Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Many students getting most of their daily nutrition from school meals

If you saw this article by David Sarasohn in The Oregonian you may have been saddened and surprised to learn that many children are only able to get adequate, nutricious food at school.  This illustrates why we need more funds and more programs to help support good food in our schools. 

"When the kids came back from spring break, they were starving," Shelly Drury says. "They wanted seconds, they wanted thirds. My principal was saying, 'We need to cook more food.' " 

If Shelly Drury is at one end of the school lunch pipeline, Tom Harkin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, is at the other. Reauthorizations -- and budgets -- go past the Iowa Democrat, and he has plans. "We'd love to get it up $1 billion a year," said Harkin in an interview earlier this month. "We could use more money. If we want to get better food for our kids, it costs money."