organic valley

Wow, wow, wow! What terrific photos you sent! What great stories you told! The school lunch challenge that began just over a month ago with an open letter to our children apologizing for the current state of school lunch ends right here, right now. Many of you have done the hard part: you've eaten lunch with your kids, taken photos, and sent them to us (so have we, by the way). You've done this in the name of research, in the name of love, and in the hopes of winning valuable prizes from great companies.

Thanks to a big national push and the large group of moms in Colorado who told us that running a school lunch contest during their kids' spring break was unkind, we are officially extending the deadline for school lunch contest entries until Friday, April 9, 2010. We will be posting our top entries and gathering votes during the week of April 12, and announcing the winner on April 19.

Click here to read details about our school lunch challenge, including rules and prizes (like lunchboxes and free organic milk from Organic Valley for a year). 

Last week, while going through a box of old things my father saved before he died, my younger brother found this old school lunch menu. It's from Valley Stream Union Free District Thirteen in NY (my family spent several years at Howell Road Elementary School in that district), and it's dated 1976. My dad was a pretty sentimental guy, so I'm not terribly surprised that he saved a menu from when we were kids.

I find the menu fascinating, and not just because there are still union free school districts in this country. I've been thinking a lot about what was on the menu back in 1976 in the context of the some of the comments you've posted related to our article "An Open Letter to Our Children: We're Sorry About School Lunch." For example, Ginger wrote:

For a fortunate few, eating gluten-free is simply a choice. For others it's a difficult lifestyle change once they've been diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, which can ranging from a mild sensitivity to full-blown celiac disease.

Last week's school lunch post, our "Open Letter to Our Children," was a direct response to the sixth graders at Minneapolis' Sanford Middle School who I'd met with the month before. Their question was simple and heartbreaking: if our communities love us, why do they knowingly feed us this junk?

The response to this post was fantastic. Many of you provided explanations, made suggestions, and shared your own views, and we at SGT were reminded once again of how much we love this community. For example, Laura wrote:

Lots of buzz at last week’s Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) conference surrounded a rather astonishing development in the organic world: the U.S. Department of Agriculture had finally done something, well, good.

After five years of debate, on February 17, the USDA had amended the standards for organic milk to reflect what most consumers thought “organic” meant in the first place. So now (or at least by June 2011, when the amended standards take effect for all suppliers) when people buy milk labeled “organic,” they’ll be getting what they paid for.

Yogurt is one of the few real foods that hasn't been demonized in recent decades. Bread, butter, milk and meat have all come under scrutiny, but yogurt has retained its standing as a healthful food. While probiotics have become trendy, yogurt has always been a great source of the live bacteria – like acidophilus – that's beneficial to our digestive tracts. Plus, yogurt is a good source of protein and calcium. So what’s the problem?

Theresa Marquez, Chief Marketing Executive for Organic Valley Cooperative, is captivating. She speaks quickly, compellingly, and passionately. Her eyes shine when she mentions a favorite book or describes the Earth Dinners Organic Valley has hosted for several years around the country, connecting people to both food and the environment. An hour with Theresa can include a poem, a discussion of politics, a newspaper article throw-down (Paul Krugman’s “Missing Richard Nixon”), a look at Organic Valley’s new packaging, and - of course - a discussion about food.

I’m thinking a lot about food systems these days. Fundamentally, there seems to be collective agreement that ours is broken (unless you happen to work for Monsanto or Smithfield), so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how we might fix it. (Jill Richardson’s excellent “Recipe for America” has a few ideas too - that and her La Vida Locavore blog are well worth reading.)

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about food systems that are:

This just in from Organic Valley, via a press release:

Organic Valley, America’s largest cooperative of organic farmers, recently won awards for its European Style Cultured Butter and Pasture Butter, two delicious butter offerings from its family of farms. To celebrate the awards—and recent health findings that butter is in fact better—Organic Valley has developed several recipes and serving suggestions just in time for the holidays.