Fighting Childhood Obesity: Moving Salad Bars to Schools

By Zach Friend, County Supervisor 2nd District

A national movement is taking place to increase children’s access and consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables by donating (through private sources) salad bars to schools nationwide. Known as “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools,” the initiative is working hard to end childhood obesity.

School salad bars are an effective strategy to increase kids’ fruit and vegetable consumption and help them develop healthier eating habits. New nutrition standards double the amount of fruits and vegetables served in school lunches. Salad bars not only emphasize a colorful variety of fruits and vegetables, but are also the easiest way for schools to comply with nutrition standards.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the lead federal agency for “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools.” To date, more than 3,000 schools throughout the United States have received salad bars, benefitting millions of school children every day.

Regionally, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Foundation has been working to raise money to provide Silicon Valley schools with salad bars. Last year I had the opportunity to work with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Foundation to identify a local school in Santa Cruz County to be the recipient from the “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools” initiative. New Brighton Middle School in Capitola was selected. The initiative has been so successful in the Silicon Valley, as well as at New Brighton Middle School, that the Foundation agreed to expand the program here in Santa Cruz County. Specifically, the Foundation agreed to fund a salad bar in one school in each supervisorial district here in the county.

In early December, I brought an item to forward to the Board of Supervisors to support this effort. The Board voted to provide formal support for this effort, at no local public cost, to work with local school districts to add five new salad bars in schools throughout our county.

I reached out to the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) to help select a school for our district. PVUSD was very supportive in helping me identify a school in the Aptos area and is also working with my colleague from Watsonville to identify a location in the Watsonville area.

After consideration, we chose Rio Del Mar Elementary as the recipient. The new salad bar should be placed at the school within the next few months.

To date, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Foundation has funded 56 salad bars in 54 schools throughout Silicon Valley. The Foundation expects the program to grow and assuming it continues to be successful in Santa Cruz County, I hope to expand the effort to more local schools in the coming years. It is great to have a public/private partnership that benefits local kids and is generously funded by the Foundation. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group Foundation raises funds for the program through donations and even sponsors a 5k race dedicated to this purpose.

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As always, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Please feel free to contact me at 454-2200.