Time for Lunch Eat-in, Monday, September 7

By now, you have probably heard about Slow Food USA's newly-launched initiative for real food in our nation's schools, Time for Lunch.

Time for Lunch is national campaign to tell Congress to provide America's children with real food at school. One of the major milestones for the campaign will be orchestrating more than 100 Eat-Ins in communities across the country on Labor Day, September 7, 2009.

Slow Food Rhode Island will be hosting an Eat-in at the Tiverton Four Corners Arts Center on Labor Day, and we'll be posting up more information on the event throughout the summer.

The Eat-Ins - potluck gatherings - will draw attention to the need for real, healthy food for the more than 30 million children who participate in the National School Lunch Program. The school lunch program is part of the Child Nutrition Act that Congress will reauthorize later this year.

The need for real school food has never been greater. Today, one in four children is overweight or obese, and one in three will develop diabetes in his or her lifetime. In the face of this crisis, our schools are financially struggling to feed children anything but the overly processed fast food that endangers their health. For many children, school lunch is their only guaranteed meal of the day. Right now, those children are forced to choose between going hungry and being unhealthy.

The Child Nutrition Act is a federal law that comes up for reauthorization in Congress every four to five years. It governs the National School Lunch Program, which sets the standard for the food that more than 30 million children eat every school day. In the last few decades, as school budgets have been cut, our nation's schools have struggled to serve children the real food they need.

The deadline for reauthorizing the current Child Nutrition Act is September 2009. Unless we speak up this summer, "business as usual" on Capitol Hill will let Congress pass a Child Nutrition Act that continues to fail our children.

If you cannot attend the Slow Food RI Eat-in, please be sure to sign the petition, contact your legislators to let them know healthy school lunches are important to you, and spread the word to your friends. If you'd like to organize your own Eat-in, information on coordinating Eat-ins is available here.

Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you at the Eat-in at Tiverton Four Corners Arts Center on Monday, September 7, 2009.

The Renegade Lunch Lady

For those of you looking for some additional information on school lunches, Ann Cooper, "the renegade lunch lady" of Berkeley, California, speaks on school lunches in this video.

And check out pictures of actual school lunches here.

Please be sure to spread the word about Slow Food's Time for Lunch campaign to your friends, sign the petition if you haven't already, and contact your legislators to let them know why real food in schools is important to you.

It’s Time for Lunch: Slow Food USA Pushes to Get Real Food into Schools

We are thrilled to announce that the Slow Food USA Time for Lunch Campaign is planning more than 100 Community Eat-Ins for National Day of Action on Labor Day, Monday, September 7, 2009.

Today, Slow Food USA launched Time for Lunch, a national campaign to tell Congress to provide America’s children with real food at school. One of the major milestones for the campaign will be orchestrating more than 100 Eat-Ins in communities across the country on Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009. The Eat-Ins will draw attention to the need for real, healthy food for the more than 30 million children who participate in the National School Lunch Program. The program is part of the Child Nutrition Act that Congress will reauthorize later this year.

“The way we feed our kids is a reflection of our values. We cannot, in good conscience, continue to make our kids sick by feeding them cheap byproducts of an industrial food system,” stated Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA. “It is time to give kids real food: food that tastes good, is good for them, is good for the people who grow and prepare it, and is good for the planet.”

With nearly 32 percent of children ages 2 to 19 considered obese or overweight, and one-in-three born since 2000 in jeopardy of developing diabetes in his/her life time, providing schools with real food is a national priority.

The Time for Lunch campaign is asking people everywhere to contact their legislators and tell them to invest in the health of our children by allocating $1 more per day per child for lunch. The USDA currently reimburses schools $2.57 for each meal served to a student who qualified for free lunch – most of this covers labor, equipment and overhead costs – but less than $1 goes toward actual ingredients.

The campaign also seeks to protect against foods that put children at risk by establishing strong standards for all food sold at school, including food from vending machines and school fast food. Right now, children can buy overly processed “fast” foods from vending machines and on-campus stores that sneak under the radar of federal nutrition standards.

Lastly, the campaign is pushing for the government to provide mandatory funding to teach children healthy eating habits through innovative farm-to-school programs and school gardens.

To show your support, sign-on to our petition, read our platform for updating the National School Lunch Program, or for details on how to organize your own Eat-In on Labor Day, visit our web site at http://www.slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

Michelle Obama speaks out on US food policy

During a White House garden event with children from the Bancroft School - the students who originally helped to plant the garden - Michelle Obama spoke about US food policy. For the full article, please visit www.obamafoodorama.com. Here is an excerpt from their article:

At an afternoon picnic at the White House, during a celebration of the harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden, Mrs. Obama delivered policy-heavy remarks that covered some of the most hot-button topics in food. While ostensibly addressing the Bancroft Elementary School fifth graders who’ve been helping her work in the garden, Mrs. Obama talked about food deserts, food security and food justice; getting more fresh and nutritious foods into the USDA’s Child Nutrition programs; the critical issue of reducing diet-related disease; supporting local and smaller food producers; encouraging urban and community gardening. Of course there was a big media presence at the harvest event, but most news outlets failed to report how very far-sighted Mrs. Obama’s remarks were, how potentially radical they are at a moment in time when everything about food is open to debate. Instead, mainstream media focused on the feel-good angle of the story, with headlines like It’s Pea Picking Time in The Garden! and Garden Party: The First Lady’s 73 Pounds of Lettuce.

This excerpt provides a great overview of her remarks, though we highly recommend reading the entire post for all of the encouraging details.

Long Pie Pumpkin

The Long Pie Pumpkin is one of the Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT) Grow-out varieties. It’s thought that the Long Pie Pumpkin originally came from the Isle of St. George in the Azores and was brought to Nantucket in 1832 on a whaling ship, where it was known as the Nantucket Pumpkin.

Farmers shared the seeds until it migrating north to Maine, and eventually became the favorite pie pumpkin of growers in Androscoggin County, Maine. Among heirloom enthusiasts, it is considered the best pumpkin for pie today. Which has us looking forward to its appearance on participating restaurant menus this fall.

Long Pie Pumpkins are long and thin, like overgrown orange zucchinis. They average 3 – 6 lbs, and often are not ready at harvest, for they are picked when the spot in contact with the ground is orange, but mature to a full‐orange in storage over several weeks or months. They are not ready to eat until fully orange.