HealthyPlanet -HSLP

Dear HealthyPlanet Members and Friends,

You're invited to our next monthly Healthy School Lunch Program (HSLP) Action Meeting. These meetings are an opportunity for us to jointly create a plan and provide an ongoing support system to aid you in making a difference in your school's lunch program. We have been helping people to create this kind of powerful change for the over a decade.

Every major health organization in America is stressing the urgent need for nutritional education in schools. Part of this urgency is the result of the “obesity epidemic” in America. The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased threefold or more over the last 30 years. During roughly the same time period, consumption of fast foods by children has increased by a stunning 500% and junk food advertising aimed at children continues unchecked. This has raised serious public health concerns that need to be addressed.

Our Healthy School Lunch Program is designed to educate parents, administrators, students and entire communities on the importance of healthful food choices and the dangers of junk food. We empower community members to take an active role in creating powerful changes in their districts. Our staff members have implemented this program in dozens of schools across Long Island and NYC since 1995.

Our three-tiered approach to helping schools improve their lunch offerings focuses on:

educating parents, teachers and administrators about the powerful effects that food choices have on children's current and future health—empowering them to make informed decisions about healthy food choices for their children.
motivating students to see through junk food advertising and to make nutritionally sound food choices.
assisting food service directors and companies in making more healthful food choices available.

We believe that healthful food options need to be the norm in school food offerings so that those parents who are educated about healthy eating are not forced to brown-bag it.

We believe that school food offerings should represent the best of what we know about nutrition.

We believe that each parent can play a major role in making a difference in their school districts and in so doing, they become part of a massive, nation-wide effort.

Most school districts would like to improve their school lunches, but budgetary constraints together with an apparent lack of community support make that important task difficult. We're here to help. Call us at 631 421-5591 to find out how you can be part of the solution.

Join us. We can help you be a part of the solution!

Sincerely,
Bob DiBenedetto
Chair, HealthyPlanet
Director, Healthy School Lunch Program
hslp@healthy-planet.org