April 4, 2013 - Over 395 schools across the country recently got a big boost in their efforts to create healthier school environments for kids, thanks to school grants awarded by Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK). The grants, averaging $2,000 each for the 2012-2013 school year, are part of AFHK’s School Grants for Healthy Kids program, which is designed to improve access to healthy foods in schools and bolster nutrition education for more than 270,000 children.

“These grants have allowed us to give schools direct assistance in the way of money and human resources so they can offer healthier food choices and adopt strong wellness practices within their building,” explains AFHK CEO Rob Bisceglie. “These are the kinds of changes that improve students’ health over the long term.”
 

And that’s precisely the goal at Bauder Elementary School in Fort Collins, Co., where 58 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Principal Brian Carpenter plans to use the school’s $5,000 grant to start a comprehensive “taste test” program in the first few months of 2013 to introduce all students in grades K-5 to new fruits and vegetables that will be added to the cafeteria’s fruit and salad bars. The goal is to get more kids to choose the good-for-you foods during lunchtime and ultimately form healthier habits.

In the meantime, the school has already started to include more fruits in its breakfast program and to make its classroom parties healthier. For Halloween, many classrooms offered healthy food options, while others held “active parties” with obstacle courses in the gym.
 

“The grant funds we have received this [school] year have been instrumental in changing the way classrooms celebrate accomplishments, holidays and celebrations,” says Jane Harvey, an instructional teacher’s aide at Bauder. “We are beginning to see students choose different fruits and vegetables they have not tried before during lunch and eating more of them.”

Bauder is one of the over 395 schools in 20 states and Washington, D.C., to receive direct support from AFHK to implement health-improving programs, including breakfast programs; providing access to healthy foods through food tasting, nutrition education lessons, and food curriculum enhancements; the creation and expansion of summer feeding programs; and the placement of healthier foods in competitive food venues, including vending machines and school fundraising events. In addition, 20 AFHK state teams received funding to support school projects in their states, which provide those schools with technical assistance and help them recruit and support local volunteers.
 

Totaling $1.5 million, the grants are part of a broader commitment made by the Walmart Foundation to support nutrition education and provide its customers with healthier and more affordable food choices, building on the success of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.

Continuing its support of AFHK, the Walmart Foundation will also provide funding for 20 Get in the Action events to be hosted nationwide in 2013. AFHK’s national service initiative, Get in the Action gives ordinary people an opportunity to get involved in their own communities, creating the kinds of healthy changes in schools that make it possible for kids to be physically active and eat nutritious food every day.

The events will take place in the spring of 2013, as part of Every Kid Healthy Week, April 22-26, an annual observance to raise awareness about the nation’s childhood obesity problem, as well as its solutions: sound nutrition, regular physical activity, and health-promoting school programs like those made possible by AFHK’s School Grants for Healthy Kids program.

If your school is interested in hosting your own Get in the Action event or receiving information about future grant opportunities through AFHK, please, contact SchoolGrants@actionforhealthykids.org or log on to our website for more details: www.ActionforHealthyKids.org. 

The New York City Mobile Vending Program deploys two food trucks to go to places where
families and children normally gather to provide free summer meals. New York City partnered
with Share Our Strength and the Walmart Foundation. 

March 11, 2013 - By Tony Craddock, Jr., Food and Nutrition Service
The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is one of the most underutilized federal programs despite the fact that it was created to feed hungry children during summer. Of the children who are eligible for SFSP (by way of receiving free or reduced-price school meals), only about 10% of those children participate in SFSP. Such perplexing statistics have signaled a call for innovative ideas for facilitating increased access to SFSP. The National League of Cities (NLC) Institute for Youth, Education and Families and the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) have answered this call by launching the second phase of Cities Combating Hunger through Afterschool Meal Program (CHAMP). This work was also made possible by a $1.5 million grants from the Walmart Foundation.

The first phase of CHAMP featured 11 out-of-school time program providers who partnered with city governments to maximize the utilization of federal funding for afterschool and summer feeding. In Omaha, Nebraska, this effort amounted to a whopping 137,000 meals served in six months.

The second phase of CHAMP begins with two regional leadership academies in late May and early June, which are each open to 10 city teams (20 city teams in total). The city teams will feature one city official and two key stakeholders who will be provided with strategies to link the afterschool and summer feeding programs to create  year-round out-of-school meals in their respective cities. At the leadership academies, national experts with experience in afterschool and summer feeding programs will share their wisdom and best practices with the city teams. And just in case you're thinking about finances, travel costs for city teams will be covered by project funds.  The request for proposals to participate in one of the leadership academies is available here.  Applications are due no later than March 25, 2013.   

Following the leadership academies, up to 15 of the 20 cities that attended will have a chance to receive between $30,000 to $60,000 for technical assistance and training to develop and improve their afterschool and summer meal programs for 12 months. Opportunities such as this show that cities are serious about ending childhood hunger, and most importantly, interested in doing it in a collaborative way where ideas are shared openly. If you are interested in being one of the cities to benefit from this idea, click here for more information. Again, applications are due no later than March 25, 2013. Help make your city a trailblazer in ending childhood hunger.  
 

Pastor Joseito Velasquez (middle) with USDA Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Service Under Secretary Concannon (left) and Dr. Danny Carroll Rodas (right) during a visit to Healing Waters Family Center in Denver, CO last year.

 

February 28, 2013 - By Tony Craddock, Jr., Food and Nutrition Service

The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is a federally funded program administered by the States that reimburses organizations that serve children meals during summer months when school is out. Unfortunately, SFSP is one of the most underutilized federal programs, with around only 10% of children who are eligible for the program receiving meals. There are hundreds of organizations throughout the country feeding hungry children through the SFSP. Healing Waters Family Center in Denver, Colorado is an example of how an organization can use the creativity and partnership-building that is allowed and encouraged in the SFSP to feed more hungry children int their communities.
 

Healing Waters Family Center is lead by Senior Pastor Joseito Velasquez. The organization's journey to becoming a SFSP sponsor began in 2010 when Pastor Velasquez attended an SFSP informational webinar. An SFSP sponsor is an organization that is approved by the state to serve summer meals to eligible hungry kids and then get reimbursed for every meal they serve.  Eighty percent of the community surrounding Healing Waters in Denver, CO lives below the federal poverty line.  With this knowledge no doubt in his mind, the SFSP webinar emboldened the Pastor's desire to feed the needy in his community. His vision was larger than simply providing meals; Pastor Velasquez also wanted to provide his community with spiritual nourishment and refer them to other county agencies that could tend to their needs.
 

Healing Waters partnered with Hunger Free Colorado, the local school district, private organizations, and the local police and fire departments to serve over 5,000 meals in their first year of operating the SFSP. The site was open every day to serve breakfast and lunch. Between the two meals, Healing Waters provided different activities for the participants, such as sports, art projects, field trips, and personal development lectures. USDA Food and Nutrition Consumer Service Under Secretary Kevin Concannon stated, "When I arrived at Healing Waters, about 35 children were taking part in a lesson about important qualities young people should have, such as kindness and faith." Healing Waters also seamlessly connected participants and their families with other agencies in the Denver area upon developing a relationship with them and learning about their needs. 

Healing Waters now has expanded its summer feeding operation by enlisting the help of smaller churches in the community.  Pastor Velasquez helped convince these smaller churches to become summer feeding sites, which would afford more children access to free summer meals.

All the great work initiated by Healing Waters Family Center began by attending an informational webinar on SFSP, just like the ones we're hosting this year in 2013 from now though the beginning of April. If you are interested, you can register to attend by clicking here.  If you are not able to attend the webinar, you can learn the same information by visiting the FNS webinars library page. Let the change in your community begin with you!
 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR OUR WEBINARS

January 2, 2013 - By Lindsay Perry, AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle

Hello from Raleigh, North Carolina, where I’m serving with the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle (IFFS). Inter-Faith Food Shuttle pioneers innovative, transformative solutions designed to end hunger in our community. I’d like to tell you about an exciting solution we’ve come up with to fight hunger in our community. The Food Shuttle is driven to respond to the crisis in hunger, obesity, and diet-related diseases.

One in 5 children in the North Carolina Triangle (a region in North Carolina anchored by the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) is hungry. The heartbreaking part is the number jumps to 1 in 4 children under the age of 5 years old. That represents over 100,000 children. Moreover, statistically speaking, the hungriest people in America are the most likely to be overweight.

In recent years the Food Shuttle has sought to offer increasingly more fresh produce to the communities we serve, with an extra push for local produce. Why local? To me, the produce tastes fresher and more flavorful, and the fresher it is the more nutritious. It’s also better for the environment. Buying locally, saves food from being transported to distribution centers, processors, and retailers, which usually means your food travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to your plate. Most importantly, local food supports the local economy.

So how do we get local food?

One of the major sources is the local farms surrounding us. For all kinds of reasons, farmers aren’t able to sell all of the food they grow. Some farms plant more than they anticipate actually selling, while others donate produce that doesn’t meet market standards, for reasons like size or appearance. Therefore, a lot of good food is left in the fields to rot. According to a Feeding America estimate, more than 6 billion pounds of fresh produce goes unharvested or unsold each year. Nothing against compost, but if food is still nutritious, it should feed people before it becomes fertilizer.
 

We have rich resources and good productivity in the region’s many farms, including the highest number of sweet potato growers in the country. Many of these farmers would prefer that their excess produce be gleaned and used to feed the hungry, and also earn them deductions on their taxes.

Gleaning, what’s that? Field Gleaning is the ancient practice of gathering excess crops after the harvest.

During 2011, IFFS has piloted a Field Gleaning program, taking 30 volunteer groups who contributed 600 volunteer hours to area farms to glean their fields. We’ve also picked up produce direct from producers and worked closely with a partner gleaning organization. During our pilot year, we have gleaned 150,400 pounds of fresh produce from local farms, including salad and cooking greens, corn, beans, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, apples, watermelons, tomatoes, squash, and, last but not least, sweet potatoes. Produce from the program has provided more than 275,000 healthy servings to our hungry neighbors.
 

Once the food comes back to the Food Shuttle it goes in one of several directions to help feed our hungry neighbors. If necessary the produce will be sorted and packaged in our warehouse by more volunteers. A large portion of the produce is sent out on deliveries to partner agencies—we distribute regularly to more than 200 partnering hunger relief agencies and programs in our seven county service area. We also host free Mobile Farmers Markets to get fresh produce directly into communities with limited access to it. We often schedule gleanings to precede Mobile Farmers Markets, so that we can supply the “markets” with local produce.

Gleaned sweet potatoes.  

Our Culinary Job Training Program, which trains people from life-challenged backgrounds to work in the culinary field, will also cook with the gleaned produce. The food the Culinary Job Training Program prepares is sent out hot or blast frozen to partner shelters and soup kitchens.

It appears that we are getting super fresh, healthful produce directly into food insecure communities, almost as if by magic. It’s kind of like we are pulling this food out of thin air. (Actually we are pulling it from the ground.) The good news is excess crops are a largely untapped resource that we can use to fill existing community needs. The Food Shuttle’s Field Gleaning program facilitates sustainability by efficiently using the outputs of one process to fulfill the gaping need of hunger in our community. How cool is that?

Field Gleaning also creates new and increased connections between farms and communities most affected by food insecurity. By creating access to diversified inputs of fresh, local produce, IFFS Field Gleaning helps disadvantaged community members to live healthier, more fulfilling lives and to break the cycles of poverty.
 

Woman shopping at the USDA's summer farmers' market in Washington, D.C.
 

November 30, 2012 - By Tony Craddock, Jr., Food and Nutrition Service
We now live in what is commonly called "The Information Age"; if you want access to information, it's readily available through numerous avenues. There is a growing movement among consumers to be more aware about the origin of their food and its contents. Farmers are delighted to meet this need, as the increased interest in local foods is economically beneficial to them. According to USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, "Local food is a rapidly growing trend in American agriculture. It offers additional market opportunities for farmers, ranchers and food business entrepreneurs while enabling consumers to develop a deeper understanding of where their food comes from and how it is produced." It is important to note that local food is not necessarily produced locally. By definition, according to the USDA Economic Research Service, local food is, “based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers’ markets or to schools." Local food sold in Virginia may be produced in Pennsylvania, but it is the direct sell from the farmer to the vendor that makes it local. Both the federal government and private businesses are responding to the needs of this movement in creative ways.
 

In 2009, USDA launched the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" (KYF2) initiative to assist in strengthening local and regional food systems. The "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" Compass is a national map with information including local food projects, farmers markets, meat processors, and food hubs. This tool was created to coordinate, share resources, and publicize USDA efforts related to these food systems. Innovations are also sprouting up where businesses are empowering their communities with access to local foods through non-traditional routes. BreadSRSL, based out of San Francisco, CA, bakes and sells whole grain, gluten-free bread. All ingredients are from local, sustainable producers. Wonder how they sell it? They sell it through a business named Good Eggs, a local food marketplace which serves as an intermediary for local food producers and consumers. While the local foods can exist, there must be an infrastructure in place to make the goods easily accessible to the public. Both the KYF2 Compass and businesses like Good Eggs fulfill that need.

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Merrigan stakes
tomatoes in the USDA People's Garden

When buying local, it is important to support small farmers, who comprise nearly 80% of the entire farming community, yet only account for 10% of the market share for local foods. Local foods are not just an investment in the health of the community, but its economy as well. Increased information equals increased power, thus consumers can influence the agricultural market by being the change that they want to see. Want local food? Go for it!

Events planned for every day of National School Meals Week in the UK
 

November 9, 2012 - By Yibo Wood, Food and Nutrition Service, Global Coordinator
This week was the National School Meals Week (NSMW) in United Kingdom (UK) sponsored by the Local Authority Caters Association (LACA). It is the biggest national healthy eating awareness week about school meals in Britain. Like the United States' National School Lunch Week, the NSMW encourages everyone to “Get Involved” in promoting healthy school lunches in primary and secondary schools. The goal is to increase school meal participation, create an interest in healthy food, and support a whole school approach to healthy lifestyle. Similar to United State's School Nutrition Association (SNA), LACA is the professional organization representing 800 school food service managers and suppliers who provide catering services to all sectors of local authorities in England, Wales, and Scotland. They serve more than 3 million school lunches a day in 22,000 schools in UK, compare to nearly 31 million meals a day in nearly 100,000 schools in the US.
 

The UK is also similar to the US when it comes to the incidence of overweight and obesity. It is a particular problem in Scotland, which has one of the highest levels of obesity in the developed world. The government of Scotland recognizes that in order to properly achieve changes in eating culture they must tackle the issue of poor eating habits in a holistic way. Their approach is to educate children about why it is important to choose a healthy and balanced diet and how that can lead them to make better choices as they move through their school years and into adult life. They embed health and well-being topics in their Curriculum for Excellence, which aims to achieve a transformation in education by providing a coherent, more flexible and enriched curriculum for grade K-12.

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and SNA have been exchanging ideas and practices with UK and LACA on our shared commitment and efforts to improve nutritional quality of school meals and promote healthy eating habits for children. You can learn more about how parents, students and school food service staff are promoting healthy eating across the pond by following their twitter @NSMW or visit http://www.iloveschoolmeals.co.uk/.
 

Chef Ann Cooper and students at one of the many salad bars she has
introduced into schools in her districts.

October 31, 2012 - By Tony Craddock, Jr.
One typically would not associate the word "renegade" with a chef, unless you consider Gordon Ramsay from the TV Show Hell's Kitchen more renegade than actor.  However, Chef Ann Cooper has earned the title of "Renegade Chef" by tirelessly championing the cause of healthy food for children. In a culture where the nutritious value of food has become an afterthought, Chef Ann's passion for creating healthier school lunches make her classification as "renegade" an accurate one.

Chef Ann has over 30 years of culinary experience and is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. She has worked as head chef at renowned restaurants, been featured throughout the press and media (including as a speaker on TED Talks- see video below), and even received an honorary doctorate from State University of New York (SUNY) Cobleskill for her work on sustainable agriculture. Chef Ann has transferred her culinary know-how into efforts that make healthy school meals a reality for all children. Her interest in school food was sparked by the authoring of her book Bitter Harvest, which explores how food can negatively impact our health. She is the perfect voice for the school food revolution as her chef skills are combined with her school cafeteria experience, having served as Food Service Director for school districts in California and New York.  She currently is the Director of Nutrition Services of the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and sometimes comes in at 4 am to start preparing school meals.
 

Chef Ann advocates for healthier school food through the Food Family Farming Foundation (F3), which she founded in 2009. The purpose of the foundation is to empower schools to serve nutritious whole food to students. F3 is focused on two projects, one of which is called Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools. Studies have shown that children increase their daily consumption of fruits and vegetables when offered multiple choices. Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools would like to award 6,000 salad bars to schools across the country within the next three years. As the name suggests, this project is an effort to support First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative. F3's other project, The Lunch Box, is a web-based portal that demonstrates how all schools can make a difference in improving school meals. This toolkit of resources features menus and recipes, instructional cooking videos, updates on nutrition news, and guides on implementing healthier practices in school lunchrooms.
 

President Harry Truman once said that, "No nation is healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers." This belief led Truman to start the National School Lunch Program in 1946. More than 75 years later, Chef Ann is from a similar school of thought and believes that, "It should be a birthright in our country that every child, every day have healthy, delicious food in school." It will take a concerted effort by everyone including students, teachers, parents, and community members to transform school meals. If everybody focuses on one thing that they can do to contribute to the cause of healthier school food, then according to Chef Ann, "being a chef working to feed children fresh, delicious, and nourishing food will no longer be considered 'renegade'."  If that happens, maybe she'll be known simply as "Just Chef Ann."
 

September 24, 2012 -- By Tony Craddock, Jr., Food and Nutrition Service
The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) has paved the way for healthy changes to school meals.  While this legislation is the first step to making nutrition a reality for more children, increased access to healthy foods does not guarantee that students will eat it.  The goal of the Cornell University-based Smarter Lunchrooms Movement is to understand how children make decisions so that healthier foods offered in schools make it into their stomachs.

Established in 2009, The Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition
Programs (also known as the B.E.N. Center) started the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement to empower school lunchrooms with evidence-based tools that improve child eating behaviors and in turn improve childhood nutrition.  The B.E.N. Center provides the research that fuels the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement’s expertise.  Much of their research is funded by the USDA Economic and Research Service.  The Center also has a Small Grants Program which helps to fund behavior-focused school nutrition research projects at other institutions such as Yale, University of Minnesota, and Brigham Young University.
 

A “smarter lunchroom” is one that encourages students to eat nutritious food through environmental cues that unconsciously impact our decision making.  Just as fast food franchises are crafty in making us crave their product without even knowing it, our school cafeterias must take the same approach to promoting healthy foods.  For example, placing a trash receptacle next to the food ordering area is a common mistake in a cafeteria, but this same error is unlikely in a McDonald’s.
 

Dr. Brian Wansick of the Smarter Lunchroom Movement talks about promoting
nutrition like a successful food eatery would.
 

The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement prides itself on offering low cost/no-cost best practices that will transform an average lunchroom into one that promotes nutrition in a unique way.  On the website, there is a Best Practices Matrix with easy-to-understand solutions for a variety of common lunchroom problems.  What’s more, the Matrix delves into greater detail, outlining why the solutions work, how to implement them, and the cost and time necessary to realize the changes.

Check out the New York Times interactive healthier lunch line.  

This groundbreaking research is also symbolic in a historical context because Cornell is a land-grand university, founded under the Morill Land Grant Act of 1862. 

Land-grant universities are uniquely charged with the mission of educating, and conducting applied research and outreach for the benefit of the state’s citizens. The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement is currently working with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to promote healthy school meal changes under the HHFKA.  In fact, several Smarter Lunchrooms techniques are now optional criteria for the HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC).  Policy makes the provisions for healthy food to be in the lunchroom, but it is behavior, the choice to eat the food, which ultimately makes it nutritious.  As they like to say in the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, “It’s not nutrition until it’s eaten.”

September 10, 2012 -- School lunches will have a whole new look this year as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) updated nutrition standards for school meals. As parents, it can be difficult to navigate what these changes mean. Join National PTA President Betsy Landers, White House Chef Sam Kass, the Kids' Safe and Healthful Foods Project, and USDA for a live discussion about the exciting new meals coming to school cafeterias!

When: Thursday, September 13, 2012 at 7PM EST
Where: Click here to tune in live right from your computer!
Speakers:
• Sam Kass, White House Chef and Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives
• Betsy Landers, National PTA President
• Jessica Donze Black, Director, Kids' Safe and Healthful Foods Project, The Pew Charitable Trusts

September 5, 2012 -- By Molly McClanahan, FNS Intern
Almost 9 million people over age 50 are at risk for food insecurity- that’s a nearly 80% increase over the past 10 years according to the AARP foundation. Food insecure older adults are more likely to suffer from diabetes, depression, and age-related limitations.

The AARP Foundation, a FNS partner, is trying to help seniors suffering from hunger by awarding grants that help combat hunger and poor nutrition among seniors through their AARP Foundation Grants Program. One of the AARP Foundation's awardees in 2012 is Collective Roots Garden Project, Inc. in East Palo Alto, CA. Collective Roots will be using their newly awarded grant from the AARP Foundation to begin a senior-focused gardening program. Collective Roots aims to change the local food system by engaging the community in programs which seek to educate and engage with sustainable programs in schools and throughout the community.
 

East Palo Alto faces many barriers to healthy eating: transportation issues, lack of supermarkets, and low income. The senior gardening program involves a 12-week course which provides information on gardening and healthy cooking as well as the creation of garden plots either in the senior’s home or in senior centers. To address some potential physical limitations, several of the garden plots are ADA accessible, and family and friends are encouraged to work with older gardeners to allow them to enjoy the many benefits of the program. Collective Roots will also lend tools and seeds.

USDA Deputy Under Secretary Dr. Janey Thornton eats lunch with Grenada Elementary School students
in Mississippi after their school was awarded the HealthierUS School Challenge Award.
 

August 29, 2012 -- TODAY, Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 1 pm EDT, Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Janey Thornton will host a live Twitter chat focusing on the new nutrition standards for school meals in order to kick off USDA’s “The School Day Just Got Healthier” back to school campaign.

Ask the Deputy Under Secretary about USDA’s school meals programs and how the USDA is trying to make the school day healthier. Under Secretary Thornton has played a key role in bringing these changes to fruition and this is a great opportunity to touch base with a national leader in school meal services. The new standards, established under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, ensure students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week; substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods and low-fat or fat-free milk; limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fat and sodium in meals.

Submit your “The School Day Just Got Healthier” related questions in advance to the @USDA Twitter account using the hashtags #AskUSDA and #SchoolFoodsRule.

Date and Time: Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 1 p.m. EDT

What: USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Janey Thornton will answer questions about the new nutrition standards for school meals.

Where: Tune in online by following the @USDA Twitter account. Use hashtags #AskUSDA and #SchoolFoodsRule to submit questions in advance and during the live Twitter chat.

USDA Virtual Office Hours, a monthly live question and answer series allows stakeholders to directly engage with USDA leadership and subject matter experts through Twitter. Sessions will be focused on a specific mission, issue or program, as aligned with the Department’s strategic goals and based on stakeholder interests.
 

Burmese refugees shopping for fresh fruits at grocery store in Salt Lake City
 

August 28, 2012 -- By Hailey Nielson, MS, CHES, Nutrition and Food Security Program Coordinator, International Rescue Committee, Salt Lake City, UT
Diabetes is the number one nutrition related illness newly arrived refugees are diagnosed with at the 30 day health screening in Salt Lake City making up 51% of all diagnosable diseases. Current diabetes management programs in the United States designed for populations with low literacy levels do not consider the unique needs of refugees; therefore shortcomings in programming still exist such as trying to teach difficult carbohydrate counting methods and leaving out cultural aspects of food that are important to refugees.  Moreover, introductions to what diabetes is and how it works is usually not interactive and not done at the appropriate literacy level.

Recognizing the aforementioned difficulties, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Salt Lake City’s Diabetes Management Pilot Program created a unique system of carbohydrate counting that eliminates the math aspect. Furthermore, IRC in Salt Lake City has piloted a diabetes management program that tries to address current gaps in diabetes education by including the following topics: What is Diabetes?; Blood Glucose; Eating with Diabetes; Carbohydrate Counting I & II; Exercise; Medication; and Taking Care of Your Body. This pilot project funded by the Utah Department of Health has received funding for another year of implementation.
 

Many newly arriving refugees to the U.S.
are from Bhutan and Burma.

The primary goal of the program was to increase self-efficacy in behaviors required for diabetes management. Outcomes of the pilot program show significant positive behavior changes in diabetes management among the Burmese and Bhutanese. Before the intervention only one person (14.3%) followed a healthy eating plan six days per week while the remaining 85.7% never followed one. In comparison, after the intervention 85.7% of participants followed their healthy eating plan seven days per week while 14.3% (1 person) did not respond. These results coupled with others indicate that an overwhelming amount of refugee participants diagnosed with diabetes lacked basic diabetes self-care knowledge. IRC in Salt Lake City’s Diabetes Management Program taught participants how to both eat healthy with diabetes and encouraged them to follow through with healthy eating.

August 24, 2012 -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture is excited to launch “The School Day Just Got Healthier." This school year, there will be great, healthy changes to school meals, and we want to make sure that parents, students, and schools are ready for those changes.  Our goal is to raise awareness about these new changes to school meals through a variety of sources including word of mouth, social media, traditional media, and direct communication with parents, school staff, children, and members of the community.

You can help us spread the word about the new school lunch standards. Here is how you can get involved:
•Learning about the changes and talking to children and parents about them.
•Using products from our toolkit to communicate with and educate various stakeholders.
•Placing “The School Day Just Got Healthier” banner/badge on your website and/or Facebook page.
•Engage Twitter followers by re-tweeting the USDA Twitter “The School Day Just Got Healthier” messaging and using the #schoolfoodsrule hashtag.
 

•Promote and share “The School Day Just Got Healthier” toolkit with your stakeholders.
•Display or link to “The School Day Just Got Healthier” Infographic.
•Repost or share “The School Day Just Got Healthier” blog posts.
•Share your organizations success stories in implementing the new school meal standards.
•Host an in-person or online event outlining and promoting the new school meal standards.
•Develop your own content based on “The School Day Just Got Healthier” platform and share it with your stakeholders.

For more information and resources that you can use to promote the 2012 Back-To-School initiative, visit “The School Day Just Got Healthier” website at www.fns.usda.gov/healthierschoolday.

You can also watch the 1 hour webcast at http://youtu.be/us1ZEDcaIdg

A Karen gardener harvesting her crops in the "City Garden." The garden was established in partnership with the City of Des Moines' Parks and Recreation Department and is located in a city park.  The Karen are a group of people that make up 7% of the Burmese population.     
 

July 31, 2012 -- By Catherine Benvie, Food and Nutrition Service

Lutheran Services in Iowa (LSI) is one of the largest human services agencies in the state and for decades has been providing critical support services to the immigrant and refugee population. Some of the refugee populations that they have worked with include people from Burundi, Sudan, Burma, and Bhutan. Recently, LSI embarked on an exciting new project by creating a community garden as a response to refugees and immigrants who have farming skills and who wish to grow food as a source of income or food for their families. Area churches and other community organizations have joined the effort by donating land, time, and volunteers, as well as lending business and farming expertise to the efforts.

The community gardens not only provide economic and nutritional benefits, but also help  foster a healthy and active community within the immigrant and refugee populations and between the refugees and the locals.  The LSI is currently running 10 community gardens in various Des Moines neighborhoods with around 400 families participating. Beginning with growing seeds indoors, participating families go on to produce a wealth of produce including corn, potatoes, melons, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, and mustard leaf. With the support of the community, LSI hopes to expand these community gardens and empower more families to take part in this innovative project.  To learn more about this project, click here. 

Bhutanese gardeners harvesting mustard greens in a
city garden in Des Moines, Iowa

First Lady Michelle Obama leads by example
and keeps active and moving.

July 25, 2012 -- By Tony Craddock, Jr., Food and Nutrition Service
The Let’s Move! initiative, headed by First Lady Michelle Obama, has reached another milestone in its quest to raise a healthier generation of American children. On July 16, 2012, it was announced that 3,717 schools are now certified in the HealthierUS School Challenge, a voluntary initiative to improve childhood health by providing more nutritious foods and promoting physical exercise in US schools. This feat is impressive given that the USDA surpassed its June 2012 certification goal of 2,250 schools by over 65%. The certification goal for June 2013 (3,250 schools) has also been achieved, a clear sign that the USDA and Let’s Move! are steamrolling down the pathway to helping our children live healthier lives.


 

The HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC) began in 2004 as a voluntary certification initiative to recognize National School Lunch Program-participating schools for making strides towards improving food nutrition and levels of physical activity. When Let’s Move! was launched in February 2010, First Lady Obama adopted The HealthierUS School Challenge as a part of the campaign to help achieve its goal. Since then, the certification is now linked to monetary incentive awards (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Gold Award of Distinction), ranging from $500 - $2,000.

School employees and students are excited about winning HUSSC awards.
“We enjoyed the HealthierUS Schools Challenge and would encourage any other school to participate because it brought awareness and helped us to focus on healthier alternatives. Sometimes we get stuck in a rut and this challenges you to try new things”
– Jackie Pierce, Food Service Manager, Sublette Elementary, Sublette, KS, Silver Award Recipient

“We really enjoyed the awards ceremony. USDA representatives from the state and region came, there were activities for the kids, and we enjoyed having lunch together. We appreciated the recognition.”
- Lynne Duda, Nutrition Services Director, Willamina Elementary School, Willamina, OR, Silver Award Recipient.

Personally, when I was in elementary school, I remember the pride my friends and I felt when we were recognized for a nationally-administered award, such as the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. We stared at the award in awe as we looked at President Clinton’s signature, knowing that our achievement must have been important if the President was congratulating us for it. I can only imagine the exhilaration current students feel when USDA dignitaries make personal visits to recognize their achievements. That is what HUSSC and Let’s Move! is about; daring to set the bar high, and rewarding students and schools in meaningful ways when they meet the standards. Hopefully moments like those recounted by Lynne Duda will remain imprinted in the children’s minds and inspire them to keep having fun and keep being healthy.
 

Visit www.teamnutrition.usda.gov/HealthierUS for more information
 

Join USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and other women around the
country integral to promoting Local Foods for a discussion on July 17 at 3 p.m.
 

July 16, 2011 -- The term "local foods" is very versatile and powerful.  It represents more than the geographic proximity of where your food was produced to where you consume it.  Local foods represents a way for communities to revitalize their economies by supporting agripreneurs, whose businesses will then go on to create more fulfilling and good paying jobs.  Local foods is a way to keep money in a community and to create closer and more mutually beneficial relationships between producer and consumer.  Local foods is about improving health and being good stewards of the environment.  Most importantly, when all is said and done, local foods represents discovering good tasting food that comes right from your community. 

On July 17, 2012, USDA Deputy Secretary and six other women from around the country will be talking about local foods and their ideas and involvement with it.  Here are the details:

• When: Join us at 3 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

• Where: Watch on WhiteHouse.gov/live, or on the White House Google+ page

• Engage: Ask questions and join the discussion on the White House Google+ Page, on Twitter using the hashtag #WHHangout, or here. Questions can be submitted ahead of time and during the event.

Below are some of the women that are going to be involved in the discussion:

Cory Carman of Carman Ranch in Oregon, a fourth-generation farmer who works closely with local processors and distributors to sell her beef directly to customers and to local universities, colleges, and restaurants;

Chris Kirby, who coordinates a Farm to School program on behalf of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture and connects local producers with hundreds of local schools across the state;

Susan Noble, Executive Director of the Vernon Economic Development Association (VEDA) in Wisconsin, who spearheaded revitalizing an abandoned factory into a successful food businesses incubator;

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore, MD, who created the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, an inter-governmental collaboration aiming to increase access to healthy affordable food across the city;

Pamela Roy, Executive Director of Farm to Table in Albuquerque, NM and  Director of the New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council, which advocates the connection between local food systems, health, nutrition, hunger and stewardship;

Valerie Segrest of the Muckelshoot Indian Tribe near Seattle, WA, who  works as the Community Nutritionist and Native Foods Educator for the Northwest Indian College's Cooperative Extension Department and sees local and traditional foods as a way to preserve her heritage.

EBT tokens used at Baltimore Farmers' Markets
 

July 11, 2012 -- By Kate Ronan, Americorps VISTA - Maryland Hunger Solutions
The second year of Maryland Hunger Solutions’ (MDHS) Baltimore EBT Farmers’ Market pilot project has closed with over $37,000 in fresh, local food purchased by low-income Marylanders through EBT and Baltimore Bucks incentives. Overall, more than $77,000 went to local vendors through the EBT/debit/credit machine and Baltimore Bucks. Seven markets participated in the project this year, an increase from three in 2010.
 

The three markets that were in their second year of accepting EBT in partnership with MDHS - Waverly/32nd Street, Highlandtown, and Park Heights- all showed growth in the number of EBT transactions and amount of EBT sales. In 2010, these three markets had 763 EBT transactions; in 2011 they had 1,564 EBT transactions. The project attracted national attention too. USDA Undersecretary Kevin Concannon visited Waverly/32nd Street Farmers Market in September.

USDA Undersecretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon visiting a Farmers' Market

Innovative practices were implemented to attract customers to market. MDHS collaborated with the Department of Human Resources, drawing almost 90 new customers to the markets in one week as a result of a flyer distributed to Baltimore City Food Supplement Program (FSP, known as SNAP nationally and formerly the Food Stamp Program) participants in October. The flyer advertised the program and highlighted an increase in the Baltimore Bucks matching incentives from five to ten dollars. Markets worked within their communities to overcome barriers and attract customers including busing seniors to the market and partnering with community health initiatives which also offered incentive coupons.