Promoting Healthy Food = Healthy Children

Over 27 million school children receive at least one meal a day through the federally funded National Breakfast and Lunch Program. Of these, an estimated 15 million school children receive two meals a day, approximately one half of their entire weekly caloric intake, courtesy of the federal government. Earth Day Network has been involved for more than 5 years in an educational and awareness campaign to inform parents, teachers, and school administrators about the importance of providing healthy food not only to low income children, but to the millions of school children who buy their lunch at school every day. We will focus our efforts on local, state, and national legislation to improve the nutritional requirements and quality of foods in our nation’s schools. 
     
Through our Go Organic campaign, EDN has raised national awareness about the positive impacts that organic and locally grown food has on children’s health and ability to learn. As part of this campaign, EDN has joined with the organics industry to promote organic food, as well as locally grown, healthy food, as an alternative to existing school food programs. Last April, more than 3,500 grocery stores and 40 leading organic manufacturers nationally participated in our campaign. Given our huge outreach and success, we were selected among 100 nominations for the Nutrition Business Journal Award for 2006. Additionally, The Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) reports that the Go Organic campaign raised consumer awareness of organic products by 3 percent nationally – more than 10 million consumers – in 2006 alone. In the next year, we plan to extend our outreach to promote healthy foods to even more schools across the nation.