School meal providers convening to FOCUS on school lunch

by intern Julia Landau

Over 100 school food service directors, community activists, and government agency partners will convene at the second Annual Meeting of the organization School Food FOCUS in Chicago on March 25-27, 2010.

School Food FOCUS supports the nation’s largest urban school districts in their efforts to procure more healthful, more sustainably produced and regionally sourced food. FOCUS was developed in response to a call by urban school districts to transform the quality of school food. The organization is also driven by a recognition that improving the meal service in large school districts with major purchasing power can go a long way towards improving the food system nationwide.

The keynote speaker of next week’s conference is Jan Poppendieck, author of the new book “Free For All: Fixing School Food in America” (We reviewed it on this blog last month). The meeting will also feature the first Real School Food Showcase - a selection of carefully chosen chicken, whole grain and other food products available for institutional purchasing that strive to meet FOCUS criteria for more healthful, local, and sustainable.

The meeting will highlight demonstrated successes in sourcing local and nutritious school food. There will be a conversation with USDA officials, giving participants the chance to learn more about the new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program and the upcoming Childhood Nutrition Act.

This is seriously good timing for talking about school lunch. Senator Blanche Lincoln just introduced her draft of the Child Nutrition Act, and the Agriculture Committee will begin marking it up on March 24. Slow Food USA is asking legislators to invest in healthier food, strengthen nutrition standards and link schools to local farms – click here to learn how you can help.

[photo, from Fed up with school lunch]

Senate unveils draft of Child Nutrition Act

Today, Senator Blanche Lincoln unveiled her version of the Child Nutrition Act and announced that the Senate Agriculture Committee will begin marking up the bill next week, on Wednesday, March 24.

Lincoln’s draft boosts funding for child nutrition programs by $500 million per year, and includes stronger nutrition standards and some support for Farm to School programs. She called it a “record investment in child nutrition programs,” which is technically true – but only because Congress has consistently under-funded school meals in every Child Nutrition Act until now. It’s encouraging to see that there’s any new funding, but Lincoln’s draft only has half of the $1 billion proposed by President Obama, which isn’t enough to transform school lunch in a time when nearly 1 in 3 children is obese or overweight.

If your Senator serves on the Agriculture Committee, you have a short window of time to make an impact. Please take three minutes to make a phone call to your Senator’s office in D.C. and ask them to support:

• Helping schools serve healthier food by making the full investment of $1 billion per year for child nutrition programs.
• Including $50 million for Farm to School programs, which link schools to local farms and support the local economy.

Email staff member if you have questions. When you’re done, reach out to friends and colleagues – especially parents, teachers and school meal providers – and ask them to make a call, too.

You can learn more about Slow Food USA’s campaign to help schools serve healthier food at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

One take on the soda tax

by intern Valerie Scott

I wish I was virtuous enough to stick to just water and wine, but I’m not – like most of America, I like soda. So why do I support the controversial proposal in New York to impose a tax on soda? Because taxes like this one are proven to reduce weight and lower risk of diabetes. And I think that’s worth a few extra pennies of punishment for a guilty pleasure.

All week, I’ve been hearing commercials from the Alliance for a Healthier New York in favor of the proposed NY “soda tax.” New York state health officials are aiming to levy a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary soda. New York Governor David Paterson proposed the soda tax in January and last week Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged state legislators to impose the tax.

I was still on the fence until a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill convinced me that a soda tax is worthwhile. The study followed more than 5,000 participants for 20 years, tracking the average price of fast food and soda in the counties in which the participants lived. The diet, weight and insulin levels of the participants were also analyzed. The results show that weight and risk of diabetes decreased for people in communities where soda and fast food prices increased.

The senior author of the study, Barry Popkin, Ph.D, states, “Our results provide robust evidence to support the potential health benefits of taxing selected foods and beverages as a way of improving public health.”

Of course, at the end of the day, a tax is about raising revenue and the New York soda tax will do that. The tax could raise up to $1 billion annually to fund health care programs across the state. State Health Commissioner Richard Daines told the NY Daily News, “It’s a triple play. We would reduce obesity, earn revenue to support health care and, in the long run, cut health care costs.”

President Obama has said that soda taxes are “an idea worth exploring,” but since the failure of Governor Paterson’s first attempt to tax soda in 2009 and ongoing health care reform woes, the administration has not proposed a similar tax on the national level. A success story in New York would be one step towards changing that.

Bottom line – I think the soda tax could be an important way to reduce obesity and diabetes and fund health care programs overburdened with the high costs of chronic disease.

If you live in New York and want to contact your legislators about the soda tax, click here!

Update on the Child Nutrition Act

On March 3, Senator Blanche Lincoln told a conference of school meal providers that she plans to start marking up the Child Nutrition Act before March 26, when Congress goes on Easter recess. If the Senator is true to her word, this will be the first progress on the bill since Congress passed a one-year extension last fall.

Lincoln also said that she’s seeking the biggest increase ever in funding for child nutrition programs, citing President Obama’s proposal to add $1 billion per year. While that amount isn’t enough to transform school lunch, it is an important step forward and we encourage everyone to let Congress know it’s a priority.

Our other policy goals – strengthening nutrition standards for all the food at school, and linking schools to local farms – have strong support from the USDA and will likely be included if Congress supports the funding increase. We’re already seeing progress: two bills to support Farm to School programs have recently been introduced in the House and Senate. A quick way to help these bills get included in the Child Nutrition Act is to call your legislators and ask for their support.

The other important news is that legislators will be home in your district for Easter recess from March 26 to April 11. This is a great opportunity to get their attention. Some easy things you can do are:

• Submit a Letter to the Editor or Op-Ed to your local paper. One fantastic story would be to gather a group of parents to eat school lunch, and then write about it in an Op-Ed.

• Schedule a meeting with your legislator or his/her staff. Bring kids, parents, teachers and school meal providers, and let them do the talking.

• Invite your legislator or his/her staff to eat school lunch.

Learn more about the Time for Lunch Campaign at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch, and email Slow Food USA staff member Gordon Jenkins (gordon [at] slowfoodusa [dot] org) if you’d like to get involved.

Busting Big Ag in Iowa

by Siena Chrisman, WhyHunger

Last night in Ankeny, Iowa, just north of Des Moines, a standing-room-only crowd of over 250 people called on the Justice Department and USDA to “bust up big ag!” and put the needs of people before corporations.  Today is the official listening session where the government agencies will hear from all interested parties on the issue of corporate concentration in the food system—particularly, this round addresses “Issues of Concern to Farmers"—but the scheduled panels today are heavy on business and light on actual farmers. Several local groups organized Thursday’s town hall as a venue for farmers to voice their real concerns.

The evening began with a panel of independent farmers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri addressing concentration in seeds, dairy, and livestock; a representative from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; and good food advocates talking about consumer issues (I had the great privilege to be one of those last speakers).

And then the floor was open to public comments. About 50 people spoke, almost all of them farmers. They told heartbreaking stories: The 29th anniversary of one man’s parents was a farm foreclosure. “The American Dream has turned into the American nightmare” for a southern Iowa dairy farmer, whose milk prices have been so low he can’t afford his feed costs. The 15-year-old son of a fifth generation dairy farmer wants to become the sixth generation, but if things don’t change in the next six months, they’re not going to have a farm.

Things are dire for farmers—as they are for so many of people who don’t have control over their food—but they’re ready to fight. They made powerful demands of the Department of Justice and Congress to enforce antitrust laws and break up the hugely concentrated ag industries. But government isn’t quite the last hope; people are. A family farmer from near Des Moines wanted to talk about power: “Industry cannot turn one wheel unless people make those machines work,” he said. “We have the power here, and we need to understand what that power means.”

More after the jump

Obama Justice Dept. is investigating Big Ag companies

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice will hold the first of five workshops to determine whether a handful of food and farming companies are exercising monopoly control over the industry. This is a big deal. If the Dept. finds that companies like Monsanto are violating antitrust law, regulators could move to break up the companies in order to protect farmers and consumers from further harm.

Friday’s workshop takes place in Ankeny, IA, near Des Moines. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney will speak on a panel, as will a selection of crop and livestock farmers from around the country. (The farmers were added at the last-minute amidst outcries that a workshop about agriculture didn’t feature any actual farmers.) Other panels will feature a Monsanto Vice President, a former President of the Iowa Soybean Association and a representative from the organization Food & Water Watch.

Farmer and consumer groups who are concerned that the Justice Dept. workshop is bent towards corporate special interests are organizing a People’s Antitrust Hearing in Ankeny on the evening prior. At the event, Iowa farmers and community leaders will share their perspective on how food company monopolies lead to higher food prices and lower farmer profits.

In December, Slow Food USA joined other groups in asking the public to submit comments to the Justice Dept. The DoJ reported receiving over 15,000 comments, and has begun posting them online.

If you’re an Iowa resident who believes in good, clean and fair food, considering joining Slow Food and getting involved in one of our Iowa chapters.

Chicago Kids Write to Eat

by Emily Dagostino, Slow Food Chicago volunteer

Wee toddlers scribbling in crayon, kids and teenagers tuned into the trouble with today’s school lunches, and parents advocating for the well-being of their children were among dozens of Windy City denizens who penned letters at a recent event asking Congress for increased funding for school lunches.

“It was great,” says Slow Food Chicago board member Ryan Kimura. “We received about 40 letters, but I felt the impact was stronger than that.” Sara Gasbarra, Green City Market Sprouts Program Chair, agreed: “I think the event was a total success!”

Green City Market and Slow Food Chicago teamed up to sponsor the “Kids Write to Eat” event on February 27 as part of a ramping up of outreach efforts for the Time for Lunch Campaign that began with Slow Food Chicago’s annual meeting in January. Since then, dozens of volunteers have emerged ready and excited to help spread the word. Teachers have approached Green City Market and Slow Food Chicago about bringing the letter-writing campaign back to their classrooms, and volunteers have redoubled efforts to reach out to like-minded organizations in the Chicago area to find new ways to tell our collective story.

In the next week or so, representatives from Slow Food Chicago, Green City Market and Common Threads plan to hand-deliver the kids’ (and parents’) letters to the Chicago office of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill. They hope to use the meeting to discuss with the senator’s staff why childhood nutrition and healthy lunches are a priority and to request the senator’s support.

In the letters, 6-year-old Alyssa, 7-year-old Quinton and 13-year-old Taisha asked Congress to “please serve healthy food” in their schools. Not only would it help them concentrate but it “gets you going at recess,” Quinton wrote.

More after the jump

The School Lunch Revolution in San Diego

by intern Julia Landau

What can one Slow Food chapter, one local school, a Whole Foods Market, and a Renegade Lunch Lady get done together? Just ask Slow Food Urban San Diego, who just spent two jam-packed days advocating for healthier school lunches with Chef Ann Cooper.

The two-day event was catalyzed by Whole Foods Market’s “School Lunch Makeover” video contest. With the help of a dedicated parent, students from the Albert Einstein Academies charter school made their case for a school lunch overhaul. Their video “Where Did the Good Food Go?” came in first place! The prize? A visit from the Renegade Lunch Lady herself, Chef Ann Cooper.

Chef Ann has been challenging and transforming the school lunch system across the country. A chef for over 30 years, she now focuses on strengthening links among food, farms, family, and child wellness. As part of this, Chef Ann is calling for a school lunch revolution in which schools shift from packaged and processed food toward healthy, nutritious meals. Her online resources, appearances, and campaign to increase school lunch funding by one dollar per meal are inspiring and empowering local schools and activists from coast to coast. This time, she made a two-day stop in San Diego.

Slow Food Urban San Diego, having partnered with Albert Einstein Academies, helped kick off the events with a press conference featuring Chef Ann and the Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders. The partnership among Chef Ann, Whole Foods, Slow Food Urban San Diego, Albert Einstein Academies, and the local restaurant Alchemy drew so much attention, in fact, that the Mayor issued a proclamation declaring February 18, 2010 “Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Day.” Later that day, Chef Ann addressed over 150 people at the Natural History Museum of San Diego. A Slow Food member gave lead-in presentation about the Time for Lunch campaign, complete with live tutorial on sending e-letters to congress.

More after the jump

Food Environment Atlas Shows Locations of Food Deserts

by intern Christine Binder

On February 9th, Michelle Obama unveiled Let’s Move, an initiative with the ambitious goal of solving the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation. As part of the initiative, the First Lady and her team also launched an interactive Food Environment Atlas. It is an important source of food environment statistics and a great way to visualize the ability of different communities to access healthy food, but it’s also a lot of fun to play with and explore.

You can look at 90 different characteristics of the food environment by state, region, or county. Who pays the most for milk? In which states do people eat the most fruits and veggies, or drink the most soda? Where are the greatest numbers of grocery stores or farmers’ markets located? How much money do Americans spend on fast food every year? Where are obesity levels the highest?

As you look at all of the different maps, you’ll probably notice that there are a lot of places in this country where healthy foods are not readily available – and even more places where unhealthy foods are. One of the four pillars of Let’s Move is Accessible and Affordable Healthy Food. This is important because 23.5 million Americans, 6.5 million of which are children, live in what are called “food deserts.”

A food desert is a neighborhood with little or no access to fresh, healthy foods, due to a lack of grocery stores or farmers markets’, often in combination with high food prices. Most food deserts are located in urban or rural areas. Even though they lack grocery stores, food deserts often contain plenty of fast food restaurants and convenience stores where cheap and unhealthy processed foods are sold. It’s not hard to see that eating healthfully in a food desert is extremely challenging.

More after the jump

Fixing School Lunch in America

by intern Christine Binder

Last month, I attended a meeting of parents at a Brooklyn public school. Janet Poppendieck, the author of Free for All: Fixing School Lunch in America, led a discussion about the state of school lunches, describing to us the changes in the National School Lunch Program over the years, and explaining the various forces that continue to shape what students eat. Afterward, we discussed the potential of the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization – which only happens every five years – to improve school lunches.

In researching for Free For All, Dr. Poppendieck, a professor of sociology at Hunter College, visited school cafeterias and kitchens all over the country, and even spent time working in one. Along the way, she met many people striving to improve school food in their own communities, whom she describes in the “Local Heroes” chapter of the book. It is heartening to hear their stories of success, but I can’t help but agree with her when she says, “It shouldn’t be so hard. One should not have to be a superhero, a magician, or a saint to get healthy, tasty food into the school cafeteria, or to make school food truly accessible to children.”

Currently, there are many obstacles for those working to improve school food. It is very difficult to serve delicious, healthful meals to children with a food budget of less than a dollar per meal. Many schools need to sell junk food in vending machines and snack bars in order to break even. Procuring local food is not always possible, due to bureaucratic and logistical barriers. Poppendieck points out, however, that the National School Lunch Program is ultimately the responsibility of Congress, and that only Congress can “step up to the plate to enact changes in federal law that make local improvements much easier to achieve.”

Towards the end of the meeting, Dr. Poppendieck asked a profound question: “How old will your children be in five years?” Everyone in the room sat in thoughtful silence, imagining the state of school food and the well-being of their children five years from now. When you think about it that way, it’s very clear; America’s children cannot wait any longer for healthy school food. Tell Congress to prioritize school lunches. To quote Free for All one final time, “It’s time to see what we can do if we put children first.”

To contact your legislator, click here!