First Lady Michelle Obama announced last week that a new public-private partnership, Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools, would make it possible for as many as 6,000 salad bars to be installed in U.S. school cafeterias at an estimated cost of $15 million. Contrary to what hundreds of irate commenters directed to Grist from a link by the Drudge Report feared, the salad bars will not be mandatory lunchtime eating for the nation's youngsters, not taxpayer-funded. If parents like Sarah Palin want their kids to eat cookies for lunch, no one is going to stop them.
Of bigger concern has been the USDA's mixed messages about whether self-serve salad bars would be permitted in elementary schools. Backers of the Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools project said local health inspectors already were citing an Oct. 8 memo from the USDA's Child Nutrition Division as a reason for declaring self-serve salad bars a potential food safety hazard and not allowing small children around them.
The memo, signed by Cindy Long, director of the Child Nutrition Division, and circulated nationwide, described only two options for salad bars in elementary schools: salads must be pre-assembled and pre-wrapped, or they must be served by an adult working behind a barrier separating children from the food.
But after I questioned her on these points, Jean Daniel, spokesperson for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) division (which governs the National School Lunch Program), said there was a third option not listed in the memo: Elementary-school children could serve themselves salad, as long as the salad bar was designed specifically for small children with a plastic barrier (aka "sneeze guard") positioned at an appropriate height.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Grist (Seattle, WA).
