Monterey, CA - Dole Food Company donated at September 27 five salad bars to schools in the Monterey Peninsula District. The event gave empahases on how schools can battle the growing childhood obesity by providing kids with healthy lunch options.
As schools try hard to comply with the new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition standards for school lunches, salad bars seems to be a good solution how to increase our students' consumption of fruits and vegetables.
"Salad bar donations are a natural extension of Dole's ongoing commitment to childhood nutrition." says company press release.
And since Monterey county has long standing agricultural tradtion with the company, through this donation Dole wanted to invest back into local comunity by helping students to have better access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
During the event representatives of Dole Compamy were joined by local Health Department and School District as well as Agricultural Commissioner of Monterey County and Celifornia's Department of Education.
"We are honored to work with Dole in a partnership that is improving our students' access to a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables," said Jennifer Gerard, RD, Director of Nutrition Services, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District.
The salad bars are being donated as a part of the First Lady's Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative, which has donated more than 1,440 salad bars serving more than 720,000 children across the country to date.
In November 2010, Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, a grassroots public health initiative working in support of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Initiative was created. The partners of the initiative, including Dole, share a vision to significantly increase the number of salad bars in schools across the country until every child has the choice of healthy fruits and vegetables every day at school.
This initiative goes hand in hand with the new standards from USDA, which aims to offer more nutritious choices for kids, including whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and school flavored milk that is lower in sugar and calories than ever before.
