Christopher Kimball: Parents Against Junk Food

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Busy Christopher Kimball wears more than one hat these days. He already has one PBS cooking show, America's Test Kitchen. He already has published a number of cookbooks, including this year's The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook Revised Edition. He already edits and publishes magazines including Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country Magazine Of late, however, he determinedly has headed up a non-profit organization called Parents Against Junk Food. This group is on a mission: ...Eliminating junk food from our public school system. No sodas. No candy bars. No chips. No processed lunch or foods of minimal nutritional value. Let’s ask our public schools to feed both body and mind properly, to take seriously their role as guardians of our children’s health and welfare. It is time to take the corporate profit out of school lunches and replace it with common sense, good nutrition, and the love and care that our children surely deserve. Chris has four kids of his own and is concerned about school nutrition and the epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes. Their current target? Bolster support in the U.S. Congress for the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act (S. 2592 / H.R. 5167), which will broaden the definitiong of junk food and allow the USDA to get junk food out of schools. Parents can write to their senators urging them to support Senator Tom Harkin's (D-IO) and Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) bipartisan legislation. The vote could come soon, so strong action is needed quickly to get it passed. Senator Harkin said in a press release earlier this year: Many American kids are at school for two meals a day. But instead of a nutritious school breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria, they are enticed to eat Cheetos and a Snickers Bar from the vending machines in the hallway. Junk food sales in schools are out of control. It undercuts our investment in school meal programs, and steers kids toward a future of obesity and diet-related disease. Congress cannot stand idly by while our kids are preyed upon by junk-food marketers. It has been 30 years since the USDA updated its rules, and it is high time they reflected our better understanding of nutrition and health. Without an overhaul, local programs like the Edible Schoolyard cannot have the nationwide impact they should. Parents Against Junk Food has over 12,000 members, of whom more than 3,000 have written in to their senators already. They also support the USDA Fruit and Vegetable Pilot Program in Utah, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Washington, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania that provides fresh fruit and vegetable snacks during the school day. Melissa Baldino of Parents Against Junk Food told Superchefblog that they hope other chefs would get involved, but that many chefs on television have to answer to their sponsors and advertisors, the very same companies that sell junk food in the schools: "That is one of the big issues. We don't have any advertising in our magazine, and we are on PBS. We don't have our hands tied." Superchefblog asked whether Parents Against Junk Food wants to replicate Jamie Oliver's successful campaign to get better school food in the UK: It is a different beast in the UK. We love him and we think he is doing really great things, but we aren't working with him. Big business and how school lunch programs are run is different here. It’s a larger battle -- trying to get soda out of schools is harder. It is harder to change perceptions. Melissa stressed that it isn't the fault of parents nor the fault of schools that they are full of junk food: "The point is as a parent you can make a difference. Parents have a lot of power." So, foodie parents, foodie aunts, uncles and friends, get going and send out those letters to your senators! Previous articles: Jamie Oliver: Junk Food Be Cursed! Jamie Oliver Betters British School Food FOOD PIX: Jamie Oliver Fat Suit Eric Schlosser: Chew On This Nora Sands: Nora's Dinners Common Threads' World Festival Jamie Oliver: School Lunch Alice Waters: Ms. Smith Goes to Washington Smithsonian Folklife Festival: Food Culture USA [Chefs & Politics - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to superchefblog