February 17, 2010

School Breakfast and Lunch




This is what my kids at Seneca Center had for breakfast today. Homemade Orange Marmalade Buttermilk Pancakes, Saggs Chicken Apple Sausages, and fresh warm fruit.
As many of you know, I have been working with the Slow Food folks on the School Lunch Initiative and awareness about this upcoming legislation coming before Congress in March this year. I guess you could say, it has become my passion to get all of my friends, family and acquaintances to lobby Congress that we need change across the board in school food. A move to healthier, more localised food....prepared daily for our kids by people like me who care.
It boggles my mind when I think of the slop my Husband Troy's daughter is served at school in Benicia. This is one of the Bay's wealthiest suburbs....lovely waterfront homes, a historic downtown and a safe town to raise your kid in with highly acclaimed schools. But what do they have for lunch? Steamed hamburgers out of wrappers. Soggy deep fried stuff. Canned fruit and vegetables or when the fruit is fresh....it has been sitting around for a very long time.
Why? Well like many school districts around the state of California and our great country...it is because we spend less per week on our kid's school food than we do FOR A SINGLE VENTI LATTE at Peet's.
Yes.......you heard me correctly. We spend less than $5 a week per child for breakfast and lunch for our kids. No wonder today's children are stressed, unhealthy, and hard to control! They have no nutrients in their little bodies to run them and their minds efficiently!!! This is not rocket science folks! What we put in.....we get out. We are creating an unhealthy future for our children and habits that will put them in the running to die before we do (for the first time in history). 1 in 5 children in this generation will have insulin dependant diabetes by the time they are 15. If you know any one with diabetes....you know that they can lose mobility, eye sight, and in the worse cases, people with uncontrolled diabetes can lose their limbs! Did you know that people with diabetes cannot get life insurance? Did you know that people with diabetes pay higher medical premiums? Did you know that automatically, many MDs will put people who have diabetes on blood pressure and cholesterol meds too? Did you know that all this medicine and the things that go with it can cost upwards of $200 a month?
Yes.......I have first hand experience. My sweet husband Troy is diabetic. He has learned about the damage to his body all too late. I know what this horrific disease can do and it is the food that we are choosing and the food that our government is choosing to feed our children everyday that is creating this epidemic.
But it can be stopped. WE can stop it. YOU can stop it!!! Demand from Congress that our schools get just $1 a day more for each student for nutritious, healthy, local, largely organic and sustainable food. Just a dollar a day more, can change everything.
It is up to you and me. If you would like to join me in lobbying Congress for just a dollar more for our kids.....for good, clean and fair food for everyone. Please click on the link below and let your voice be heard!

2 comments:

Lisa & Alfie said...

You are an impassioned and inspiring champion for this cause M'lisa. And very informative in a concise and impactful way.
All my respect and love,
Lisa & Alfie

Heidi said...

i have been working with a new organization in san fran - the san francisco school food coalition - trying to get some better food on the kids' plates. it is amazing to me how much microscopic bureaucratic crappy politics have to do with making even little changes (they did get berkeley farms to change their formula for chocolate milk to replace hfcs with sugar, nonetheless the kids are still getting chocolate milk - ugh!). keep up the good work on your side of the bay!