As I wrote here last week, and as I’ve been telling you for the last few months, many of the important school food reforms of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act are currently at risk of being rolled back. We fought hard for the passage of those improved school meal standards and changing course just two years after their implementation, especially when we’re already seeing progress, would be a terrible blow to our children’s long term health.
The most immediate threat is posed by legislative efforts to include language in the pending Agriculture Appropriations bill which would weaken or remove various school food requirements. That bill is likely to be voted upon in the House and Senate in a matter of days, so if you care at all about healthier school food, can you please do the following?
First, please sign this Change.org petition started by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Then take an extra second to share it on Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter hashtag for this effort is #SaveSchoolLunch and here are some sample tweets you can use to promote the petition:
Join me in telling Congress: school lunch is off limits. Don’t play politics with children’s health. http://chn.ge/1ll7k1X#SaveSchoolLunch
First Congress declared pizza a vegetable…now this: http://chn.ge/1ll7k1X#SaveSchoolLunch
Please Congress: protect children’s health. Nutrition should be the standard for school lunch, not politics. http://chn.ge/1ll7k1X
If you’re a Twitter user, please also tweet your congressional representatives and tell them you oppose efforts to weaken school meal standards. Here’s one sample tweet you can use:
Dear @ElectedOfficial (add in your senator’s or representative’s Twitter handle here), look how great school lunch can be: http://bit.ly/1sPtrCi. Don’t weaken school nutrition standards.#SaveSchoolLunch
Also, if you read this post early enough today, you can join me in listening in on a phone call with First Lady Michelle Obama and Let’s Move! Executive Director Sam Kass on protecting the gains we’ve made in school food. Just click the invitation below to register for the call.
Thank you in advance for taking steps to #SaveSchoolLunch! Of course I’ll keep you posted on the latest developments.
Do You Love The Lunch Tray? ♥♥♥ Then “like” The Lunch Tray! Join over 8,100 TLT fans by liking TLT’s Facebook page (and then adding it to your news feed or interest lists) to get your Lunch delivered, along with bonus commentary, interesting kid-and-food links, and stimulating discussion with other readers. You can also join almost 5,000 TLT followers on Twitter, see my virtual bulletin boards on Pinterest and find selected TLT posts on The Huffington Post. And be sure to check out my free video for kids about processed food, “Mr. Zee’s Apple Factory!”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2014 Bettina Elias Siegel
[…] advocates, myself included, are deeply worried about these developments and we’ve begun to ratchet up our response to SNA’s efforts on social media. And, predictably, I’m now seeing some scuffling on […]