Child Nutrition Act

On March 17, Senator Blanche Lincoln unveiled her version of the Child Nutrition Act and scheduled the Senate Agriculture Committee to begin considering the bill on Wednesday, March 24.

Senator Lincoln’s draft increases funding for the child nutrition programs by $500 million per year, and strengthens nutrition standards and adds some support for Farm to School programs.  She calls it a “record investment in child nutrition programs.”   This is correct but only because Congress has consistently under-funded school meals in every Child Nutrition Act until now.  While it is encouraging to see that new funding, Lincoln’s draft has merely half of the $1 billion proposed by President Obama.  This is not enough to provide healthy school lunches during this time when nearly 1 in 3 children is obese or overweight.

We urgently need a Child Nutrition Act capable of:

• Helping schools serve healthier food by making the full investment of $1 billion per year for child nutrition programs.
• Including $50 million for Farm to School programs, which link schools to local farms and support local economies.

Email Slow Food USA staff member Gordon Jenkins if you have questions or have some time to volunteer to act quickly on this issue. When you’re done with the email, reach out to friends and colleagues – especially parents, teachers and school meal providers – and ask them to get involved, too.

You can learn more about Slow Food USA’s campaign to help schools serve healthier food at www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

San Benito Bounty is in the process of creating a local Convivia (which is what Slow Food calls a chapter).  We’ll keep you informed as to how to join to celebrate local food!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 at 5:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.