three national organizations - School Food FOCUS, the Community Food Security Coalition and the National Farm to School Network - have coalesced to advocate for more healthful, more sustainably produced and regionally sourced school food in schools.
At the campaign's Web site, www.onetray.org, video clips
show the stark contrast between a typical monochromatic pale meal and one that is full of color, diverse in food and rich in nourishment.
As a child carries her lunch tray to a table, her thoughts are narrated:
"One school lunch: $2.68 cents.
School food: over one half of kids' daily calories.
Children who will develop diabetes:1 in 3.
One year of diabetes: $11,744.
Investing in the health of the future: priceless."
Making meaningful improvements in the nutrition quality of school meals, serving more real food prepared on site and fewer highly processed products,and procuring more of it from local small family farms would do much to improve the health of our children. It also would do much to enhance the sustainability of agriculture and invigorate local communities
and economies.
Jennifer Wilkins teaches community nutrition in the Dietetics Program at Cornell University.
Contact her at jlw15@cornell.edu.
