The "School Lunch Debate"

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“The School Lunch Debate” has been all over the news since a House subcommittee approved a measure allowing school districts with proven economic hardship to temporarily opt out of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act nutrition standards passed in 2010. The new measure would allow schools to sidestep new standards for lower-sodium and 100% whole grains in meals. GOP leaders and the School Nutrition Association, which represents school food service directors and food suppliers, claim that the new requirements are unattainable.  They are saying that kids aren’t interested in the healthy options; therefore the schools are losing large amounts of money due to waste. There is also concern about effectively reducing the amounts of sodium and other preservatives. 

According to NPR, about a month ago, the USDA decided to relax its guidelines on whole grains by “offering a two-year extension for schools that can 'demonstrate significant challenges in serving whole-grain rich pastas' to continue serving 'traditional enriched pasta products' for up to two more years as the food industry develops better whole-grain pasta products for schools".

Supporters of upholding the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act nutrition standards include the First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the National Education Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Heart Association.

Education paired with healthy options could be the answer to healthier students and less food waste. Kids are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables that they’re familiar with, and toss out those that they don’t know. Research has shown that kids need to be exposed to a new food 10-15 times, before they are likely to try and acquire a taste for it. More than 40,000 schools across the U.S. are currently engaging in farm-to-school activities. Students who are introduced to new foods in the classroom or school garden are more inclined to try them in the cafeteria. Education is a powerful and effective preventative measure to combat diet-related disease.

Paying extra for more nutritious foods in our schools costs much less than the $14 billion per year spent on treating conditions such as type-2 diabetes and hypertension in children. One in three children in the U.S. is currently overweight or obese, and one in three children will eventually develop diabetes if current trends continue.  The answer shouldn’t be taking away these standards for nutrition, but instead figuring out ways to help schools achieve them more easily, and with less waste. 

Harvest of the Month

Photo by Hither and Thither

Eating seasonal produce grown close to home is an important contribution that anyone can make to a healthy local food system. As an added bonus, seasonal produce is fresher, tastes better, and is often cheaper than its out-of-season counterparts.  However, feeling comfortable identifying, purchasing, and preparing produce that’s in season is not a reality for many people.

Education is a key piece to building a healthy and conscious community. Nutrition education can be incorporated into any subject matter. There’s no doubt that it is beneficial to expose children to various fruits and vegetables and healthy lifestyle choices at an early age. According to Champions for Change, research has shown that eating a colorful variety of fruits and vegetables and getting at least 60 minutes of physical activity daily helps children to maintain a healthy weight and lower risk for serious health problems.

Harvest of the Month aims to increase access, preference and consumption of local and seasonal produce. The primary audience is students of any age, but there are also components included for use with families and communities. The program was originally created by several local school districts in California as part of a broader nutrition education program targeting low-income students, but was launched as a statewide effort in 2005 by the California Department of Public Health.  Harvest of the Month features resources that can be used in a wide variety of settings including schools, daycares and farmers markets, to name a few. These materials include tasting recipes, history, nutrition information, family and community newsletters (in Spanish and English), and activities relating to the featured produce.

Harvest of the Month currently reaches 2,900 students in Del Norte schools each month. The program in Del Norte is supported by the Community Alliance for Family Farmers (CAFF) and sources produce from local growers whenever possible. This creates and builds upon partnerships between growers and the greater community, while creating long-term sustainability. Since the implementation of the program, an increase in consumption of fruits and vegetables over the course of one school year has been recorded by surveying 4^th, 5^th, and 9^th grade students.

The Harvest of the Month Program was funded in the past by the Network for a Healthy California. However, they have shifted their focus away from schools and these funds are no longer available to support this program. The Community Food Council for DNATL, along with CAFF and the Del Norte County School District, has been committed to ongoing efforts to keep Harvest of the Month in our schools. These efforts have included creating community partnerships, fundraising, exploring alternative funding sources, and spreading the Harvest of the Month message to the whole community.

In addition, the Food Council is working in partnership with SNAP-Ed at the Department of Health and Human Services to implement new Harvest of the Month Programs and expand those that already exist in Home Daycares, Preschools and Head Starts in DNATL. We have created a resource guide for the Harvest of the Month Program that can be used by 0 to 5 providers. The guide includes tasting recipes, educator guides with produce information, physical activity for the classroom, and poems about enjoying seasonal produce. The Food Council recently attended the Child Care Council’s Annual Home Daycare Providers Conference and gave fifty-eight copies of our resource guide to the Home Daycare Providers in DNATL. We are also providing all of the preschool and head start providers with resource guides for the upcoming school year.  One of the goals of the Food Council in the coming year is to support 0 to 5 providers in effectively using these resource guides and being able to more easily incorporate the Harvest of the Month Program into their already packed curriculums.  

The Community Food Council is working to build a vibrant and sustainable food system in DNATL in various ways. Through promoting the Harvest of the Month program, we are aiming to have a positive influence on students and their families. The larger goal is to ensure that they will be surrounded by healthy choices and possess the knowledge and skills to support a nutritious and active lifestyle for years to come. 

DIY Food Workshops: Bringing food education to Crescent City

Recently at the Youth and Family Fair, representatives of the Community Food Council conducted a survey where participants identified the biggest struggles they face when trying to put a healthy meal on the table. Overwhelmingly, the results showed that time, money, and skills/knowledge were the most significant barriers to eating healthy. This was just a recent survey, but it confirmed something that we've suspected to be true for a long time: one of the biggest problems people face is simply not knowing what healthy food is, or how to cook it.

As a council, we have often discussed the issue of the lack of knowledge around healthy eating. It seems like it always came up in every discussion we had about how to properly address this issue and how to help: there needs to be a consistent and comprehensive method of teaching basic skills for all aspects of food. With the help of excellent volunteers, like Paul and Julie Jo of Ocean Air Farms, we had been able to hold a few educational workshops on growing your own food. When Food Day 2013 rolled around, proclaiming "education" as the theme for the holiday's festivities, we decided to put a strong focus on food education, from growing your own, to cooking, preserving, and even foraging. on Food Day 2013, we had our first big outing of "DIY Food Workshops." That day we had a whole day devoted to DIY workshops, including mushroom foraging, fermentation, basic kitchen skills, gardening skills, raising chickens, other food foraging, and canning. Our day of DIY was a great success, so the Food Council decided to make these DIY Food Workshops an on-going event.

Starting in January of 2014, the Community Food Council kicked off its series of DIY Food Workshops with a two-part workshop on consecutive weekends; the subject was home canning, including water bath canning and pressure canning. We were lucky enough to have a representative from the UC Cooperative Extension, Deb Giraud, come down to lead this workshop. Our impressive turn out of 30+ people learned the in's and out's of two different types of canning, got hands-on by canning their own veggies and beans, and were able to take home some basic canning supplies. After coming together for this workshop, a small contingent of the attendees followed it up by attending the Master Food Preserver's courses in Humboldt County.

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Since our first DIY class, we've since held two more, in March and May. Paul Madeira teamed up with Andrea Souther of the National Resource Conservation Service in March to lead the workshop on Spring Gardening. Paul shared insight with attendees based on his extensive experience with local farming, while Andrea brought equipment to test attendees' soil samples for pH and taught about soil conservation methods. We continued with the theme of gardening into our May workshop, where Annie McAleenan of Annie Mac's Family Produce taught about all the exciting potential of Container Gardening. Again, attendees got to get hands on, planting a straw bale, numerous hanging bucket planters, a pallet, and a multitude of other containers that Annie Mac uses for her own home farm.

The Community Food Council will continue these DIY Food Workshops every other month into the future. We have yet to determine the subject and speaker for our July workshop, so stay tuned to this blog, our Facebook page, and look for flyers around town! As we continue the workshops every other month, expect these topics to come up:

• Fermentation
• Cheese making
• Mushroom foraging
• Native plant foraging
• Orchard care
• Permaculture/sustainable design
• and a multitude of cooking subjects

We hope you get the chance to attend one of our workshops in the future. All workshops are free of charge, open to anybody, and will always have raffle prizes to give away! If you have specific topics you'd like to see us feature in a workshop, please feel encouraged to write us at foodcouncildnatl@gmail.com or on our Facebook page: "Community Food Council for Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands."