Send a Letter to a county supervisor
[Date]
Dear Supervisor _______________________:
RE: School Food
My name is _______________________ and I live at ___________________________________, in your district. I am writing to you as a concerned citizen about the current condition of school food in many of the public schools throughout Santa Barbara County.
While there has been much talk among federal and state politicians of improving nutrition standards for foods sold out of vending machines, à la carte in the cafeteria, and in school stores, little attention has been paid to improving the nutrition standards for the school meals themselves. I respectfully request that you carefully consider both the health and social justice issues attendant to the poor quality, highly processed products that are being served daily Santa Barbara County public schools. I urge you to use your power as County Supervisor to publically urge school district administrators to work with community leaders and parents to provide their students with healthy, cooked-from-scratch meals in their cafeterias on a daily basis.
As you know, good nutrition is critical to children's health, well being, and ability to learn. Nonetheless, the USDA's nutrition standards for foods served within the purview of the National School Lunch Program are dangerously outdated. Under the existing federal standards, highly processed chicken nuggets, tater tots, canned fruit cocktail and chocolate milk may be – and are – regularly served to children as part of the National School Lunch Program. Over the past several decades, over-consumption of calories, saturated fat, trans fat, refined sugars, and sodium have increasingly become problems in children's diets. Those constituents are largely ignored by the USDA's school nutrition standards yet contribute to obesity, heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and tooth decay. As Supervisor, it is within your power to help create county-wide standards that exceed the nutritional guidelines set by the federal and state governments.
Of course, a primary reason for the service of such poor quality “food” is that the federal government and the State of California seriously underfund school lunch programs. This is unconscionable when the Centers for Disease Control is predicting that one of three children born since the year 2000 may develop Type II Diabetes. I urge you to consider ways in which the County may be able to financially assist school districts that are aggressively working to improve their school food. To ignore the issue now is to saddle the County in future years with staggering medical costs.
I look forward to hearing from you about how you will work to address both the nutritional guideline and funding issues related to school food.
Sincerely,
[Name]
[Street Address]
[City] [State] [Zip]
[Phone]
[Email]