Food Revolution

One of the exciting things about being in DC is that I am able to get involved with issues like the Child Nutrition Act through Slow Food. Being in the Nation's Capital - I am able to make a difference and help raise awareness. I have always been passionate about food and how it relates to people. Helping others is also important to me...I feel everybody deserves good, clean and fair food. It is time for us to stand up and fight for the good, clean and fair food in our system.

Changing school lunches and helping children with obesity is becoming more of a national concern and more and more people are getting involved to fight in this "Food Revolution." Slow Food USA started The Time for Lunch campaign this past summer. The campaign kicked-up with the National Day of Action that brought 20,000 people together at more than 300 “Eat-Ins” nationwide. It’s time to give young Americans the school lunch they deserve: real food that tastes good and is good for them! Slow Food's goal was to talk to Congress to help make changes. When Congress reauthorizes the National School Lunch program in 2010, Slow Food members are calling on our elected officials to:

1. Invest in health. Find the funding to give school lunch programs
$1 more per child per day.
2. Protect kids from the junk food sold in vending machines, cafeterias and
school stores. Approve the Child Nutrition Promotion
and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009.
3. Link schools to local farms, and teach healthy eating. Guarantee
$50 million for Farm to School programs.

Image from Front Page Magazine
First Lady Michelle Obama announced a few weeks ago an ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight and unveiled a nationwide campaign – Let’s Move – to help achieve it. The Let’s Move campaign will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve the national goal, and will provide schools, families and communities simple tools to help kids be more active, eat better, and get healthy.

A new TV show titled, Food Revolution, premieres March 26th. Jamie Oliver, chef, TV personality and best-selling author, goes to Huntington, West Virginia (which has been called the unhealthiest city in America) and tries to change the way people eat. Jamie is inviting viewers to take a stand and change the way America eats, in our home kitchens, schools and workplaces. ABC's website states, "The impassioned chef is taking on obesity, heart disease and diabetes in the USA, where our nation's children are the first generation NOT expected to live as long as their parents. Now that's scary!" He hopes to help get Huntington off that list and start a chain reaction of positive change across the country.

Great article in TIME about school lunches in France. "The French don't need their First Lady to plant a vegetable garden at the Élysée Palace to encourage good eating habits. They already know the rules: sit down and take your time, because food is serious business."

In his new book Food Rules, Michael Pollan states in rule No. 58: "Do all your eating at a table." French children quickly learn that they won't be fed anywhere else. Snack and soda machines are banned from school buildings in France — a battle that is now raging across the U.S. And France's lunch programs are well funded. While the country is cutting public programs and civil-servant jobs to try to slash a debt of about $2.1 trillion, no one has dared to mention touching the money spent on school lunches.

Fed Up With Lunch Project

Photo: Chicago school lunch: Corn chips with cheese sauce, French fries, ketchup, pears in syrup, & chocolate milk (Source: American Lunchroom: What Our Kids Are Eating at School: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

This is a great blog by Mrs. Q, an anonymous school teacher from an unnamed Illinois public school, who has vowed to eat the same school lunch offered to her students throughout 2010. She is blogging about it to make a difference and bring awareness to the unhealthy lunches the children are eating. This anonymous lady states, "This issue is important now because the Child Nutrition Act is being reauthorized and debated in Congress right now. I realize that everyone is strapped for cash right now. Individuals, companies, states, and countries are losing money. No matter what is going on in this world, we can't forget the kids and the fact that many of them are at the mercy of school districts and corporations for their daily meal(s). It will cost the US more money in the future (healthcare costs) if schools don't address the big problem that is staring them in the face everyday: childhood obesity. No matter how great a school is, it can't control what the kids eat outside of school. But still schools can do better for kids while they are in building."

Here is her flickr account (Group)- where you can view pictures and also take a picture and share it with your own school lunch experience.

I think this is a great way to reach out to people...and to create change. Many kids in the U.S. eat half their daily calories at school. She is becoming very well known and getting tons of interviews. She is worried about losing her job...but I am proud somebody is finally saying something. Her recent interview with Robin Shreeves at Mother Nature News.

Interesting article in NYT talks about how it has been nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools and how a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items like Pop-Tarts and Doritos during the school day, but not brownies, zucchini bread or anything else homemade. This idea to me is upsetting. Our children do not need to eat processed food filled with junk and preservatives, instead they should indulge in homemade treats and healthier snacks.

Other people working towards this Food Revolution:
Anne Cooper, a Lunch Lady, who revamped school lunch programs in Harlem, NY, Berkeley, CA, and Boulder, CO.
Susan Rubin’s Better School Food.
Blogger Ed Bruske (recently spent a week in an elementary-school kitchen in the nation’s capitol) The Slow Cook.

Ed Bruske wrote about items the children were eating..such as scrambled eggs, “a manufactured product with 11 different ingredients cooked in a factory in Minnesota and delivered 1,100 miles frozen in plastic bags to the District of Columbia.”

Many people are coming together to fight and stand up for the children. It will be interesting to see what will change...and what these handful of people can do. Will it take more people? More people like the teacher? Or more high up people like Michelle Obama. Obama told Josh Viertel in a recent visit to DC..."Show me a movement..and I will make a difference." So I feel that it does take people like the teacher to prove that there is a great need for this...and we are behind it.

Slow Food A Food Revolution is just what kids need...actually what many Americans need (regardless of their age). Everyone deserves to eat fresh fruit and vegetables. And it needs to start somewhere or the next generation of children are in great danger. Food Matters!