Teaming Up in the Challenge to Bring Healthier Meals to Schools

Ending childhood obesity within a generation is the central goal of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! initiative. We know achieving this goal requires all of us to work together – parents, teachers, schools, chefs, community leaders, Federal, State and local elected officials and our children – there’s a role for each of us to play.

Today we are thrilled to launch the Recipes for Healthy Kids Challenge along with First Lady Michelle Obama. Through this exciting effort, we will challenge teams of food service staff, chefs, students, and community members to develop creative, nutritious, tasty and kid-approved recipes that schools can easily incorporate into National School Lunch menus.

The Recipe Challenge draws on the talents of chefs, students, parents, and school nutrition professionals to develop tasty, nutritious, kid-approved foods. Chefs will provide culinary expertise, school nutrition professionals will share insight as to what can be accomplished in a school setting, and kids and parents will make sure that students will choose these nutritious items in school and beyond. Additionally, we encourage people in the community to submit recipes to the schools and support their local teams.

When I visited schools on a Nutrition Tour earlier this year, students everywhere showed interest and curiosity about foods, but they do not always enjoy foods that provide the greatest nutritional value.

Winning recipes will increase students’ intake of whole grains, dark green and orange vegetables, and dry beans and peas. Teams can form today and the challenge is open through December 30, 2010. Recipes must be taste tested by students and served on the school lunch menu. The top ten recipes for each healthy food category will be published in a Recipes for Healthy Kids Cookbook to share with others.

So start a team and join us in our move to bring healthier, and tasty foods to schools nationwide!

4 Responses to “Teaming Up in the Challenge to Bring Healthier Meals to Schools”

  1. Dalton Toper says:

    Thanks for your great work!

  2. Hugo Hefner says:

    !! This information is really good and I will say will always be helpful if we try it risk free, So if you can back it up .. That will really help us all. And this might bring some good repute to you. The diet of human beings prior to the arrival of agriculture, technology and civilization is known as the Paleolithic Diet !! This Stone Age diet, in short, consisted of mainly lean red meat and vegetables. In this type of diet animal meat is consumed in large quantities and 45 to 65% of the energy needed by the body is derived from it. Over and over again, life expectancy studies related to diet, including by the World Health Organization (WHO), have concluded that Americans and Europeans would do better to eat more like third world peoples as the options provided by their additional wealth have most often lead to poor nutritional choices. This is the same basis for the USDA based their popular food pyramid in 1994 ! Researchers at Harvard have only suggested perhaps tweaking the food pyramid by replacing some dairy products and read meat with more fruits, vegetables, and fish while also emphasizing the importance of improving the ratio of “good” to “bad” cholesterol… Plus, exercise not only makes weight loss much easier, but also lowers blood glucose levels, decreases blood pressure, improved circulation, and increases one’s metabolism. Good regular sleep patterns are also just as important. Diets based on USDA recommendations include DASH, American Diabetic Assoc, Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig… When children understand how important “real food” is and where the natural ingredients of our food come from, they will increase the general population’s appreciation for preserving our natural environment and limiting toxins and polluting processes in our world. We may even trend back to the time when people stepped outside their homes to interact with family and neighbors in home and community gardens and block-party barbeques? Does anybody even remember how nice those days were?

  3. Jerome says:

    this is a great idea. this will certainly encourage people to go for healthier meals and not just the ones sold in fast food chains. being healthy is top priority for every person in the world. they should incorporate it in every protein diet plan they have or planning to have.

  4. Jill Hathaway says:

    This is a great idea. What gets me most is they way those meals are heated to very high temperatures in plastic wrap. SO bad for out kids.

    Jill

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