We are preparing for the most thoroughly planned meal in America, and it's not Thanksgiving dinner. It's school lunch.
Once every five years school meals are put on the Congressional kitchen's front burner through reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. In the process of cooking up this legislation, school meals have been researched, reviewed, rallied for and railed against. And while the resulting stuffed turkey that is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids' Act, is not perfect, it's pretty darn good.
Congress must stick a fork in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session, get it done and finally serve the kids. 
For the last two years, advocates, lobbyists, politicians, and celebrities from Rachael Ray to Michelle Obama have worked to craft a bill that will daily affect the lives of the 31 million children who clamor to the nation's school cafeterias to quell their grumbling bellies. For this bill to pass, over the next few days we the people must prove to our elected officials that the Child Nutrition Act is a national priority.
This past September marked our country's first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Yet while one in three U.S. children are obese or overweight, one in four struggle with hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) reported last week that more than 50 million Americans, including more than 17 million children, are food insecure - meaning they lack consistent access to a nutritious, well-balanced diet.
Simultaneous hunger and obesity may seem like a paradox, but the root cause is the same: lack of access to healthy food. Give children nourishing food in the cafeteria, nutrition education in the classroom, and hands-on learning through school gardens, and a lifetime of healthy eating can take root.
We need to show our support for House passage of the $4.5 billion child nutrition bill that passed the Senate earlier this year. If the bill isn't on the president's desk soon, supporters will have to start over in the new Congress. It's like dropping the turkey in front of all the seated family and friends.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act offers a real chance to improve nutrition for all children. By improving opportunities for healthy meals in and out of school, the bill would take an important step towards addressing both child hunger and obesity.
Unanimously passed by the Senate and supported by more than 1,300 national, state and local organizations, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307) will:
• Improve school meals;
• Support farmers through Farm to School programs;
• Address skyrocketing obesity rates; and
• Feed more hungry children.
The bill would help reduce hunger and increase children's access to healthy meals by expanding the after-school supper program nationwide, better connecting eligible children with free school meals, and streamlining the certification process for the Women, Infants, Children (WIC) program.
The bill would strengthen nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, provide schools with increased resources and training to improve meal quality, and support Farm to School programs and school gardens.
Last week, the House designated October as National Farm to School Month. Now they have a chance to walk the walk, in addition to talking the talk, by passing a bill that will increase access to quality food for school children, foster local farm job growth and generate local economic development. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act establishes a competitive grant and technical assistance program in the Department of Agriculture to increase the use of local foods from small- and medium-sized farms in schools, with $40 million in mandatory funding.
The competitive grant program would help create more Farm to School programs benefiting kids and communities alike. A recent study from the University of Minnesota found the potential economic benefit of Farm to School to the region ranged from about $20,000 if each school served one locally grown meal a month to up to $430,000 if they bought large amounts from farmers.
Now consider that the fast-food industry spent more than $4.2 billion on marketing & advertising in 2009 alone, according to the Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. And our elected officials can't pass child nutrition legislation that provides almost an equivalent amount in $4.5 billion over 10 years to reduce hunger and provide access to healthy food.
What have you done to help reach the goals of ending child hunger by 2015 and solving childhood obesity in a generation?
Before you pass the turkey, consider helping to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session. You and your family can deliver a strong message to Congress to vote yes on this urgently needed legislation, by sending your photo as part of a nationwide photo petition. Go here for details.
A healthy school lunch for our children is something to be truly thankful for this holiday season.
Follow Debra Eschmeyer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/farmtoschool
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/ (the FDA topic)
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/labels.htm (what IS food insecurity)
From the site:
"However, children are usually protected from substantial reductions in food intake even in households with very low food security. In 2009, 988,000 children (1.3 percent of the Nation’s children) lived in households with very low food security among children."
There's nothing insubstantial about nearly 1 million children in households that experience hunger, but even then most of the children are shielded from hunger because adults are mostly good people who make sure kids eat. Distorting the facts and figures to make political points does no one credit.
a liberal vegetarian does not want you to eat meat.
welcome to the "state" of america.
Are you really going to tell me that there are parents out there that can't afford a loaf of bread and some peanut butter or bologna to make sandwiches for their child's lunch?
And even if there are, it would be much cheaper to buy them the bread than to go through the hassle of supplying a school lunch.
This whole thing is a sham.
yah, f those kids, they should starve cause their poor
Just one less to feed, is the motto.
Sick twisted selfish minds calling policy on the poor's children when they really just don't give a damn and won't admit it, because they are supposed Christians and in denial after listening to Rush, Beck and Fox for years.
Stereotyping the poor and middle class.
YOU BETCHA.
Nobody grows of dreaming of welfare and living in poverty. If you ask these kids what they want to be, you certainly don't hear the word "POOR" in the answer.
It's a fight between USDA and farmers, anti-tax neocons, soft-drink industry, ranchers, vegans.
Things went downhill from there: Now I can't even chow down on a Triple Whopper with extra mayo with a HUGE printed warning about cardiovascular disease on the wrapper staring me in the face.
Don't you GET it, America??? IT'S SOCIALIST TYRANNY!!!!! DON'T GO THERE!
Americans won't accept Socialism at face value but they will and are accepting every fragment of it under Liberalism. There government isolates and devours piece by piece. Health Care, Auto, Wall St., etc.
Junk foods such as processed carbs are addictive. Mice will eat it preferentially, become obese and unhealthy. So will humans.
First step: replace soft-drink vending machines with free bottled water in cafeterias. That includes fruit juices, fructose is terrible for you, and they all have added corn syrup. And artificial sweeteners cause obesity, they cause insulin release so can cause diabetes, Google same for info.
Scientists realize that it's impossible for the body to correctly judge calorie intake. If weight depended on that we would all soon be obese or starving, a few calories would make too big a difference.
All this according to Science News, great mag.
It is both, though... we need access to healthy food and lack of access to unhealthy food.
But a contract with a local farmer, keeps them going and is healthier and cheaper to provide because of NO shipping cost.
And the best that government can do is pizza, fried chicken, and hamburger and fries.
Now they are asking for a law so they can do what's right for the kids. Well why not just provide a healthy menu to the kids now? There is no law stating that the lunches government provides has to be high fat and crappy.
It's the mean-spiritedness of those that don't take the time to learn the reality of school nutrition that help perpetrate the misconception that school food sucks. Nothing is further from the truth. But then, I wonder if you could handle the truth? Reality is that there IS a law that says school meals must NOT be high fat and crappy.
Step out of your little comfort zone; volunteer at your local school's cafeteria. You might be surprised at what you'll learn.
but since it varies county to county, You cannot speak for the whole of all..
I can only speak for my county, I have eaten there.
The bill needs to pass for those who don't have that form of nutrition
Until enough people care pack your kids a lunch.Once tohe gov loses out on the lunch money maybe they'll listen?!
Also, that would mean that the parent's would have to pack lunch daily, but wait.....a lot of adults are out of work and have been for a while. That means they have or should complete an application for school meals. Oops, sorry, that means they would have to eat crappy school food. But wait, if you simply take a minute to check it out, school food is NOT crappy.
It is the perception that, since school meals are either free (not really, but who's checking that one out??) or very inexpensive (same meal purchased at a restaurant away from home would cost about $5) then they are crappy....but then that would blow the perception of those that don't take the time to really check things out.
Go to your local school district's website and check out the Food Service webpages. Bet you get a really nice surprise!
cause you don't know about every school...
it varies
generalizations are not truths
My mother packed my lunch, and yes, she was employed.
There are better ways to go about this that don't involve another 4.4 billion that we don't have.
That's is just CRAZY. Feed them, clean them, teach them. NO way. I wan't Uncle Sam to do that for me. :-)