Ten Steps to Changing Your School's Menu
Once you start noticing the long-range and devastating effects of our nation's epidemic of childhood obesity, you're most likely going to be concerned. This means it's time to take positive action to change things! Here are 10 things you can do to start now.
Ten Steps to Changing Your School's Menu
- Visit your school and familiarize yourself with the layout, cafeteria food, ala carte lines, school store, and vending machines.
- Eat a typical lunch at the school if at all possible. Consult the curriculum or teachers to determine if students receive any instruction in nutrition and healthy eating. Talk with food service workers to get their opinions on what students do and don't eat.
- Meet with your school's decision-makers: the school food services director; the principal; the PTO; and/or members of the school board-and discuss your concerns.
- Organize a committee! Enlist other parents and/or teachers and staff who feel as you do.
- Recruit members from the community at large who might be helpful-a pediatrician, nurse or nutrition expert, for example. Identify students to serve on your committee or help with the project. Student participation is key!
- Study the issue! Use the information you might find in Stonyfield Farm Menu for Change Library section to build your case and become informed. See Point/Counterpoint: Overcoming common objections to help frame your arguments.
- Involve the media. Write letters to the editor about the problems you see. Cite statistics. Send press releases to your local newspapers and radio stations to announce an event or an important meeting about school food. Suggest your local paper doing a feature story on the problems you see.
- Stay tuned to the process. Whether your school agrees to ban some junk foods, discontinue vending services, change the cafeteria menu…whatever it is, stay involved. Keep your committee intact to oversee the process and to step in if implementation doesn't go as expected.
- Advocate for the issue: Write letters to public officials to help change public policy.
- Inspire others: Tell your success story to the media. Write a press release about what you’ve accomplished or learned. Better yet, call up a reporter or editor you might know and suggest they do a feature story or an editorial about your school or project. Send us your story here at Stonyfield and we may put it here on our web site. Drop us a line at: menuforchange@stonyfield.com.
Source: Stoneyfield.com
