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Slow Food gaining speed in Ohio school lunch program

By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Imagine having a farm-to-school food program whereby school lunch programs would use food from nearby farms.
That concept is not yet in place, but officials at Slow Food USA believe it’s only a matter of time.

Slow Food USA, with 170 chapters across the country, is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America through programs and activities dedicated to taste education, defending biodiversity and building food communities.

Over the Labor Day weekend, Slow Food held a “Time for Lunch” campaign as thousands across the nation participated in more than 300 eat-ins as a way of telling Congress that it’s time to get real food back into the nation’s schools.

One eat-in was held at Shanahan Middle School just outside of Powell, Ohio. At this location the food served was healthy, nutritious and home-cooked, as opposed to fast food or processed.

“The goal of that particular campaign was to send a message to our community leaders that we care about improving the quality of food in school lunches,” said Bear Braumoeller, Slow Food chapter co-leader out of Columbus. “This was a way of getting together people from around the country who are passionate about getting better food in our schools and building a stronger social network for change.”

This effort would be a big payday for local producers. According to Braumoeller, “if successful, the campaign would guarantee $50 million in mandatory funding for farm-to-school programs and establish incentives for schools to buy food from local farms.”
Under the Slow Food manifesto, the organization believes pleasure and quality in everyday life can be achieved by slowing down, respecting the convivial traditions of the table and celebrating the diversity of the earth’s bounty.

“These foods, and the communities that produce and depend on them, are constantly at risk of succumbing to the effects of the fast life, which manifests itself through the industrialization and standardization of our food supply and degradation of our farmland,” Braumoeller said.

Slow Food got its start in 1986 and was spearheaded by Carlo Petrini of Italy, who wanted to reach out to consumers and demonstrate to them that they have choices over fast food and supermarket homogenization.

To this day the organization that Petrini and his colleagues founded is active in more than 132 countries and has a worldwide membership of more than 100,000.

Cynthia Walters, a Slow Food representative from the Columbus chapter, teaches at Shanahan Middle School and is seeing a change in the eating habits at her school.

“I would love to see our school district have a close relationship with local farmers in our area, and I believe the time is ripe for such a relationship,” she said. “I plan to push the envelope later in the school year.”

Walters added the idea of eating better and buying from local producers is going to catch on.

”Our school has adopted nutrition, fitness and garden-based learning as our school wide initiative this year,” she said. “As the founder of our school’s wellness team, I have witnessed incredible change in such a short period of time.

“My focus is to empower the students with knowledge, certainly enough knowledge to question what they are eating and make healthy choices. I think we’re going to see major changes in our school lunch program sooner than we think. We’re hoping other schools, districts and regions get on board.”

The School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program are permanently authorized. The other child nutrition programs that affect school nutrition operators, however, must be reauthorized every five years. The Child Nutrition and WIC (Women, Infants and Children) Reauthorization Act of 2004 expired on Sept. 30. Reauthorization has been delayed.

President Obama proposed increasing the budget for child nutrition programs by $1 billion, roughly 8 percent over the 2009 budget. Subsequently, the chairs of the House Education and Labor Committee and the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee requested $1 billion from the House and Senate budget committees to enact changes in reauthorization.

The budget resolutions adopted by the House and Senate contain no additional resources for reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. Instead, they adopted a “Deficit-Neutral Reserve Funds” provision that requires the committees to find savings in order to make new investments.

“Slow Food is on a campaign to contact legislators to allow for more funding,” Walters said. “The funding will allow for nutrition education, gardening activities and farm-to-school programs. I have already spoken to our superintendent about a farm-to-school food program this school year. This, like all other initiatives, is possible with patience and perseverance.”

Slow Food has 14 chapters in the Farm World readership area. There are four offices in Michigan, three in Iowa, two each in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and one in Kentucky.

10/14/2009