Download or read book Efforts to Improve School Lunch Programs written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Seven school districts in 7 states were reviewed to determine if innovative school lunch approaches were solving or aggravating lunch program problems. While the amount of lunch food offered generally satisfied the USDA meal pattern, none of the district high school lunch formatsmet the program goal of providing a third of the students' RDA; all formats provided less than recommended levels for 7of 14 nutrients examined. Student participation in the lunch program increased from 7 to 18% after the districts provided greater food selection. Lunch costs were generally not higher when innovative (e.g., fast-food and salad formats) lunch programs were added to the conventional formats. In addition, average plate wastes for the fast-foodformat was 9% compared to 13% for the conventional food format. Milk had the lowest waste rate. Females wasted more food than males. Nutrient analysis of lunches, meal price lists, and a table of RDAs are included in the appendices. (wz).

Download or read book School Lunch Program written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lunch Wars written by Amy Kalafa and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There's a battle going on in school lunchrooms around the country...and it's a battle our children can't afford for us to lose. The average kid will eat 4,000 school lunches between kindergarten and twelfth grade. But what exactly are kids eating in school lunchrooms around the country? Many parents don't quite know what their children are eating-or where it came from. As award-winning filmmaker and nutritionist Amy Kalafa discovered in researching her documentary film Two Angry Moms: Fighting for the Health of America's Children, these days it's pretty rare to find a piece of fresh fruit in your average school lunchroom amid all the chips, french fries, Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets, and soda that's being served. But what, if anything, can parents do about it? Written in response to the onslaught of requests she received from parents who saw her film and asked, "If I want to attempt to change the food culture in my kid's school, how on earth should I get started?!" this empowering book arms parents with the specific information and tools they need to get unhealthy-even dangerous-food out of their children's school cafeteria and to hold their schools and local and national governments accountable for ensuring that their growing children are served healthy meals at school. In Lunch Wars, Kalafa explains all the complicated issues surrounding school food; how to work with your school's "Wellness Policy"; the basics of self- operated vs. outsourced cafeterias; how to get funding for a school garden, and much more. Lunch Wars also features the inspiring stories of parents around the country who have fought for better school food and have won, as well as details Amy's quest to spark a revolution in her own school district. For the future health and well-being of our children, the time has come for a school food revolution.

Download or read book Fed Up with Lunch The School Lunch Project written by Mrs. Q and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When school teacher Mrs. Q forgot her lunch one day, she had no idea she was about to embark on an odyssey to uncover the truth about public school lunches. Shocked by what her students were served, she resolved to eat school lunch for an entire year, chronicling her experience anonymously on a blog that received thousands of hits daily, and was lauded by such food activists as Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, and Marion Nestle. Here, Mrs. Q reveals her identity for the first time in an eye-opening account of school lunches in America. Along the way, she provides invaluable resources for parents and health advocates who wish to help reform school lunch, making this a must-read for anyone concerned about children's health issues.

Download or read book The National School Lunch Program written by Wendi Anne Gosliner and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract The National School Lunch Program: Ideas, proposals, policies, and politics shaping students' experiences with school lunch in the United States, 1946 - present By Wendi Anne Gosliner Doctor of Public Health University of California, Berkeley Professor Ann Keller, Chair On an average school day in 2012, The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) supported the provision of lunch meals to almost 2/3 of school-age youth in the United States. Recent spikes in childhood obesity rates and the emergence of childhood-onset Type 2 diabetes have brought renewed attention to the program's potential to positively impact the health of the nation's youth. The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 began a process of reforming the NSLP, requiring schools to serve foods consistent with updated nutrition standards, representing the most important punctuation to school lunch policy in decades. The three papers comprising this dissertation provide new insights into ways the public health nutrition community can support the success of the new policies, and continue to improve the impact of the school lunch program on children's health and development. The first paper examines the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption at school and specific factors in the school setting, such as the amount of time available to eat lunch, the quality and variety of produce options served, and whether students are involved in food service decision-making. This cross sectional study of California 7th and 9th grade students (n=5,439) was conducted in 31 schools in 2010. Multilevel regression models were used to assess relationships between students' responses to survey questions regarding school food behaviors and recorded observations of school food environments. The study found that a longer lunch period was associated with increased odds of a student eating fruits (40%) and vegetables (54%) at school. Fruit quality increased the odds of a student consuming fruit at school (44%). Including a salad bar and involving students in food service decisions increased a student's odds of consuming vegetables at school (48% and 34%, respectively). The findings suggest that institutional factors in schools are positively associated with middle and high school students' consumption of produce items at school. The second paper explores the original issues and arguments that were presented by advocates, administration officials, and members of Congress in the 1940's, when a National School Lunch program first was being debated in Congress. Political science theory suggests that understanding history can provide insight into current policy debates. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the early framing and arguments that led to the original structure of the NSLP. It was hypothesized that understanding the full complement of issues and arguments debated at the time the program was established would help explain the policies that shape current school lunch environments. This study examined the transcripts of the three Congressional hearings held in 1944-1945, when proposals for establishing ongoing federal support for school lunch programs were first considered in Congress. The study identifies many issues of contention in the early debates, including whether the primary program objective was to serve the Nation's agricultural needs or to support children's health and wellbeing, which federal agency would administer the program, the degree to which federal resources should be used to support school meals, which children would benefit from school lunch programs, whether food and nutrition education should be included, and whether resources would be provided for equipment and training of personnel. The paper shows that the outcome of the early debates continues to shape present policies, and that modern advocates' vision for an optimal school lunch program mirrors the vision of advocates in the 1940's. The paper underscores the importance of understanding the school lunch program's history, in order to more effectively promote and protect children's opportunities to benefit from school meals. The final paper presents the results of a pilot study of legislative documents from the National School Lunch Program's history (1946 - present), in order to provide a longer-term perspective on the evolution of the program. The purpose of this study is to explore and describe the school lunch policy ideas and proposals that have appeared on the federal decision-making agenda over time, in order to inform future directions for research and advocacy related to school lunch policy. A ProQuest Congressional search utilizing the search terms "school lunch," "school meal," "child nutrition," or "school nutrition" was conducted, and all hearing and bill summaries were reviewed. The findings suggest that Congressional attention to school lunch, in the form of legislative hearings and bills, has shifted over time, with more legislative attention devoted to the program during the period of expansion in the late 1960s through the period of curtailment in the early to mid-1980s. Further, the study shows that the program consistently has suffered from constrained resources, and that periods of investment in the NSLP have been followed by efforts to curtail the program. The study also reveals that after the program's beginning, many issues cycled on and off of the federal decision-making agenda. These issues include: the degree to which the program should be administered at the federal or state level; which students should benefit from school meals; whether nutrition education should be included; what foods and beverages are served; and how the USDA-distributed commodities should be structured. While the school lunch program generally enjoys bi-partisan support, policymakers have not yet exhibited the political will to provide a program consistent with advocates' desires to operate seamlessly within the school system and offer healthy meals to all students. Future efforts to support and improve the program can now be informed with a better understanding of the program's past political successes and failures. Recommendations about ways the public health nutrition community can continue to support and improve the National School Lunch Program, based on the history described, conclude the paper. Together, these three papers highlight both opportunities and challenges facing the National School Lunch Program. Cast in the light of this historical perspective, advocates for ideas that have failed in the past can see the value of considering whether current approaches are vulnerable to the same politics that trumped them in past political battles. Similarly, program supporters should understand the proposals to dismantle the federal school lunch program, and why they failed, in order to be prepared to defend the program against similar proposals that may be anticipated in the future. Further, these papers show that while the public health nutrition community may perceive the school lunch program to be a stable federal investment, this perceived stability may be more a function of political good fortune than of a strong and secure federal commitment to children's health and nutrition. Yet current projections suggest that investing in the nutritional health of today's youth is especially important, given the costly epidemics of early-onset diet-related chronic diseases now plaguing the nation. We can no longer afford not to provide a robust and effective National School Lunch Program.

Download or read book Free for All written by Janet Poppendieck and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-01-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did our children end up eating nachos, pizza, and Tater Tots for lunch? Taking us on an eye-opening journey into the nation's school kitchens, this superbly researched book is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of school food in the United States. Janet Poppendieck explores the deep politics of food provision from multiple perspectives--history, policy, nutrition, environmental sustainability, taste, and more. How did we get into the absurd situation in which nutritionally regulated meals compete with fast food items and snack foods loaded with sugar, salt, and fat? What is the nutritional profile of the federal meals? How well are they reaching students who need them? Opening a window onto our culture as a whole, Poppendieck reveals the forces--the financial troubles of schools, the commercialization of childhood, the reliance on market models--that are determining how lunch is served. She concludes with a sweeping vision for change: fresh, healthy food for all children as a regular part of their school day.

Download or read book Hungry for Change written by Room Room 234 and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During spring 2016, Room 234 students examined the requirements associated with the National School Lunch Program, which subsidizes meals for students attending public schools, and visited High Tech High elementary schools to understand the different ways they comply with federal guidelines and handle challenges that arise. After interviewing operations staff, food vendors, registered dietitians, policy experts, and their local congresswoman, students found that these legal rules are complex, controversial, subject to compromise, and implemented in dramatically different ways. Throughout their process, they took careful notes, raised challenging questions, and continually reflected on earlier experiences in light of new information. Students participated in formal meetings as part of a committee tasked with helping select new food vendors for their network of schools, and then aimed to educate school parents and ask them to join the call for regular meetings between families and food vendors to provide feedback and a breakfast option for High Tech Elementary Chula Vista. This collection includes their recommendations to the committee as well as reflections and illustrations on what makes a healthy lunch, what schools should serve, how guidelines for the National School Lunch Program should be modified, and what we can all do to eat better at school.

Download or read book The Labor of Lunch written by Jennifer E. Gaddis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There’s a problem with school lunch in America. Big Food companies have largely replaced the nation’s school cooks by supplying cafeterias with cheap, precooked hamburger patties and chicken nuggets chock-full of industrial fillers. Yet it’s no secret that meals cooked from scratch with nutritious, locally sourced ingredients are better for children, workers, and the environment. So why not empower “lunch ladies” to do more than just unbox and reheat factory-made food? And why not organize together to make healthy, ethically sourced, free school lunches a reality for all children? The Labor of Lunch aims to spark a progressive movement that will transform food in American schools, and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed. By providing a feminist history of the US National School Lunch Program, Jennifer E. Gaddis recasts the humble school lunch as an important and often overlooked form of public care. Through vivid narration and moral heft, The Labor of Lunch offers a stirring call to action and a blueprint for school lunch reforms capable of delivering a healthier, more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.

Download or read book Eating to Learn Learning to Eat written by Andrew R. Ruis and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat, historian A. R. Ruis explores the origins of American school meal initiatives to explain why it was (and, to some extent, has continued to be) so difficult to establish meal programs that satisfy the often competing interests of children, parents, schools, health authorities, politicians, and the food industry. Through careful studies of several key contexts and detailed analysis of the policies and politics that governed the creation of school meal programs, Ruis demonstrates how the early history of school meal program development helps us understand contemporary debates over changes to school lunch policies.

Download or read book School Lunch Program written by United States Government Accountability Office and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School Lunch Program: Efforts Needed to Improve Nutrition and Encourage Healthy Eating

Download or read book School Meal Programs written by United States Government Accountability Office and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: School Meal Programs: Changes to Federal Agencies' Procedures Could Reduce Risk of School Children Consuming Recalled Food

Download or read book Efforts to Improve School Lunch Programs Are They Paying Off written by United States Accounting Office (GAO) and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Efforts To Improve School Lunch Programs--Are They Paying Off?

Download or read book National School Lunch Program written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book School Lunch Politics written by Susan Levine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether kids love or hate the food served there, the American school lunchroom is the stage for one of the most popular yet flawed social welfare programs in our nation's history. School Lunch Politics covers this complex and fascinating part of American culture, from its origins in early twentieth-century nutrition science, through the establishment of the National School Lunch Program in 1946, to the transformation of school meals into a poverty program during the 1970s and 1980s. Susan Levine investigates the politics and culture of food; most specifically, who decides what American children should be eating, what policies develop from those decisions, and how these policies might be better implemented. Even now, the school lunch program remains problematic, a juggling act between modern beliefs about food, nutrition science, and public welfare. Levine points to the program menus' dependence on agricultural surplus commodities more than on children's nutritional needs, and she discusses the political policy barriers that have limited the number of children receiving meals and which children were served. But she also shows why the school lunch program has outlasted almost every other twentieth-century federal welfare initiative. In the midst of privatization, federal budget cuts, and suspect nutritional guidelines where even ketchup might be categorized as a vegetable, the program remains popular and feeds children who would otherwise go hungry. As politicians and the media talk about a national obesity epidemic, School Lunch Politics is a timely arrival to the food policy debates shaping American health, welfare, and equality. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Download or read book The Food Revolution written by John Robbins and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth anniversary edition of an essential text on food politics: “Well researched and lucidly written . . . This book is sure to spark discussion” (Publishers Weekly). When John Robbins first released The Food Revolution in 1987, his insights into America’s harmful eating habits gave us a powerful wake-up call. Since then, Robbins has continued to shine a spotlight on the most important issues in food politics, such as our dependence on animal products, provoking awareness and promoting change. Robbins’s arguments for a plant-based diet are compelling and backed by over twenty years of work in the field of sustainable agriculture and conscious eating. This timely new edition will enlighten those curious about plant-based diets and fortify the mindsets of the already converted.

Download or read book The Rural School Lunch written by Nellie Wing Farnsworth and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lunch Money written by Kate Adamick and published by Food Systems Solutions LLC. This book was released on 2012 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From nationally renowned school food reform expert and Cook for America(R) co-founder KATE ADAMICK comes this timely book dispelling the myth that school food reform is cost prohibitive. Touted by such food systems leaders as Marion Nestle, Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, and Jan Poppendieck, and praised by leaders in the education and school food arenas, LUNCH MONEY: SERVING HEALTHY SCHOOL FOOD IN A SICK ECONOMY provides effective money-saving and revenue-generating tools for use in any school kitchen or cafeteria. Included in this practical how-to book are examples, diagrams, charts, and worksheets that unlock the financial secrets to scratch-cooking in the school food environment and prove that a penny saved is much more than a penny earned. Through both wit and wisdom, Adamick demonstrates how school food can be transformed from a problem into a solution to the childhood obesity epidemic, which serves as a reminder that learning doesn't stop at the cafeteria door. PROCEEDS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK WILL BE DONATED TO CHILDREN'S HEALTH FOUNDATION. PRAISE FOR LUNCH MONEY "Kate Adamick is my go-to guru for tough-minded practical advice about school food. . . . This book is a must for anyone who works with school food as well as parents who care what their kids eat in school." - MARION NESTLE, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of What to Eat and Food Politics "Ever since childhood obesity put improving the quality of school food on the national agenda, the conventional wisdom has been that fresh preparation on site - 'scratch cooking' - is too expensive to consider. In this remarkable book, Kate Adamick has effectively retired that myth. . . . Every food service director and school food reformer in America should read this book." - JANET POPPENDIECK, Professor of Sociology, Hunter College (CUNY), and author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America "With her intimate knowledge of the system, Kate Adamick demonstrates that the solutions to the school lunch issue can be tackled by regular people, as long as we have the will to change." - MARK BITTMAN, New York Times columnist and author of How to Cook Everything "I love what Kate does in her brilliant work. She's a true ambassador for sustainable change that can be achieved if people really want it. She's inspirational, no-nonsense and realistic." - JAMIE OLIVER, Chef, author, and founder of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution " . . . I was pleasantly surprised by how effective the tools in Lunch Money are . . . . The lunch money lessons learned enabled our school nutrition program to move forward from 90% processed menu items to 90% scratch cooking within 2 years and, most important, we are operating at a net profit. . . . " - KATHY DELTONTO, RE-1J Nutrition Service Director, Montrose, Colorado "Lunch Money answers the daunting question of how to get healthy food within hands reach of America's public school students at an affordable price and elevates the status of the 'lunch lady' to the Lunch Teacher(TM) . . . . " - DENNIS VAN ROEKEL, President, National Education Association "Adamick proves that with a few smart choices, school food service managers don't have to choose between healthy kids and a healthy bottom line." - CURT ELLIS, Executive Director, FoodCorps, and Filmmaker, King Corn "[Adamick's] belief that school food is not the problem, but the solution, is the right step, in the right direction, at the right time. . . . - DONNA WEST, Child Nutrition Manager, Brownwood Elementary, Scottsboro, Alabama