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Karen Showalter's picture

Dear Test,

This is red-hot urgent! We need all hands on deck to tell Congress that pizza and french fries, five days a week, is not a menu we want in school cafeterias.

Tell your member of Congress to put children’s health FIRST by maintaining strong nutrition standards for school meals and snacks. http://action.momsrising.org/go/4582?ak_proof=1&t=4&akid=5484.None.ZJZM6p

This week, some members of Congress are trying to weaken school lunch standards. So the clock is ticking to make our voice heard.

Now is not the time to go backwards! Just last year, parents, students, and many school leaders celebrated as the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated nutrition standards for school lunches for the first time in 15 years, ensuring that students eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and avoid sugary snacks and foods that are high in fat or sodium. The vast majority of schools (90 percent) are already meeting the standards and serving healthy choices to the 31 million students who eat school meals every day.

It’s unfortunate that Congress is even considering blocking efforts to improve the health of the 31 million children served through these programs.

If we don’t act, Congress may weaken these standards and take our kids back to pizza and french fries every day of the week—instead of helping the struggling few schools meet the healthier standards, they want to lower the bar. Specifically, the proposed measures would allow schools to:

  • Exclude fruits and vegetables from meals 
  • Serve meals high in sodium and low in whole grains 
  • Sell foods full of sugar, fat and salt in snacks and a la carte lines without having to meet evidence-based nutrition standards 
  • Delay or even prevent the implementation this fall of the Smart Snacks standards, which apply to foods and beverages sold outside of meal programs

Urge your member of Congress to protect our children’s health and fight pediatric obesity by maintaining strong nutrition standards for school foods. http://action.momsrising.org/go/4582?ak_proof=1&t=6&akid=5484.None.ZJZM6p

Thank you! Together we're a strong voice for healthy schools,

- Karen, Monifa, Donna, Migdalia and the rest of the MomsRising.org team! 


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