Posted on 12/06/2010 11:05:58 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
First Lady Michelle Obama announced last week that a new public-private partnership, Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, would make it possible for as many as 6,000 salad bars to be installed in U.S. school cafeterias at an estimated cost of $15 million. Contrary to what hundreds of irate commenters directed to Grist from a link by the Drudge Report feared, the salad bars will not be mandatory lunchtime eating for the nation's youngsters, not taxpayer-funded. If parents like Sarah Palin want their kids to eat cookies for lunch, no one is going to stop them.
Of bigger concern has been the USDA's mixed messages about whether self-serve salad bars would be permitted in elementary schools. Backers of the Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools project said local health inspectors already were citing an Oct. 8 memo from the USDA's Child Nutrition Division as a reason for declaring self-serve salad bars a potential food safety hazard and not allowing small children around them.
The memo, signed by Cindy Long, director of the Child Nutrition Division, and circulated nationwide, described only two options for salad bars in elementary schools: salads must be pre-assembled and pre-wrapped, or they must be served by an adult working behind a barrier separating children from the food.
But after I questioned her on these points, Jean Daniel, spokesperson for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) division (which governs the National School Lunch Program), said there was a third option not listed in the memo: Elementary-school children could serve themselves salad, as long as the salad bar was designed specifically for small children with a plastic barrier (aka "sneeze guard") positioned at an appropriate height.
The FNS later issued a written statement, saying:
USDA does not prohibit self-service salad bars, and they may be used in elementary schools. USDA encourages the use of fresh fruits and vegetables in school meals. Self-service salad bars are one approach that can be successfully included in the meal service when monitored closely to ensure safety. [Emphasis mine.] Now that that's out of the way, let's look at how the salad bars might work.
Raising the bars' cash
The alliance of produce industry, school food professionals, health advocacy groups, and government agencies has come together under the First Lady's Let's Move banner to fund the effort through a combination of corporate and private donations, including creating a website where schools can direct donors from their own communities to make contributions as large or as small as the like to the individual school.
"It's still a work in progress," said Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for Boulder, Colo., schools and one of the group's organizing partners. Cooper was recently involved in a similar campaign in which Whole Foods raised $1.4 million in donations from its customers in order to donate salad bars to schools, and her Food, Family, Farming Foundation, based in Boulder, will be in charge of managing the application process for the Let's Move campaign.
The project is scheduled to begin accepting applications from individual schools on Jan. 1, 2011. "We're expecting thousands and thousands of applications," said Cooper, who estimated there are at least 80,000 schools in the U.S. without salad bars.
Cooper sees "micro-philanthropy" aided by social networking tools on the internet as the cutting edge for funding food improvements in local school districts.
The salad bars in question, made of polyvinyl and chilled with ice packs, cost $2,500 each. "If a school found 500 people to each donate $5, they could have a salad bar," Cooper said. Any school that participates in the National School Lunch Program is eligible to apply. They must show that the local schools superintendent, the school principal, and the food services director are committed to using a salad bar on a daily basis. Preference will be given to schools with large numbers of low-income students, and those that have achieved at least the bronze level in the HealthierUS Schools Challenge.
Schools will have help raising the necessary dough -- and some more than others. "The coalition is absolutely raising money to donate salad bars, and we fully expect to raise a significant amount of funds," said Cooper. "We assume that all schools will have some amount of money donated directly from the coalition, and some schools will have their salad bars fully funded."
While the White House was directly involved in organizing the alliance, it is not involved in daily operations, although Michelle Obama is expected to play a major role in promoting the campaign and encouraging schools to apply, Cooper said.
Getting Fresh
Another principal partner in the Let's Move alliance is United Fresh, a produce industry trade group, that began its own salad bar campaign two years ago backing legislation sponsored by Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) that called on the USDA to increase fruits and vegetables in school meals. Farr represents the produce-growing powerhouse Salinas Valley.
Ray Gilmer, spokesman for United Fresh, said the legislation "never got much traction," but generated some buzz around salad bars. A year ago, United Fresh began soliciting donations from its corporate members to purchase salad bars and place them in schools. "A lot of companies want to place them in the communities where they operate, a sort of ‘good neighbor' thing," Gilmer said.
Gilmer said the United Fresh campaign was low-key, conducted mostly by word of mouth and the internet. To date they've given away 60 salad bars and plan to donate an undetermined amount of cash to the Let's Move campaign. "We're going to New Orleans for a convention, and we've already placed 10 salad bars in schools there," Gilmer noted.
A third partner in the White House effort is the National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, comprising the USDA, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and such disparate groups as the American Cancer Society and the California Department of Public Health.
The CDC has emerged as a leader of the group, taking up fruits and vegetables as a key ingredient to preventing diet-related diseases such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
The salad bar effort still faces some obstacles. Some schools don't want salad bars. Montgomery County, just outside the nation's capitol, does not permit salad bars for food-safety reasons. Philadelphia schools similarly do not offer salad bars, but serve salad in the regular food line instead.
"Self-serve brings a number of management issues that we'd have to look at," said Philadelphia schools spokesman Fernando Gallard. "Basically, you'd have a salad bar in an open area where people are going to walk around it. That's something we still have to consider -- the sanitation issues."
Cooper has complained about USDA regulations that require students who use the salad bar to pass a cashier, or point-of-sale station, where a trained cafeteria worker would inspect the student's tray and confirm that the student had taken the required items in the correct portion sizes in order for the school to qualify for reimbursement. Such rules create logjams in the cafeteria, Cooper said.
Here in the District of Columbia, many food-service areas are not designed to accommodate a salad bar. Installing one would require rethinking how students pass through the meal line and where the cashier is situated.
Kate Adamick, a school food consultant and fervent salad bar advocate, said those obstacles can be overcome without too much difficulty. "I don't think there's any other way to serve produce in school," she said. Most cafeteria vegetables are cooked to death, or come out of a can, and kids either refuse them in the service line or throw them in the trash. Adamick believes children eat more vegetables when they're allowed to serve themselves from an array of fresh choices.
"When kids get to make their own decisions, they're much more likely to try things," she said.
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A reporter for the Washington Post in a previous life, I now tend my “urban farm” about a mile from the White House in the District of Columbia and teach kids something I call “food appreciation.” I believe in self-reliance, growing food close to home and political freedom for the residents of the District of Columbia. I am currently working to introduce local produce into the D.C. school system. I write a daily food blog called The Slow Cook.
This is like watching reruns of Man v Food and Diners, Drive Ins and Dives at midnight.
Big mistake. LOL
Have a good night my FRiend. Makes you wonder how we survived our youth being abused by having to eat all that food. In fact, I don't think Salad Bars even existed back in the 60’s. I'm surprised we are still breathing.
I use a 5 lb bag of sugar a year. I just don’t like sugar that much.
I see plenty of people that slog down 32 oz Dr Peppers with breakfast.
That’s their decision.
But that’s my decision.The Gov should hold no sway over family’s decisions or individual adult decisions.
You’ll not they always start with the childruns before they regulate the adults.
No. Its worse! There is nothing like the Italian Kitchen.
I know old geezers in their 80s that still hold the home made pizza night, with all the wine and fun.
Everybody will be there and having fun.
What else is there to do?
Write a bunch of dumbass laws?
“You’ll note”
Compare those to Sasquatch’s shoes....what the hell are those silver things she’s wearing?
Salad bar + kids = food fight. Can you imagine?
I agree with the carbs, simple sugars ok. All the HFCS and soy needs to go as well. It is clear, by watching salad eaters that it is not a weight loss answer.
Food fight, anyone? This shows MO doesn’t really understand how kids are “in the wild.” Besides, there are many other health reasons why that is not a good idea.
Also, where are the schools going to get the money for this? All the schools around here are hurting for funds thanks to all the government cutbacks.
Most salad bars I’ve seen have very fattening items, otherwise nobody would get them.
MO does come up with the most ridiculous ideas and they usually center around food. She was pushing for grocery stores to be built every few blocks to combat food desert areas. But it’s for the children! I live in the country. Who’s going to build two or three grocery stores between my house and town? As if a grocery would make any profit from so few customers and can you imagine the price mark ups for the customers? Then there’s her equally out of touch husband who wants to put a tax on my mileage when I can’t get in my car without it taking a 30 mile trip. They also want to crack down on home gardeners. Since I won’t be able to drive to town and I won’t be able to garden, there’s no other choice but to send my poor little hungry children on a 30 mile hike to get salad fixin’s. At least they won’t get fat on that trip. Geez, those two are clueless. MO needs to get another hobby that’s not food oriented.
I've also got a picture of a barely-moving salad bar line of giggly 8 year-olds, all playing build-a-salad with the varied little globules, slices and dices arrayed before them and little plastic scoops to pile on the pastel-colored fatty dressings and stale croutons and little reddish shoe-leather bits for garnish......
.....then most of these mountains of mush of will not be eaten and will end up along with taxpayers' dollars shoved through the swinging flaps of unmonitored trash bins.
This is another brain-seizure from administration food nazis.....and is eventually gonna come back to bite the naive, trying-so-hard-to-be-relevant, willing tool, Michelle, right in her asparagus.
Leni
You just know the “svelte” moochelle sits up nights in her bed eating mac & cheese, potato salad, pizza, ribs and cinnamon rolls until she passes out. Probably every night. I can”t wait for a tell all book from one of the staff years from now.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
People like Ms. Obama will not, cannot ever just leave people alone to live their own lives. Others must be "improved" or "enlightened" or have their consciousness "raised", if necessary: by force. It's for their own good and of course it's for... the children.
It’s really not much of a ‘decision’. If you go to an average public school, you’ll find 90%, if not more, is really bad food as an option. It’s funded by you and I, and so is the medical system; and that problem will continually be a ‘collectively charged’ premium via job pools (that or some stupid liberal ‘solution’). So young people have their ‘freedom’ to buy 90% crap in a public school and grow up to be out of shape, while we have the burden to pay for their medical premium costs.
Well this certainly is a first for me - (member since Jan. of 1999) - I have had a comment pulled by the moderator?? SO.... Michelle can tell us what to feed our children but we cannot point out that her girls eat ice cream constantly? My comment was simply that the author of this article - who made a snarky comment about Sarah Palin feeding her children cookies - needed to see a photo (that was ALSO PULLED) - that showed the Obama's woofing down ice cream. That was not the only photo.... If you care to search Yahoo photos from this summer of endless Obama vacations... they ate ice cream everywhere they went - not just one scoop either!
I did NOT say anything unkind about the Obama children, I did not discuss their looks or anything close to that - I ONLY COMMENTED on what SHE (Michelle) allows HER children to eat.... I feel it is hypocritical. If anyone can tell me how that warranted being pulled I would like to know!
I wasn’t criticizing you.
I was just trying to make clear that I was dinging Michelle for her GOVERNMENT IMPOSED hypocrisy.
My main point is that its not the governments job and that it costs us more money to administer this BS.
Wouldn’t it be simpler to pack a lunch?
I did not comment on her at all - I only pinged the poster of the original article and said they should forward that photo to them and ask why Michelle thinks she has any standing to tell American parents what to feed their children. I think its perfectly fine for children to eat ice cream, cookies, AND salad - all things in moderation....
BUT mostly - I think its our right to choose what we eat and she is a hypocrite if you look at the photos of what her family ate all summer.
I am sincerely looking for an explanation from the moderator - because after 12 years here - this must be some kind of new policy!
I posted the ice cream shots.
Did they get pulled?
The Obamas are the most Nero like gluttons I have seen in public office next to the Kennedy’s.
I Love ice cream and all that stuff but don’t try to regulate us you hypocrite aholes
Going back to check the admin moderator action on the thread now.
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