Keep packing those school lunches!

That's a freaky article but not a huge surprise. The USDA only spends about 90 cents per child on lunch food. It's insane. Whole Foods Market launched a new helpful site this year - the “School Lunch Revolution” campaign which can help parents and schools make better lunch choices. 

It's not just the meat either. According to the CDC, “One in three children born in the year 2000 will have diabetes, and 30 percent of them are overweight, and the cost of treating diabetes in the United States is estimated at $174 billion each year.” A lot of that I'm guessing is based on the fact that school lunches suck. There haven't really been any decent standards set and kids have mainly been served commodity foods, like cheese and ground beef, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Distribution Program and frozen, processed, packaged foods. Since there are no national standardized limit on sugar or other ingredients like artificial colors, flavors or preservatives the school lunched stack up to a lot of crap.

My son goes to a Free School and they're not part of the school lunch program, but even if I went crazy and decided to send Cedar to public school, I would still pack him a lunch. Still other kids have to eat this stuff so we need some major changes. If you're a parent (or anyone) you can tell your Congressional leaders to support a healither, well-funded reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act or visit the action plan ideas at Appetite for Change.