Childhood Obesity journal devotes entire issue to school food

Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal on weight management and obesity prevention in children and adolescents, has dedicated its entire August 2012 issue to improving nutrition in our nation’s schools. Its Special Issue on School Food is devoted to exploring what it takes to transform school food from being part of the problem of childhood obesity to being part of the solution.

“Our children’s minds should be cultivated by high-quality pedagogy, their bodies by high-quality nourishment,” writes Editor-in-Chief David L. Katz, MD, MPH, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. “Standards for school food should be set high, and our society should do what it takes to get there from here.”

In a guest editorial, W.K. Kellogg foundation (WKKF) Vice President – Program Strategy Dr. Gail C. Christopher places the transformation of school food in the context of sustainable agriculture and the good food movement. Gail Feenstra and Jeri Ohmart of University of California, Davis trace the evolution of the farm-to-school movement from its beginnings in the 1990s to today. Rodney Taylor, director of nutrition services at Riverside, Calif., Unified School District, discusses how his unique farm-to-school salad bar model offers an option to the traditional hot lunch.

The issue features more than a dozen articles by a range of authors with deep knowledge of school food transformation, among them Toni Liquori, executive director of WKKF grantee School Food FOCUS and Anupama Joshi, executive director of WKKF grantee National Farm to School Network. Rounding out the articles are brief reports of success stories from around the country and profiles of the shift to procuring fresh chicken and cooking from scratch in St. Paul and Chicago; a values-based supply chain for local produce in San Diego; and a school garden program in Denver.

Childhood Obesity is published bimonthly by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. It engages doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals; nutritionists and dieticians; educators and school administrators; healthcare advocates; and federal, state and local policymakers. The Kellogg Foundation has supported the journal since its inception as it reinforces the foundation’s work to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable children and families and address the root causes of health inequities in the United States.

A free copy of the Special Issue on School Food is available on the Childhood Obesity website.