Improve children's eating habits

Decades before former President Bill Clinton got off the fast-food track for health reasons, Alice Waters built the foundation of a food revolution based on using locally produced, sustainably grown foods. In 1971, Waters opened Berkeley's Chez Panisse, and her principles aligned her with Slow Food, a movement that began in Italy in 1986 to protest the industrialization of food.Neither Clinton nor Waters envisioned that they would become crusaders to change the food habits of American children. But they are, and we benefit. Miami-Dade, the fourth-largest school system in the nation, serves more than 340,000 students. The majority live in poverty; 60 percent are Hispanic, 28 percent are African American.Studies indicate that obesity occurs at the highest rates in households with the lowest incomes: at a rate of 23 percent in those with annual income below $25,000; 38.7 percent in non-Hispanic black households. It is only right that we work to change the diet and eating habits of this student population at high risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.Miami-Dade County Public School's Wellness Policy, established by the School Board in May 2006 in response to a 2004 federal mandate, is promoting change: providing nutritious foods; physical education; health literacy and nutrition education; and school-based healthcare. The challenge is to make it the foundation of changing eating habits.Waters' Edible Schoolyard initiative does that by involving students in all aspects of the food cycle, starting with planting a school garden and growing vegetables. Her model integrates gardening, cooking and sharing of a daily school lunch into the core academic curriculum. Slow Food Miami followed her model in 2004 to seed the Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative (CNI) by helping schools start sustainable vegetable gardens.Now directed by The Education Fund, a Miami-Dade nonprofit that began in 1985 to involve the private sector in improving our schools, and funded by a Health Foundation of South Florida grant, the CNI is a comprehensive strategy to improve children's health and nutrition. It is working with second-graders at five elementary schools with high populations of Hispanic, Haitian and African-American children from low-income families. Clinton is involved in M-DCPS through The Alliance for a Healthier Generation -- a joint venture of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association to combat childhood obesity. The Alliance has made a $2 million grant over four years to M-DCPS for a system-wide Healthy Schools Program to raise the quality of physical and health education and the number of healthy food and beverage options offered at school. Waters will be at Books & Books in Coral Gables on Tuesday, reading from her new book The Art of Simple Food. Join us as we build an army of food soldiers in this revolution where a plate of delicious food from local sources is the weapon of choice. We'll know we've won when locally procured fresh mango slices appear on school lunch menus.