I was traveling to all day yesterday for a media appearance (more on that when I’m allowed to share), which was extremely frustrating because all I wanted to be doing was speaking with school food sources to get their reaction to USDA’s announcement about school choice and pink slime. Fortunately, though, my online colleague and [...]
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Following the lead of other bloggers and writers in the past few days, I thought I’d share my list of some people (and organizations) for whom I’m truly thankful . . . . People Who Inspire and Challenge Me to Be a Better Blogger Janet Poppendieck, author of the excellent Free for All: Fixing School [...]
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The New York Times has an excellent article today describing the stiff opposition of the food industry (along with some Congressional representatives of potato-producing states) against current attempts to improve school food nutrition standards. According to the report, over $5.6 million has been spent to date by lobbyists opposing the proposed school food rules to be [...]
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Chef Ann Cooper’s The Lunch Box organization recently shared with me a post from their blog and offered to let me repost it here. It’s written by Ryan Andrews, a registered dietitian who, according to The Lunch Box, was impressed with the daily need to consult his adult clients on healthy eating habits they should have [...]
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Last week we talked about how hard it might be for some school districts to follow the new federal mandate to provide free drinking water to students during meal times (“Getting Water Into School Cafeterias: Not As Easy As It Sounds“). If you haven’t read the comments on that post, I encourage you to do [...]
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USA Today has an op-ed this morning entitled “Want Fries With That? Not at These Schools.” In it, the newspaper is critical of those, like the School Nutrition Association (which represents school food directors), who worry that the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 is underfunded and that schools will not be able to meet [...]
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Last week I introduced to TLT readers an anonymous school food professional named “Wilma” who let me share a frank email regarding the difficulties she faces in trying improve school food. In that email, she noted that parents hold a wide range of views about what school food should look like and expect her to [...]
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I noted today that Chef Ann Cooper posted on her Facebook page a request for donations to keep her innovative school food program, the School Food Project, afloat in the Boulder Valley School District. This article from a local Boulder, CO paper discusses the newly-launched fundraising campaign, and points up the very issue we’ve been [...]
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In the last few weeks I’ve been surprised to find myself in the role of School Food Reform Naysayer, which isn’t what you’d expect from someone who serves on her district’s Food Services Parent Advisory Committee and its Student Health Advisory Council and who is a daily kid-and-food blogger. If I really thought that school food reform [...]
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Copy it. Share It. Nail it to the schoolhouse door.
An Open Letter to FDA From 29 Organizations and Experts re: Dairy Products and Non-Nutritive Sweeteners
by Bettina Elias Siegel on April 15, 2013
In late February, I alerted you to an FDA citizen petition which would allow the dairy industry to add non-nutritive sweeteners (such as aspartame) to milk and 17 other dairy products without the prominent front-label “nutrient content claims” currently required by FDA regulations — phrases like “reduced sugar” or “reduced calorie.” I explained to you in detail [...]
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