Starting Young

           As I begin my quest to educate myself more about local and sustainable foods I think about my food education through out my youth. I was lucky, I had a mom who made her living feeding kids. My mom is a dietitian, who works at a local school district as the Nutrition director. She is not your typical "lunch lady", or as I use to explain to people, "the HEAD lunch lady", my mom dedicated herself to not just feeding kids, but feeding them GOOD food, and by good I don't mean just tasty I mean healthy food. We all know the stereotypes about school lunch, how it is not healthy and just adds to the health problems that kids are facing these days, however, that isn't always true.
    
             In elementary school I was the only kid that could describe to you in depth what the food pyramid was. My mom ingrained into my sister and I why we needed to eat 4 servings of vegetables a day and why we were forced milk down our throats (thank you mom). I was lucky, not only did I have a mother who cooked me tasty food, I had a mom who understood the importance of vegetables, milk, etc. While I envied the kids who could drink soda for dinner, as an adult I am happy my mom instilled in me healthy eating habits. But like I have said before I was/am lucky. Many kids do not have the opportunity to experience GOOD food. That is why when I first heard about the Farm-to-school program I was so excited, a program that allows kids that would never get the chance to have good food the ability to.

           Over the course of this blog I, Michelle, want to explore the importance of Farm-to-School. Not only the increased health benefits for the students who get to eat healthy fresh food, but also the increased benefits communities and local farmers get from these programs (I am a Planning and Environmental Policy student after all... the words local & sustainable get me about as excited as when a dog hears the word dinner). After all the children our future, why not make sure our future is as healthy as possible, for the people and our communities.