Reuters, Adam Marcus, November 23, 2010
Teens who live in households where food is scarce suffer academically, but a new study has found that government programs to provide meals in schools can reverse this effect.
According to the researchers, the findings suggest that school programs aimed at reducing so-called food insecurity can break an insidious cycle of poverty: poor children go hungry, get bad grades, don’t go on to college and fail to rise out of their socioeconomic status — raising children whose lives follow the same unfortunate narrative.
“Food insecurity is more …

The New York Times, Lesley Alderman, November 5, 2010
THE lunch menu at my son’s elementary school — Public School 29 in Brooklyn — looked very tempting recently: vegetarian chili, sofrito brown rice, confetti corn salad, pico de gallo, salad bar, milk. Making the menu even more appealing was the price: $1.50.
When a school lunch is nutritious and tasty, it’s one of the best health bargains around. Lunches provided through the National School Lunch Program, which is subsidized by the federal government, cost parents about $1.25 to $2, typically less …

The Boston Globe,  Syney Lupkin, July 31, 2010
Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill yesterday that will change the way Massachusetts public school students eat, by banning the use of fryolators and requiring the sale of fresh fruits and non-fried vegetables wherever food is sold.

The bill aims to curb childhood obesity by calling on the state Department of Public Health to establish statewide school nutrition standards for foods sold in vending machines and at other locations on school property. It also requires several state agencies to establish guidelines for training …

Washington Post, Jane Black, June 9, 2010
With the spotlight on childhood obesity, schools across the country are looking for ways to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. In New York, the Department of Health decided to do some research. How much, it wondered, would a school need to cut its prices for apples, oranges and bananas to increase sales by 5 percent over a year?
Brian Wansink was called in to play detective. But the director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab soon discovered he had been hired to …

AP, April 21, 2010
School lunches have been called many things, but a group of retired military officers is giving them a new label: national security threat.
That’s not a reference to the mystery meat served up in the cafeteria line either. The retired officers are saying that school lunches have helped make the nation’s young people so fat that fewer of them can meet the military’s physical fitness standards, and recruitment is in jeopardy.
A new report being released Tuesday says more than 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all …

Tara Parker-Pope, January 25, 2010, The New York Times
Can something as simple as the timing of recess make a difference in a child’s health and behavior?
Some experts think it can, and now some schools are rescheduling recess — sending students out to play before they sit down for lunch. The switch appears to have led to some surprising changes in both cafeteria and classroom.
Schools that have tried it report that when children play before lunch, there is less food waste and higher consumption of milk, fruit and vegetables. And some …

Between them, Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey have worked on Wall Street, traveled the world and taught school from East Africa to Ecuador. Now they make lunch for a living.
Friends since they met in business school at the University of California, Berkeley, Ms. Richmond and Ms. Tobey founded Revolution Foods Inc. to ride a political and economic wave: surging support for healthier food in school cafeterias.
Federal nutrition guidelines require subsidized school lunches to meet benchmarks on calories and fat, but they do not require that foods be whole, local, …

Reuters, November 17, 2009.  By Christopher Doering
Schools that serve more fruits, vegetables and whole grains to pupils should see higher federal support rates than those serving less-healthier meals loaded with high fats and sugar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday.
Child nutrition programs, which include school lunch and breakfast, are due for an overhaul but Congress is not expected to act before 2010. The government has targeted improving the nutritional quality and access to school meals amid rising child obesity rates.
“It is important for us to reward top performers,” Vilsack …

Mary MacVean, June 8, 2009
The Assembly has passed a bill to set minimum standards for food in licensed child-care centers, requiring a vegetable to be part of lunch and supper and forbidding whole milk for children 2 or older.
The food children eat in kindergarten through 12th grade in public school is regulated for fat and salt content, among other things. But for many preschool children, there have been no such dietary rules.
“California enjoys a worldwide reputation for its sunny, healthy lifestyle,” said the bills author, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley D-Santa Monica. “Childhood …

The federal school lunch program, which subsidizes meals for 30 million low-income children, was created more than half a century ago to combat malnutrition. A breakfast program was added during the 1960s, and both were retooled a decade ago in an attempt to improve the nutritional value of food served at school.

More must now be done to fight the childhood obesity epidemic, which has triggered a frightening spike in weight-related disorders like diabetes, high-blood pressure and heart disease among young people. And the place to start is the schools, where …