No one inAmericabelieves the walls of our kids schools should be lined with machines full of chemicals & artificial foods as a way to subsidizeAmerica’s educational system.We need to lose hydrogenated fats, artificial flavors & colors, refined white breads and sugars from our kids’ lunches.
Points to think about:
- The average cost to prepare lunch for one student is $2.66, the government doesn’t reimburse this full amount. There is not enough money to pay for the gap in cost versus what is reimbursed. So, schools are looking for ways to make up the gap. It’s often done by selling junk food because it has a higher profit margin. We need to find alternative & better ways to make this gap up.
- Alice Waters, founder of the edible school year, recently did an editorial in the NY Times. The government spends $9 billion on school lunch per year, this is the equivalent of 2 weeks of funding for the Iraqwar. When you compare it to the $170 billion that the government recently spent to bail out AIG, the lunch program money is a drop in the bucket. Alice & others are lobbying to triple the amount we spend on school lunches, making it $27 billion.
- In France they spend $5/ student on lunch. InEnglandafter Jamie Oliver’s “Feed ME better” campaign they are also spending about $5/ lunch. So this amount is doable and would be the equivalent of tripling the current budget.
TAKE ACTION – watch the movie Two Angry Moms –
They have other tools on their website to help us at angrymoms.org:
-a 10 step action plan
-Posters & Flyers
-A petition to get signed in your own community
