Kidlet Dinners: Salad Bar Nation

Kid food. I have slowly become quite passionate in the last 3.5 years. What started as a way to save money on baby food quickly turned into a love for introducing my child to a variety of healthy foods. I enjoyed chopping, steaming and pureeing even with a busy working mom schedule. I made it work. Then he grew up and I kept giving him a variety. Since then, I went on a food documentary Netflix binge that included a few talks about what we feed our kids. While I can sit here and say “I will buy organic stawberries for my babies” I realize that is a large leap away from being able to find an actual vegetable at the local store. Some kids ONLY eat at school because our tax dollars pay for it (I don’t mind paying at all. More food for the kids is fine by me. Call me a CRAZY liberal if you want).

Ann Cooper really jump started my focus on school lunch even though my kid isn’t even there yet. She  revolutionized a school district. Healthy food and education about food for all. She also made a point in her TED talk to note that they had put salad bars in the schools. If a kid is going to learn about food, seeing it all out there for options is a great way. We all underestimate what kids will eat. Along the Toddler Dinners journey, I stumbled upon his desire to eat salad. A toddler? Eating salad? Who Knew? So when Whole Foods contacted me about their Whole Kids Foundation, I couldn’t reply fast enough. Their current initiative is to bring salad bars into schools. Pretty simple concept but if you know anything about education budgets, you know this isn’t easy. They are raising money to make it happen. To help with the mission, they made this great graphic to help you visualize how much school lunch impacts our youth and what a salad bar can do for them. Let’s start a revolution!

2 thoughts on “Kidlet Dinners: Salad Bar Nation

  • April 2, 2013 at 2:24 pm
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    I’m really, really lucky in that my kids will ask for salad. And broccoli. And corn. And Brussels sprouts. Or whatever they happen to see me eating.

    I just wish they never, ever saw me eating candy.

    Reply
  • April 4, 2013 at 1:14 pm
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    This is so important! When I was teaching I got lazy one semester and at the cafeteria lunches. I think I gained 30 pounds… it was so disgusting!

    Reply

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