fns

As a federal employee for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, it is part of my job to know the many faces of hunger. People in need can come from all backgrounds, ages, locations, and walks of life. They are children. They are senior citizens. They are even those who are newly unemployed during our nation’s economic downturn. I knew all of this. But what caught me off guard was the fact that many are also our nation’s veterans.

Looking to help USDA fight hunger and obesity? The USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has launched a new webpage just for you! The “Get Involved” webpage is full of tools your organization can use to improve outreach efforts for food help programs like SNAP, Summer Food, CACFP At-Risk Afterschool Meals, and more. When you visit our site you’ll discover how your organization, or even you as an individual, can dive into FNS outreach.

Visitors to the page are greeted by a section across the top of the page that says, “Start Here - If you are new to FNS, click here to learn how to... serve meals, get funding, end hunger, provide nutrition ed., join webinars, and much more.” This page offers information for organizations that want to get started and have done limited or no outreach with FNS in the past. It connects them with an overview of FNS food help programs, and it gets them to resources they need to start a meal or outreach program from scratch.

One of USDA’s most important missions is providing healthy meals to school lunch programs across the country.  In a unique partnership, the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) agencies teamed up with Rachael Ray’s Yum-o! non-profit organization, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system and Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality to create and serve a new healthy, tasty and exciting school lunch recipe.

To do this, Bob Bloomer of Chartwells-Thompson, the provider of meals in most of Chicago’s schools, worked with the Agricultural Marketing Service to acquire fresh, unprocessed chicken. After issuing a solicitation and competitive bids from domestic suppliers, the Agricultural Marketing Service awarded the first contract for two truckloads—that’s 80,000 pounds —of raw chicken leg quarters for shipment to Chicago’s schools.

Nothing says autumn like pumpkins fresh from the farm! And since it’s Farm to School month, It’s fitting that I joined Christine Skipp, Lori Hall and their first grade class at RB Hunt Elementary School, in St. Augustine, Fla.  to sample 11 different varieties of pumpkins.  We took advantage of this fall’s harvest from the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences farm in Hastings, Fla.

How does one turn a cold, miserable rainy day in late October into one as bright and warm as a sunny day in June?  Just visit a local elementary school where students and teachers and community volunteers are all so excited about the bountiful garden out back behind the school.  A magical place where young minds learn about growing healthy foods, about earthworms and soil, about cover crops and harvesting, about composting and frost dates, and about how tasty that strange looking vegetable with the funny name is . . . the one they started to grow from seedlings last school year.

During tough times families can find it increasingly difficult to prepare cost-friendly meals. The SNAP-Ed Connection provides tools and resources to health educators that help dispel low income families make healthy eating an attainable goal. One of those tools is the recipe finder, an online tool that allows you to quickly locate pre-analyzed and budget-friendly recipes that may support your nutrition education goals or lesson plans. Over 600 healthy recipes are right at your fingertips!

Every child deserves to have the tools they need to succeed in the classroom. That’s reason enough to recognize the nutritional accomplishments of our school meals programs during National School Lunch Week, Oct. 10-14. But there is more to celebrate…

I didn’t know there was a museum devoted to southern food until our regional administrator, Bill Ludwig, was notified that he had been selected to receive their inaugural Humanitarian Award for Public Service. The Southern Food & Beverage Museum is appropriately located in New Orleans, where food is definitely an art form!

When I asked museum president and director Liz Williams about the inspiration for the award, she said, “We wanted to create an award that reflects that public service and being a humanitarian can work hand in hand.  We wanted a person who had long service, who was doing good, and who was doing that good just because, and not to get recognition.  We considered others, but Bill rose to the top.”

In August I went back to school with students in Albany and Newton, Ga., to see how healthy school meals help students get their “S.W.A.G. on” and prepare for success.

In Albany, 400 Sherwood Acres Elementary Magnet School students celebrated school breakfast, many wearing S.W.A.G. t-shirts, which stands for “Students with Academic Greatness!”

Vanessa Hayes, Dougherty County Schools Director of Child Nutrition Services, explained, “We understand that good nutrition is the fuel for the educational vehicle.”

Thank you to all of the USDA Summer Food Service Programs that submitted an entry into the “Food, Fun, and Sun” Summer Food Service Program Story and Photo Contest!  The competition was extremely tough as we had over 100 contest submissions representing programs in over 40 States!  The first round of judging is complete.  We are thrilled to present to you the four contest finalists in each of the four categories.