce dear, and thus contributes to obesity and Type 2 diabetes? It will promptly get involved in the fight over the farm bill â€" which is to say, the industry will begin buying seats on those agriculture committees and demanding that the next bill be written with the interests of the public health more firmly in mind.
In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to support, and perhaps even help pay for, public education efforts like New York City’s bold new ad campaign against drinking soda. At the moment, a federal campaign to discourage the consumption of sweetened soft drinks is a political nonstarter, but few things could do more to slow the rise of Type 2 diabetes among adolescents than to reduce their soda consumption, which represents 15 percent of their caloric intake.
That’s why it’s easy to imagine the industry throwing its weight behind a soda tax. School lunch reform would become its cause, too, and in time the industry would come to see that the development of regional food systems, which make fresh produce more available and reduce dependence on heavily processed food from far away, could help prevent chronic disease and reduce their costs.
Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they determined that promoting the concept of a “foodshed” â€" a diversified, regional food economy â€" could be the key to improving the American diet.
All of which suggests that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health â€" which means going to work on the American way of eating.

But even if we get a health care bill that does little more than require insurers to cover everyone on the same basis, it could put us on that course.

For it will force the industry, and the government, to take a good hard look at the elephant in the room and galvanize a movement to slim it down..

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” 

February 8, 2010
A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of Schools
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON â€" The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.
In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare.

To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Monday at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to The Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with nutritious offerings to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our nation’s children.”
The first lady, Michelle Obama, said last month that she would lead an initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and her involvement “shows the importance all of us place on this issue,” Mr. Vilsack said.

The administration’s willingness to put Mrs. Obama’s popularity on the line is a calculated bet that concerns about childhood obesity have become so universal that the once-partisan fight over who should control school food offerings â€" the federal government or school boards â€" has subsided.

But Republican support is far from certain.

Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican and the ranking member on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, met at the White House with Mrs. Obama on Tuesday to talk about childhood obesity. And while Mr. Chambliss released a statement saying that “schools play an important role in shaping nutrition habits of young children,” an aide refused to say whether he would support a ban on junk foods.
Other Republicans said they would wait to see legislation before signaling whether they would put aside long-held views that school boards should control food offerings.

Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas and the chairwoman of the committee, said she would introduce the legislation within weeks. “It’s a big priority for me, other members and the administration,” she said.
While Democrats have coalesced around the idea of denying sweets to schoolchildren, many students are not keen.

The legislation would reauthorize the government’s school breakfast and lunch programs. It aims to transform the eating habits of many of the nation’s children and teenagers, but some school officials say it will further crimp already strained budgets.

In addition to banning sugary treats, the new rules would require many schools to offer more nutritious options, which could be expensive. The administration has proposed spending $1 billion more each year on the $18 billion meals program, but the increase may not be enough to cover the extra costs.

The National PTA and a host of health and medical advocacy groups support the legislation, but local school officials are lukewarm.

“Our feeling is that school boards are acutely aware of the importance of ensuring that children have access to healthy and nutritious food,” said Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association.
The bill would exempt bake sales, parties and other occasional offerings of sweets. But drawing the line between routine and unusual can get tricky.

“What do you do about the Spanish club buying Kit Kat bars and selling them in the cafeteria?” asked Doug Davis, director of food service for the City of Burlington Public Schools in Vermont.

The National School Lunch Program serves 31 million children in more than 100,000 schools. It was started in 1946 to ensure that children get enough to eat after health problems related to malnutrition were found in an alarming number of World War II draftees. Now, health officials are also worried that children are eating too much of the wrong foods. About two-thirds of the nation’s adults and a third of its children are overweight â€" double the rates of 1980.

Junk food has long been banned from official school breakfast and lunch programs, but many schools offer fatty foods and sweets outside of these programs or have vending machines with sodas and candy, with the money often used to finance sports or other extracurricular programs. The legislation would require that all school offerings comply with strict new nutritional guidelines.

Many schools have changed their offerings. Five years ago, fewer than a third of the nation’s school districts put limits on students’ access to candy and sugary drinks. That share jumped to two-thirds by 2008, according to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. William H. Dietz, an obesity researcher at the disease centers, said that changing school food policies had already helped.
“There’s been a plateau in childhood obesity, and I think one of the reasons is that things are different in schools,” he said.

Industry opposition to the new legislation has softened in part because the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo now sell far more than Coke and Pepsi. So instead of having to yank vending machines from schools, the companies could replace offerings with bottled water or juice.

Kevin Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, said that companies had been voluntarily taking high-calorie drinks out of schools. But, he said, the industry does not favor a federal ban.
Orange County High School has vending machines with Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper, but even more popular among students is a candy cart wheeled into the school’s central hallway three times a day by Betty Almond, a school secretary.

At a meeting in his office to discuss food offerings, Bette Winter, director of the Orange County schools wellness committee, suggested that selling candy to students was not a good lesson.
“What’s the best way to teach children? By example, no?” she asked.

But Mr. Kotulka responded that it was parents’ responsibility to forbid children at risk of obesity to buy candy.
Whether the new rules will change eating habits is unknown, but Mrs. Almond’s candy cart became popular only after the school cafeteria got rid of its own sweets two years ago.
Edgar Coker, an 18-year-old senior, buys Pop-Tarts from Mrs. Almond every afternoon for 50 cents. “If I couldn’t buy it here, I’d bring it from home,” he said.

But Denise Snow, the school cafeteria manager, said that children can be taught to eat better. “When we went to whole-wheat pizza, the kids fussed for a while and we lost some of them,” Ms. Snow said. “But now they don’t say a thing, and pretty much everyone is back to eating them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/health/nutrition/08junk.html