Oct 12 2010

It’s National School Lunch Week!

The USDA has issued a lengthy press release on its current efforts to improve school meals.  One part of this is the HealthierUS School Challenge, which awards grants to schools to create healthier school food environments.

I just received another press release from the USDA (not yet posted online), this one announcing that Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass are kicking off the 2nd annual Washington D.C. “Farm to School Week.”

Merrigan and Kass will visit Savoy Elementary School to highlight Obama administration efforts to improve school meals by incorporating locally-grown foods. Merrigan and Kass will also tour the Savoy school garden and emphasize healthy eating, locally grown ingredients, and farm to school programs.  Here’s the schedule:

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

1 p.m. EDT
WHAT: Agriculture Deputy Secretary Merrigan and White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass will kick-off the 2nd annual D.C. Farm to School Week.
WHERE: Savoy Elementary School

2400 Shannon Place SE

Washington, D.C.  20020

These are good things to do.  Now, how about some policy changes?

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  • Dana Woldow
  • October 12, 2010
  • 11:26 am

Here’s another viewpoint on USDA school meal programs, from a parent who is troubled by the disconnect between the USDA’s PR happy talk and the reality of school cafeterias
http://tinyurl.com/36sk286

  • Katie
  • October 13, 2010
  • 11:36 am

As someone who works in a school where over 80% of the

  • Katie
  • October 13, 2010
  • 1:13 pm

As someone who works in an elementary school in Philadelphia, I view the USDA’s current move to invest $2.5 million dollars in “Healthier US Schools” awards as completely contradictory to its investment in another program – Philadelphia’s Universal Feeding Program, which provides over 100,000 children throughout the School District (including my own students) free or reduced lunch. The USDA cannot claim to support a healthier school environment while it simultaneously subsidizes a program that provides dangerously unhealthy lunches to low-income students across the city of Philadelphia. I’d love for Secretary Vilsack to come sit in our cafeteria for a day, where he’d have the chance to enjoy two slim jims, a pack of cheese crackers, a fruit roll up, and a juice box the size of my thumb for lunch. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the existence of a program that provides meals to my students, rather than have them sit through classes on completely empty stomachs. But the USDA needs to take a second look at where it spends it dollars, and start demanding an improvement in the nutritional content of the school lunch programs it ALREADY supports, rather than attempt to encourage schools to design better lunches with the lure of $2,000 awards.

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