{"id":9444,"date":"2016-11-30T19:56:16","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T19:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/?p=9444"},"modified":"2016-11-30T19:56:16","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T19:56:16","slug":"school-food-gets-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/30\/school-food-gets-real\/","title":{"rendered":"School Food Gets Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\"><em><span class=\"s2\">BY LOCAL FOOD ALLIANCE<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s3\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-8297\" src=\"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/localfoodalliance-300x165.jpg\" alt=\"localfoodalliance\" width=\"300\" height=\"165\" \/>L<\/span><span class=\"s3\">ast month, the Wood River Community YMCA and Roy A. Hunt Foundation, in partnership with Local Food Alliance, brought celebrated chef, educator, author and healthy-school-food advocate Ann Cooper (aka the \u201cRenegade Lunch Lady\u201d) to our Valley to share her hard-earned expertise on improving school food.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">As food service director for Boulder Valley Unified School District in Colorado, Chef Ann has proven that a school district can serve up delicious \u201creal food\u201d and make it affordable. Under her leadership, Boulder has successfully transitioned to 100-percent-scratch-cooked meals and organic white milk; eliminated artificial colors, preservatives, trans fats and high fructose corn syrup; and significantly increased local and regional food sourcing. And they do it for less per meal than many districts (including Blaine County) pay for highly processed heat-and-serve meals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">Making the switch isn\u2019t easy, but it can be done. With this in mind, Chef Ann created Lunch Lessons, a consulting firm that guides school districts through the challenges of large-scale school food system change. She also established The Chef Ann Foundation, which provides a cornucopia of resources and grant programs to help schools nourish children with food other than cheap preprocessed commodities shipped in from afar and reheated in plastic bags.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">During her visit to the Wood River Valley, Chef Ann spent time with community leaders, heads of school, teachers, and parents; met with Blaine County School District leadership and wellness committee representatives; and shared her story during a free community talk. She inspired all with her vision of \u201ca time soon when being a chef working to feed children fresh, delicious, and nourishing food will no longer be considered \u2018renegade.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">It\u2019s a financial and social imperative to ensure our students get the highest quality food for the money spent. Together, we can make it happen. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\"><i>Local Food Alliance is a nonprofit whose mission is to create a vibrant local food system in the Wood River Valley. For more information, visit localfoodalliance.org.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY LOCAL FOOD ALLIANCE Last month, the Wood River Community YMCA and Roy A. Hunt Foundation, in partnership with Local Food Alliance, brought celebrated chef, educator, author and healthy-school-food advocate Ann Cooper (aka the \u201cRenegade Lunch Lady\u201d) to our Valley to share her hard-earned expertise on improving school food. As food service director for Boulder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-food-for-thought","category-sponsored"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}