Let's Move - One Year Later

Check out this video from the First Lady. We think her work with the Let's Move Campaign is good for everyone in the country, no matter your age, socio-economic status or political orientation.

A Student's Letter to the Editor

We loved this student's letter to the editor of her local newspaper. She talks frankly about school lunch and why she makes the choices she makes. We think she makes all the right points, and it's a great example of what is wrong with most schools' attitude toward offering healthy lunch.

"Why are healthy foods so much more expensive than junk food in my school and community?

Buying lunch at school can get really expensive. Schools tell us to exercise and eat healthy food, but they make it so hard. A fruit cup cost $3 but a piece of pizza only cost $2. So, when I go to buy my lunch, I can usually only afford one. I’m going to buy the pizza because it is more filling than a fruit cup and I won’t be hungry for the rest of the day. A salad or a sandwich can cost anywhere from $4 to $5 but, again, pizza only costs $2. If I buy my lunch, my mom usually gives me $4, so the healthy stuff is out of my price range.

Schools should change their prices if the average student can’t afford healthy food.

Another place where healthy food is too expensive is grocery stores. Fruits and vegetables are much more expensive than chips or soda.

Research done at the University of Washington shows junk food is less expensive than healthy food and the prices of these foods are less likely to go up.

Families with lower incomes can’t afford to buy expensive foods every time they buy groceries. Their children learn bad eating habits that will stick with them through adulthood.

Expensive food prices are the reason that the highest rates of obesity are seen among lower income groups. Prices of healthy foods need to change."

Carly McShane - Pantagraph.com

Michelle Obama's Wal-Mart Endorsement

The first lady's gotten a lot of flack recently about her Let's Move campaign in general and specifically about her decision in January to partner with Wal-Mart to offer healthier and more affordable pre-packaged foods.

Wal-Mart is a giant corporation, and of course there is some risk that this partnership will undermine other issues, like fair market values and fair labor practices. This might be a controversial position to take, but we at Organic Fresh Fingers support the First Lady's actions. We agree that until major companies like Wal-Mart start committing to change, healthy options won't reach the general public.

Change like that won't come if companies don't profit from making their food healthier and more affordable. A huge market player like Wal-Mart could be just want this movement needs. If Wal-Mart demands that their suppliers make their products healthier while still keeping costs down, chances are that will have a ripple effect on grocery store chains across the country. For example, when Wal-Mart demanded that containers for large products like laundry detergent be shaped more efficiently for shipping and shelf-storage, pretty soon all grocery stores started carrying those same sized products. Like it or not, the choices Wal-Mart makes affect us all.

That's why we think it's so great that Wal-Mart is making this change. We can't continue to fight with industry leaders - we need to find a way to work with them. An article on The Indypendent's website points this out in terms we can all understand:

“Hating the food industry is not an option,” says Shiriki Kumanyika, a public health advocate and scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the African American Collaborative Obesity Network. “The question is, how do you work with the food industry so that they can make a profit, but still sell us food that is more likely to promote health and less likely to promote obesity?”

The “huge victory” Obama championed in the Wal-Mart announcement is creating viable choices for informed consumers. She and others have argued that communities can only win if there is cost parity between healthy food and the high-calorie snacks that contribute to obesity. “If you have a dollar menu item and a healthier salad that costs three times as much, it’s not a choice for people living on a limited income,” says Antronette K. Yancey, co-director of the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity.

Yancey also emphasizes that it’s not just families who have to make these choices—budget-strapped schools and city-run summer camps also must make cost-effective food purchases for children. Getting the food industry to self-regulate sugar and sodium has long-term benefits; getting a company as large as Wal-Mart on board might just trigger other manufacturers to follow suit, which leads to a marketplace with more healthier options, at a fair price to consumers. Even though consumers are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make, giving them the ability to make those decisions without economic repercussions makes good ones more likely. - "Is Michelle Obama's Wal-Mart Endorsement a Healthy Idea?" - The Indypendent.

So even though we don't agree with all of Wal-Mart's decisions, we can still get on board and support Mrs. Obama in her partnership with Wal-Mart. We need more companies who are at least willing to begin making changes toward healthier, affordable options.

Excuses, excuses...

If you've been following the news about school lunch at all, you probably know by now that USDA has changed school lunch nutrition requirements. We at Organic Fresh Fingers are excited about these changes, as they are a step in the right direction to serving children healthier food. Organic Fresh Fingers is already following most of these new requirements as part of our guiding principles.

But, as expected, a lot of school lunch coordinators across the country are sounding off about how difficult these changes will be to implement and whether are not children will like the food. Here's just one example of the types of comments and excuses being made:

"The USDA wants to reduce sodium content of lunches to a scant quarter teaspoon per day, or around 640 milligrams, depending on the child's grade level. The average school lunch currently has about 1,400 milligrams of sodium in it, according to USDA.

In other words, just the ham in a sandwich would be above the proposed limit.

"I can give them a bread sandwich!" said Dickl, joking. "A bread sandwich, milk and some vegetables, with that level of sodium."

Most lunch lines in the region have already done away with salt shakers and packets, administrators say, but there's still hidden salt in most foods.

"How do you do all that and have the kids eat?" asked Karen Helton, food service coordinator for Blount County Schools. "How do you make a teaspoon of salt go all week?"

Eventually manufacturers will come out with more low-sodium foods, USDA says. Whether they'll taste good is another issue, administrators counter.

"In high school, their palates are already developed," said Margaret Burrell, school nutrition program director for Anderson County Schools.

"If you cut the sodium too much, and you stop frying anything, then you get into the fact that they'll just stop eating with you, period." - Knoxnews.com

Organic Fresh Fingers knows from experience that it is possible to make healthy and delicious foods that kids enjoy eating. You won't find any complaints from us about how it is hard to serve healthy food. We know that it's not difficult - it just takes a commitment to quality and health that most school food providers don't have.

Jamie Oliver Needs Our Help

For those of you following the school lunch revolution, you might have heard that the Food Revolution television show and Jamie Oliver were recently kicked out of the Los Angeles Unified School District. We certainly applaud Jamie's efforts and passion to shine a spotlight on the state of school lunches in this country, but we have to admit that he's sadly uninformed about the USDA National School Lunch Program, and the requirements that have to be met for reimbursement.

One example of this is when Jamie tried to remove chocolate milk from the cafeteria. The lunch ladies insisted that they had to have the chocolate milk to get reimbursed. If Jamie had only known that instead of offering plain milk and chocolate milk he could have offered whole milk and 1% milk, the reimbursement problem would have been solved, and he would have avoided serving the chocolate milk.

That's why we think Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution show need the help of Organic Fresh Fingers. In the past four years, we've hurdled every reimbursement requirement of the USDA National School Lunch Program while still serving healthy, local, fresh and organic lunches to kids. Our schools don't serve chocolate milk because we know what the requirements are. We learned pretty quick that in order to get into the school lunch arena, you've got to know the rules of the game.

So Jamie, give us a call. We'd be happy to offer our knowledge and real-life experience in the fight to give children healthier food in schools!

The Problem with "Healthier" School Lunches

We all know that school lunch needs to change. With the recent legislation of the new Child Nutrition Act in December, schools are required to change their school lunch offerings to a traditional food based approach. Currently, most are using the "enhanced nutrient based approach," which essentially means that vitamins, minerals and nutrients can be added to the food after processing. The traditional food based approach doesn't allow for adding nutrients back in - it has to come from directly from the natural food.

This new approach creates quite a problem as schools struggle to adjust to the new requirements they are expected to meet at the beginning of the next school year. Many providers of school lunch are simply unable, currently, to meet these requirements. This has led to schools trying to serve "healthier" school lunches which taste and look worse than the processed junk food that is currently being served.

For example, take a look at the description of a Chicago school district's new lunch offerings:

"Complaints arise with the reformulated items, including new pizza products with grainier cardboardy crusts. The same goes for overly tangy and tomatoey red beans with whole wheat pasta; chalky whole wheat macaroni salad; a mixture of beans, cheese and tomato called "enchiladas"; nearly flavorless rice and beans; brown-tinged, formaldehyde scented iceberg salad in a cup; a stiff flour tortilla wrapped around fish sticks named a "fish taco"; canned pears that taste like wet toilet paper and, worst of all, waterlogged and unsalted boiled vegetables.

We all know that kids often reject food just to be difficult, but I'm an adult with a high appreciation for whole grains (even whole wheat pasta), vegetables, beans and salad. If I were served the CPS versions of these foods in a restaurant, I would send them back immediately. At the very least, I would sprinkle the vegetables with a few crystals of salt, but students are not allowed salt and cooks are never allowed to use it on meals made in CPS kitchens. If these were my first tastes of broccoli, zucchini and carrots, I might never want to try them again.

Most students love the fresh fruit --even though one table reported that their apple skins taste like hand sanitizer--which makes it even sadder that each day thousands of students are forced to throw away their whole unbitten fruit if they don't finish it during the 14 minutes of average eating time." - Chicago Tribune, Healthier school lunches make kids, and one adult, cringe.

If only we could get the message out about what Organic Fresh Fingers can offer to these struggling school districts! Not all healthy food has to taste bad. In fact, we currently have 25 entrees in our current rotation that kids love. It's our philosophy that during the most important formative years of a child's life, they should have access to quality, delicious and nutritious food - even at school. It's our mission to make that happen - one school at a time!

Healthier School Lunch: Priceless!

No matter the cost of providing healthier school lunch, the cost of not doing so far exceeds that in consequences to our children and our society as a whole. Check out onetray.org to learn more!

Also, take a look at the post below to learn more about the childhood obesity epidemic in our country.