- Author: Katherine Lanca
- Editor: Danielle L. Lee
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
- Editor: Wendi Gosliner
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated food and nutrition challenges. Many families initially lost access to meals offered by school and childcare facilities, experienced unemployment or work reductions, and faced increasing prices for food and other necessities. National and state policies and programs provided food and cash assistance to mitigate impacts on food security. Researchers at the Nutrition Policy Institute, a research center of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, evaluated safety-net policies implemented during the pandemic to better support families with low incomes in the...
- Author: Shannon Klisch
- Author: Katherine E Soule
School food service is a multibillion dollar industry that impacts the lives of over 30 million (mostly) low-income students. Every school day and, with increasing frequency, during summer weekdays as well, this industry provides two-thirds of students' meals (breakfast and lunch), as well as snacks, contributing a large portion of the nutrients youth consume throughout their childhoods. To qualify for a free school lunch, a family of three must make less than $26,208 in 2016-17.
School food service directors have a huge charge on their hands: feed kids, every day, with a lot of requirements, for very little money. The current reimbursement rate for free meals provided to students in California is $3.31, which is required to...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Several grade school students set down their forks to eat their green salad, picking up individual lettuce leaves with their fingers and pushing them into their mouths. Not that I was there to judge for style, it was just an observation as I looked around the cafeteria festooned in colorful hand-cut paper banners to see how many of the kids had taken a salad.
The youngsters are required to take at least a half-cup serving of fresh fruits or vegetables as part of a healthful meal to meet national nutrition standards, but I noticed they...
- Author: Shannon Klisch
- Contributor: Lisa Paniagua
- Contributor: Melissa LaFreniere
Which end of an asparagus do you eat? I am not going to eat that, it's too spicy! Pink milk cartons (non-fat) are only for girls.
These and many other questions and comments came from students and staff at schools in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District (SMBSD) during recent efforts to expose students to a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. A collaboration between SMBSD staff and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources's UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties (UC CalFresh) was initiated in the 2014/2015 school year to...
