July 2001
Davis "Farm to School" salad bar featured in national magazine
Students are proud of their colorful, fruit-vegetable-protein-bread balanced lunches. (photo by Lyra Halprin)
DAVIS – The farmers' market "Crunch Lunch" salad bar at Pioneer Elementary School in Davis is featured in the July 2001 issue of Gourmet Magazine (p. 34). A story by Davis resident Jay Feldman, illustrated with photos by Lyra Halprin of the Davis-based UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP), details the salad bar-based meal, which is available in addition to the standard two-entree lunch selection. The Crunch Lunch includes locally grown vegetables and fruits, and two or three protein-rich foods such as eggs, turkey, tuna, beans and cheese. The popular salad bar option debuted in March at Pioneer, and will open at César Chávez Elementary School in the fall.
The salad bar is just one part of a curriculum that also involves a school garden and recycling project. After lunch, students sort their leftovers into paper, garbage, fruit and vegetable scraps, and recyclable materials, and dump them in separate bins. Food scraps are composted in the garden.
"We're thrilled the kids are enjoying something that combines a way to improve their eating habits with an awareness of where their food comes from," says Page Lee Webb, president of the Davis Farm to School Connection, which has been instrumental in establishing the salad bar.
Parents, educators and community members worked together for more than a year raising money to establish salad bars in area schools and link them to garden curriculum, composting and recycling activities and tours of local farms. Produce is purchased from local farms as much as possible; in the first eight weeks of the program, more than $4,500 worth of fruits and vegetables were purchased from local farms. As more funds become available, the goal of the community organization is to open a salad bar in every school in the district.
"We've seen in Santa Monica and in Berkeley that getting fresh produce into the schools also benefits small- and medium-sized farms," says Gail Feenstra, SAREP food-systems analyst. She is evaluating the salad bar through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems. "It’s exciting for our statewide program to be involved in this Davis effort to help kids eat well and see where their food comes from." SAREP has funded a related report, "Healthy Farms, Healthy Kids."
Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr, a Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist at UC Davis, also is doing an overlapping evaluation for the project for the California Department of Education's SHAPE Program to encourage healthy eating and improve student nutrition through farmers' market salad bars and school gardens. Carol Hillhouse, director of the UC Davis Children's Garden at the Student Experimental Farm, is coordinating teacher training for the school gardens through the SHAPE grant. Additionally, the California Integrated Waste Management Board, is funding projects aimed at stimulating composting projects and reducing waste from lunch programs. Worm composting projects are in place at both Pioneer and César Chávez elementary schools.
Electronic images of salad bar activity and student gardens can be obtained from Lyra Halprin at the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program at UC Davis, (530) 752-8664 or lhalprin@ucdavis.edu.
Media contacts:
Lyra Halprin, (530) 752-8664, lhalprin@ucdavis.edu
