Fat Fighter TV » school food

News Nugget: School lunches may get healthy makeover

FatFighter — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:36:21 +0000

Earlier this month, a new study showed fewer schools are selling snacks and drinks like candy and soda. Now, a panel recommends the government make healthy changes to school meals, even though it will increase costs. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) says as obesity continues to rise, breakfast and lunch at schools should be lower in calories, and have more fruits, vegetables and whole grains to help kids adapt better eating habits. The IOM says the changes could increase the cost of breakfast by as much as 25 percent and lunch by 9 percent.

Get your FREE copy of "Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals" Download e-book here.

Two Angry Moms – the movie: Making a Healthy Difference

FatFighter — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:00:04 +0000

Now playing in a city near you… (*cue movie announcer*) They’re angry about the junk food in our schools. Angry at how it’s affecting childhood obesity and other health issues. And angry enough to do something about it.

Two Angry Moms…starring…

Amy Kalafa: award-winning filmmaker, holistic health and nutrition counselor, mother

Dr. Susan Rubin: founder of Better School Food, holistic nutritionist, mother

Get a sneak peek below – watch clips from the documentary, Two Angry Moms, and see how it’s Making a Healthy Difference. Here’s what the film’s producer, Amy Kalafa, tells FFTV about the movie, her anger, and how you can join the fight for kids’ health.

What made Amy angry
“I was angry that my efforts were being undermined by what was being served in the school cafeteria. And when I met other moms who felt the same way, they were called ‘Food Police’ and ‘Nutrition Nazis’ rather than being welcomed with open arms, saying, ‘How do we do this?’ That is still going on now. If you try to feed kids better, you get labeled as a spoiled sport.”

Why she’s concerned
“There’s a childhood obesity crisis in this country. For the first time, kids will live shorter lives than their parents. And obesity is the tip of the iceberg. Maybe what’s great in a sort of weird, twisted way is that we can see it, because then we actually notice it and want to do something about it.”

Too much blame on parents?
“Parents are getting blamed for all the bad eating habits of kids and yet, they’re like the second or third generation that’s grown up in this food culture, so they don’t know any better.

It’s not that there’s too much blame put on parents; it’s that there aren’t enough tools for parents to make changes and there’s not enough support for parents. There are parents who don’t care and parents who do care. It shouldn’t be entirely up to the parents. The schools shouldn’t be complicit in doing harm to kids. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.”

What to do?
“I thought, somehow this information needs to be packaged so that parents can understand it and be able to make wise choices for their kids. I decided somebody should make a movie and that somebody should be me. I focused on school food just because I could reach the most people the most efficiently.

I see parents as advocates for their kids. If they go to the school and say, ‘We’re not happy with what you’re feeding them,’ that’s how they can create change.”

See a preview of Two Angry Moms

Familiar frustration
“When I started making the film I thought, I’ll just go find a mom like me who knows how to fix this, because I didn’t. I started interviewing moms who had tried to make a change in communities near mine and they all started telling me the same story - ‘I signed up for my school food committee, I volunteered my time, I went to meetings, I offered suggestions. We all felt like something was going to happen, and at the end of the year, everything stayed the same. We all dropped off the committee and decided it was a waste of time. And what do we do now?’”

The other angry mom
“That’s what started getting me angry. I thought there’s got to be somebody who knows how to do this. Then I was introduced to Dr. Susan Rubin. She just happened to be the one tenacious mom who had been fighting that fight for ten years in her community and still had gotten nowhere. But she kept at it and her organization was starting to have an impact. So I followed her and Better School Food over the course of a school year and step by step saw how they were able to help one school district implement change. They went really far. The film kind of models that transformation and the conflict in the community and the misunderstanding, and then eventually – the success.”

Uphill battle

“I’m a parent who does the right job at home and my kids will still eat all the junk that’s being sold in the school. I went to the school thinking, I’m just going to show how the system works, and there I go finding my daughter is eating Pop-Tarts and Rice Krispies Treats. Yeah, if you offer it to her, she’ll eat it. It’s kind of like saying, ‘Maybe they should have a cigarette machine in the high school cafeteria because at age 16 it’s legal to smoke.’”

Change is possible
“What the film tries to show is that schools can actually be part of the solution. And instead of going around showing what was wrong, I made a movie that showed the schools that were doing a really great job and the parents who were advocating so that their schools would make those changes.

When I started doing the film I was looking for models and there weren’t a lot. It was really hard to find good programs. In the wake of the film, there have been many success stories.”

Not a Nutrition Nazi
“I love pizza. I love sweets. My kids do, too. The schools, at the bare minimum, should not offer foods that we know promote obesity and not offer foods that are laden with chemicals and preservatives. You want to serve pizza? How about serving pizza made with fresh, healthy ingredients?”

See the movie, join the movement
“I’m encouraging people to sign up to host a screening. If you watch it in a community group – even if it’s a small group like a house party of 10-12 people – you’re going to gather the neighbors together, you’re going to have a great conversation afterward, and you’re going to say, ‘What can we do as the next step?’”

###

In the past nine months, there have been about 60 movie screenings across the country. To find out how you can host a screening or if there’s already one scheduled near you, visit Two Angry Moms.

Thanks, Two Angry Moms, for Making a Healthy Difference!

Check out all of FFTV’s Making a Healthy Difference honorees here.

If you know of someone you think we should profile, we want to hear from you. Just send us an email at sahar [at] fatfightertv [dot]com

Get your FREE copy of "Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals" Download e-book here.

Better School Food: Making a Healthy Difference

FatFighter — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:00:51 +0000

She’s so dedicated to changing food in our schools that she got the leading role in a movie about the actions she’s taking.

Meet Dr. Susan Rubin. As a parent, she got involved with traditional programs in public schools to try to bring in healthier food options. Years later, she says all she got was frustrated by all the bureaucracy. So she started the nonprofit group, Better School Food (BSF). Here’s how the program is Making a Healthy Difference.

It started with candy wrappers
Yes, candy wrappers were making their way home from school with one of Susan Rubin’s daughters. Rubin was a dentist at the time, and was immediately concerned.

“I was really shocked to find out the stuff was coming out of the cafeteria,” Rubin recalls.

But it wasn’t just about cavities. Rubin was worried about the overall health of her children because of the food schools offered. She wanted to do something about it, so she left dentistry to become a holistic nutritionist. Now she and BSF are reaching out to schools across the country to try to stem childhood obesity.

“Every school has a bureaucratic system and you have to play by those rules,” says Rubin. “So I decided to form this organization outside of the schools because then there were no rules.”

Better School Food’s mission
Like the name says, it’s about better school food – specifically, BSF wants every school-age child to have access to whole foods and fresh fruits and vegetables. Its goal is to also get rid of unhealthy ingredients, like trans fats, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and potentially harmful preservatives, from schools and from kids’ daily diets.

BSF is made up of health professionals, educators, and concerned parents. The group supports pretty much anyone across the country who wants better food in schools – from the cafeterias to the food sold for fundraisers.

“We’re just kind of creating an army of advocates,” Rubin explains. “It’s not just K-12. I really believe we’ve got to hit it earlier in child care centers, pre-schools, and after school programs.”

Back in time
To move forward, Rubin says we have to go back to how things used to be. We went from growing our own foods long ago to buying processed foods, and now there’s a push to eat organic, whole foods again.

Rubin believes a way out of the obesity epidemic is for students to go back to eating foods they’ve grown themselves in school gardens. This lets kids learn about fruits and vegetables by doing, instead of just reading about them in textbooks. She says because they would actually see where their food comes from, they’d be more likely to connect with and want to eat fruits and vegetables they have planted and nurtured themselves.

No More Sweets?
Don’t worry – she’s not saying sweets should be banned. But when you have them, why not have the good stuff made with all natural ingredients?

“My kids eat cookies,” says Rubin. “They make chocolate chip cookies from scratch with the best ingredients. So I’m not saying, never do this. I’m saying, bump up the quality and have less.”

Movement turns into movie
Rubin’s passion caught the attention of filmmaker and mom, Amy Kalafa, who featured BSF in the documentary, Two Angry Moms. Rubin and Kalafa became two angry moms when they saw the poor diets their kids were eating in schools and how it affected their health, behavior, and learning.

“It’s a real story about school food and the challenges and the successes that are out there. So we always joke that Two Angry Moms is the movie and Better School Food is the movement.”

Fat Fighter TV » school food

News Nugget: School lunches may get healthy makeover

Related posts

Two Angry Moms – the movie: Making a Healthy Difference

Related posts

Better School Food: Making a Healthy Difference

Related posts