So. You've done the food shopping, the prep cooking, and the meal preparation. You served a healthy meal and you feel good about it. It was a lot of work, but you care about your children and want nothing but the best for them. Your actions are setting up healthy eating patterns for the rest of their lives.

Right?

But what happens when your kid comes home from school with their backpacks loaded with candy wrappers? And they want chicken nuggets and fries instead of the meal you've prepared. Your work is undone. More importantly, your child's health is negatively affected. Sometimes schools can undermine our best efforts to keep our kids healthy by exposing them to a wide range of poor-quality foods that you wouldn't consider serving them on a regular basis.

Welcome to the world of school food. Thanks to tight budgets, most cafeterias have to be self-sustainable or make a profit to survive. And poor-quality food is quick, cheap and profitable. Food service profits, but our children's health has become the price we pay.

Brown bagging your kid's lunch can work for individual families, but it doesn't come close to touching the issue on the scale it needs to be addressed. Candy rewards in the classroom, frequent parties loaded with sweets, food fundraisers and vending machines loaded with junk have turned schools into a toxic food environment. Kids want to fit in and they want to eat what everyone else eats.

If you're reading this letter, you know that something has to change because our kids are sicker and fatter than ever. You may feel powerless to do something about school food. And you are busy. And, thanks to food industry marketing and conflicting nutritional information, you're not even sure just what is "healthy" anymore.

We're here to help. Please use the resources on this website. Participate in our teleconferences to get advice about improving school food in your local community. And know that you are improving the health of your children, and your community's children.

Sincerely,

Dr. Susan Rubin
Founder, Better School Food