The Springfield City Council has voted to authorize seven million dollars to help support a growing meals program for the state's second largest public school system. The money will help purchase and renovate a warehouse dedicated to help save taxpayers money and provide healthier school meals for the city's 30,000 impoverished kids, by housing all food-related operations for the district into one place. The school's department of finance chief Patrick Roach explained that the warehouse will help save the program over half a million dollars a year, and help create a culinary and nutrition center that will allow for more scratch cooking and less processed foods. The warehouse will also allow high school students learning opportunities and provide 40 additional full-time jobs to ...
New cooking classes at Weymouth Middle School are helping kids think twice about how to make a pizza crust and how to eat at home with new ingredients in their recipes. John Mullaney, the health class teacher said this idea came up after brainstorming ideas, and he discussed the idea of creating new healthier recipes with the school district's dietitian, Kelsey Massis of Chartwells Food Service. He wanted to help kids come up with new ingredients that use less sugar and less flour with his student's recipes while cooking in class. Mullaney hoped that kids would be creative, and they were. Students like Brook Pelley used skim milk and low-fat cheese in her macaroni and cheese, and Brook Ferbert who used a salsa that had a variety of fresh vegetables. Other students used ...
Healthy cooking challenges are not just popular on TV. Now schools in Fairfax Count, Va. are cooking up healthier meals in the Real Food For Kids (RFFK)'s Culinary Challenge and Wellness Expo to change school menus, offering kids the chance to cook up something different, healthy and tasty. To help change school menus to offer more healthy and tasty foods, the challenges gives kids the chance to cook up something different, healthy and tasty and help sprout new ideas into the school menu, all while staying in school budget limits. Twelve Fairfax County Schools competed for awards in three categories, including Smart snacks, Grab 'N Go, and Makeover Lunch Challenge. The challenge was to make a meal that would work within the schools nutrition, portion and cost standards. ...
A study from Preventing Chronic Disease showed that after district-wide policies were implemented across Boston schools, students had less access to sugar-sweetened beverages. The data showed that after a ban of sugary drinks in 2004, 89.6% of all schools studied met beverage nutrition standards, with elementary schools showing the most compliance at 93.6 percent. Through the study, researchers also found that when these nutrition standards were met at 85.5 percent of schools studied, only four percent of students had little to no access to competitive beverages or sugary beverages at school. Rebecca S. Mozaffarian, MS, MPH of the department of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health explained in a recent article that these findings from the ...
One of four U.S. kids already is overweight or obese by ages 2-5, making it critical find ways to help kids achieve a healthy weight early on. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is one taking steps to meet this goal by providing nutritious meals and snacks to more than 4 million children in child care centers, family care homes, and after-school programs. On March 15, 2016, use #SaludTues to tweet with us about the importance of healthy foods and drinks for children in celebration of CACFP Week, March 13-19: WHAT: #SaludTues Tweetchat: How Kids Can Eat Healthy in Child Care and Afterschool Settings
TIME/DATE: 1-2 p.m. ET (Noon-1 p.m. CT), Tuesday, March 15, 2016
WHERE: On Twitter with hashtag #SaludTues
HOST: @SaludAmerica
CO-HOSTS: The Association for ...
Linda Joseph, a special needs teacher in Florida, with some of the highest drowning rates in the country, wanted to make sure her students could swim and weren’t afraid of the water. As someone who values whole-child health, Joseph knows that water safety boosts confidence and opens doors to many water-based physical activities and associated brain and body benefits. She went to a nearby pool for information and learned about and enrolled her students in free water safety education lessons through SWIM Central.
Fear of Drowning is High in Florida Linda Joseph, a special needs teacher at Lauderdale Lakes Middle School, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (13.7% Latino), lost both of her parents to a drowning accident when she was 16. She became fearful of water and didn’t learn ...
What does a healthy school look like? Most people would agree that a healthy school would include learning well, eating well, and having time for breaks that include physical activity. Unfortunately, many kids are losing out on recess to increase activity in schools. Studies suggest that children are less likely to meet the recommendations for daily physical activity and are more likely to engage in sedentary behaviors. So how can we ensure all kids, including Latinos, eat and play well for a healthier life? Schools are where kids spend most of their time and consume half of their daily calories. Follow #SaludTues to tweet with us on Jan. 19, 2016, as we unveil the results of a new study that explores the impacts of unhealthy foods and unhealthy school environments that ...
Schools often have physical activity facilities, but many are not open to the public. Shared use agreements—contracts between a school and a city, county, or sports league that outlines rules for sharing existing facilities—can help neighborhoods have more access to active spaces and help kids stay active and healthy, according to our new infographic on shared use agreements. The infographic is part of Salud America!’s Active Spaces and Kids research package, which tackles the latest issues on the physical activity environment and offers recommendations. Share this infographic today! Salud America! is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded national childhood obesity prevention and communication ...
Chef Ann Cooper founder of the Chef Ann Foundation (CAF) has created an online resource called The Lunch Box, to help support schools who want to change their school food situation. In a recent interview Emily Miller, from CAF told Food Tank that they want to help create healthier food for kids in today's world, where kids can learn the importance of nourishing their bodies and where their food comes from. Miller explains that the best way to teach kids about healthier foods is through school, where kids are already in a learning environment. The Lunch Box resource is an in-depth school food resource, where school food professionals can use free tools to help move from processed foods to scratch-made plates that are sustainable. Including over 200 recipes that are kid-tested, ...
