A blueprint demonstrating results for other schools to follow is the only way to create change, this concepts gives us hope for healthier humans in the future. Thank you!
In the picture with the young kids in the garden, one kid is filling up a watering can from a blue barrel that does not have a spigot. The water stream is originating out of thin air. Are these gardens even real or AI generated?
Constance, If you need ideas, support, assistance of any kind, please contact me. I have a B.S. Food & Nutrition, Community Nutrition from Iowa State University 5 yr degree and this is exactly what I was trained for. My education included knowing how to prepare food and cook and store, including food safety, meal planning, and creative ideas for engaging children of all ages in nutrition and program planning. Yes, it takes steps first. I have been on the weekly MAHA zoom calls every week for the past 6 months. The foods in the new food pyramid are exactly what I have been using for the past 30 years in nutrition education. Debbie Ericson at Yellowpaintedchairs@gmail.com
I want to thank you so much for your offer. We are working with the School of Lunch right now. They are fabulous. I am going to keep your information because we need more people like you! If anything comes up, I will reach out! And if you want to connect sometime, please let me know. Always wonderful to meet like minded people.
Yes, please leave me your contact information at my email address. The key to lunch is delicious, fun, and I want more please compliments. Thank you for your note Constance.
This is such an exciting venture! I pray it is successful. I have grandchildren now and worry so much about the foods they are exposed to as well as the insane number of vaccines they are required to receive. They deserve so much better. Best of luck!!!
Catherine, I have mixed feelings about this school program. Having skilled chefs cooking is great, but these kids are never going to be able to sustain healthy eating habits unless we reinstate Home Ec classes. I would have been thrilled to see these kids working to prepare meals with the chefs, planning the meals, buying ingredients for the meals. MAHA needs to address this with the public schools. We all know Laozi's saying: give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Time to make it policy.
Home ec in conjunction w PROPER NUTRITION should be taught in all schools INCLUDING MEDICAL SCHOOL! This should also include how foods are grown and manufactured.
We are taught the biochemistry and physiology of nutrition in medical school. Vitamin, nutrient, protein deficiencies; vitamin/mineral overdoses; nutrient absorption problems, etc. Doctors also get help from Registered Dietitians who are the true experts in nutrition (not nutritionists, anyone can call themself a nutritionist).
What you should actually want is more access Registered Dietitians and more funding for nutrition research, unlike RFK's cuts to nutrition research funding.
OK. Doctors need more help than just Registered Dieticians. Especially the young ones. I learned early on that I had to educate myself after some serious iatrogenic 'illnesses'. If I could educate myself than so can they. Schools teach you how to pass tests the rest is practical experience. They all need to lose their bad, egotistical attitude.
I hear you, Sonia, but if there's going to be a step it would be better to reinstate mandatory Home Ec than just having one good meal. While school lunches account for a lot, if the kid is pre diabetic and eats a low glycemic, non processed lunch, then goes home to parents who don't cook and pop a pre made dinner in the microwave and serve it with several cans of soft drinks, that can undo all the good at school. I'm amazed at how few adults cook at all.
I believe a multi-prong approach is needed. This is why the school will blend a healthy eating program, with organic culinary arts, organic agriscience, wellness newsletters for families, and some nutrition education classes.
Can a Revolutionary School Lunch Program in a Small Florida Town Change the Way Children Eat Across America?
Yes, it can and will, but it requires a lot of background knowledge. My long life experiences prove it beyond a doubt. A small example: Food grown within one mile of a golf course cannot be considered as "organically grown."
The elementary gardens are within a mile. The jr/sr organic farm is almost 3 miles. The golf course has not be utilized as a golf course for around 10 years.
Small scale home gardens, or ones like this school may not. Every piece of produce labeled "organic" in a grocery store was grown with the help of "organic" pesticides.
Here in our ag county near the California state capital of Sacramento, we have many organic farms. The local schools often serve organic produce.
Here's a proposal to further upgrade school meals so that ALL the ingredients are organic because stats from Moms Across America show excessive toxins in school food.
Pesticide and herbicide residues in food aren't easily eliminated from the body but are often stored in body fat, hence it would be wise for the milk, eggs, cheese, and meat in school breakfast and lunch to also be organic.
Furthermore, baked goods are often made with wheat that’s been sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate) a week before harvest to dry it out, and there’s plenty of evidence of the toxicity of this “safe” herbicide.
For all these reasons, we need to feed our children organic food!
Our students also need the long-chain omega-3s (DHA, EPA), which are now scarce in the American diet, as are vitamins and minerals.
The proposal describes what can be done about these deficiencies:
Hi Lauren, I am an educator and I have proposed going all organic to a school district in L.A. starting in 2019 due to the lawsuits surrounding Roundup, one of which RFK Jr. won. I would share with you the video clip, but YouTube eliminated my 5-year account in 2021 when I forewarned people about the covid shot. In addition, I addressed it in a bulletin, which went out to 7,000 educators at the NEA Annual Meeting in 2024. What I did get passed, was for legislation to be lobbied for the federal "Farm to School Program." I am now working on getting publicity amongst educators on a state level, in California, with the state teachers' union, as no new federal grants are being issued. I do see dairy and meat as violations towards other beings, though. I personally take https://amandean.com/collections/vegan/products/vegan-omega-3 for DHA and EPA. Here is the Farm to School program if you would like to share with your local school district, in case they have yet to implement it: https://cdfa.ca.gov/caf2sgrant.
If you have a chance to call me, it would be great to talk about progress on all organic meals in schools! My phone is 530 7nueve6-246threee.
You probably know that a small school district in Marin County, which happens to be in a relatively low income area, has been providing al organic meals for 12 years!!
I am aware of the school. I was outside it in August 2019 on a return drive from NoCal. I let the district cafeteria manager know about it. I had a conference call with him and a rep from "Organic Consumers Association" on Skype. I pulled over. In the end, the district café manager said it would be too expensive. We were supposed to have a follow-up meeting, but it was brushed aside, then "con"vid happened, and the district did many "non-organic" things. I'm a guest teacher, not even a contracted one. I cared enough, so I spoke out. I gained volunteer positions within the teachers unions to combat the covid injection, mainly. While I had the opportunity, I created proposals on other important issues. When I had the "Farm to School program" pass in the national union, my initial idea of only organic produce was removed because not all local farms would be able to certify. I was still glad, because some local farms are organic, even if not certified. This was the language, as found here: https://nea.org/about-nea/governance-policies/nea-legislative-program: "supports a sustainable farm to school program as a means of improving student nutrition, supporting local food producers, and providing other health, economical, and environmental benefits"
This sounds very promising! I'd like to hear about an approach to parents to gain their understanding and support of this initiative. Perhaps, at the end of this trial phase a mapping of impact on families food practices.
OFF TOPIC:
Read the EPA banned entry of a pesticide shipment. Encouraging sign the EPA is moving toward MAHA support. Maybe take note and register appreciation?
It's great that children are growing their own gardens in schools. This is a great direction for future generations to come, and a great model for schools everywhere. The issue is a lack of funding. How can schools get the funding they need for their own garden?
I think it is impossible to live up to vegan standards. I don’t see any way out of the cycle of life that Nature evolved, which requires both lions and antelope. This cycle is epitomized by regenerative farming (such as Joel Salatin et al have demonstrated) and by nature conservancy (as practiced by Allan Savory et al), which requires both grazers and their predators to be in balance.
Neither antelope nor cows fear death the way we do. Yet vegans seem to project our human capacity for anticipation onto all the other animals in our subphylum (vertebrates). To paraphrase Joel Salatin, ‘The animals on our farm have a beautiful life and one bad day.’ (Actually, it’s one bad instant.)
My main objection to veganism is that there is no way for humans to get certain essential nutrients only from plant sources, such as B12, sufficient fat-based vitamins (A, D, MK-4), long-chain omega-3s (DHA and EPA), and butyrate.
The reality of life as we know it is that death is unavoidable even to vegans. A vegan friend of mine couldn’t resolve the dilemma that her beloved feline pets could not live on a vegan diet, which is also a conflict for dogs loved by vegans.
As an extreme example of taking one’s ideals to an impossible extreme, a vegan suggested building a fence dividing Africa in half—the grazing animals would be on one side, the predators on the other.
As I witness when I visit local organic farms to buy food, respect for animals and their welfare is orders of magnitude higher on organic farms than is likely on farms rearing livestock in conventional feed-lots. In other words, the real goal in food production is to care for livestock humanely when they’re alive so that their contribution of good nutrition to us is both high quality and ethical.
The Wheel of Life on Earth is based on 3 essential categories:
● Producers: use sunlight and photosynthesis to form food that is the basis of all food chains
● Consumers: must eat other organisms (either producers or other consumers) to survive
● Decomposers: return nutrients from dead animals and plants to the countless wheels of life throughout nature.
Death is unavoidably part of that vast cycle. Care of our earth, and gratitude for our sustenance, are fundamental to human consciousness.
I'd say it's impossible to live up to the standards where we kill animals and then call it a circle of life when it's a circle of death (especially because we just don't need to cut an animal's life short. A true circle of life for them is them dying on their own from natural causes, no artificial human interference needed to be involved). I agree - a circle of life would involve antelope and lions, but we can't have that if we keep killing them for trophy hunts! What's the point of that for the 'circle of life'?
Well because overgrazing has led to desertification worldwide, so it's planting trees that is true regenerative farming, because they create microclimates to support all sorts of plants and life. From plants come animals.
It's actually carnists that project their human capacity on animals, but who project their views onto them by eating them.
We have to think - where does b12 come from for an animal? From the foods they eat! B12 comes from bacteria, so it's the bacteria in the soil and the b12 that plants absorb that allows animals to have b12 in the 1st place. In this hypersanitized day and age, most animal products just lack b12. It's the vegan food that tends to have more of it.
Vitamin D is from the sun, DHA in fish comes from algae (because again, most vitamins come from microbes), and mk-4 isn't what we should seek, because it's less absorbable. That's in animal products. The one to seek out is mk-7, which is really high in lichen and natto - again microbes.
What's ethical about animals being on a farm for a human's whim?
We can avoid a whole lot of death based on what we eat and you know that.
Yes, yes. YES! Children deserve to be provided with the knowledge needed to understand good health & the opportunity to build a solid foundation of healthy habits! I am so grateful I am alive and reading this! 💗🌱
This is a great step in the right direction. What we need next is a similar school that feeds the kids the same food but also accepts only totally unvaccinated kids to compare outcomes to the students at this school.
From scratch meals were served in my school when I was growing up. They were served in the cafeterias at the schools where my kids grew up. It all started to change when they started using one cafeteria in a district and carting the food to all the schools in the district. Then they started bringing in prepared food for ‘cooks’ to warm up. Now there’s the added responsibility of feeding students breakfast. All this to be done in a few minutes in the morning and half an hour at lunch. Most of the food goes in the garbage as the kids would rather go to recess than eat. At least in the school district where I live now that is the case.
A blueprint demonstrating results for other schools to follow is the only way to create change, this concepts gives us hope for healthier humans in the future. Thank you!
In the picture with the young kids in the garden, one kid is filling up a watering can from a blue barrel that does not have a spigot. The water stream is originating out of thin air. Are these gardens even real or AI generated?
I am the Founder of the school. I can assure you the gardens are real. If you blow up the pic a bit, you will see a black spigot.
Constance, If you need ideas, support, assistance of any kind, please contact me. I have a B.S. Food & Nutrition, Community Nutrition from Iowa State University 5 yr degree and this is exactly what I was trained for. My education included knowing how to prepare food and cook and store, including food safety, meal planning, and creative ideas for engaging children of all ages in nutrition and program planning. Yes, it takes steps first. I have been on the weekly MAHA zoom calls every week for the past 6 months. The foods in the new food pyramid are exactly what I have been using for the past 30 years in nutrition education. Debbie Ericson at Yellowpaintedchairs@gmail.com
I want to thank you so much for your offer. We are working with the School of Lunch right now. They are fabulous. I am going to keep your information because we need more people like you! If anything comes up, I will reach out! And if you want to connect sometime, please let me know. Always wonderful to meet like minded people.
Yes, please leave me your contact information at my email address. The key to lunch is delicious, fun, and I want more please compliments. Thank you for your note Constance.
This is such an exciting venture! I pray it is successful. I have grandchildren now and worry so much about the foods they are exposed to as well as the insane number of vaccines they are required to receive. They deserve so much better. Best of luck!!!
Catherine, I have mixed feelings about this school program. Having skilled chefs cooking is great, but these kids are never going to be able to sustain healthy eating habits unless we reinstate Home Ec classes. I would have been thrilled to see these kids working to prepare meals with the chefs, planning the meals, buying ingredients for the meals. MAHA needs to address this with the public schools. We all know Laozi's saying: give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Time to make it policy.
One step at a time, Polly.
Home ec in conjunction w PROPER NUTRITION should be taught in all schools INCLUDING MEDICAL SCHOOL! This should also include how foods are grown and manufactured.
Agree completely.
We are taught the biochemistry and physiology of nutrition in medical school. Vitamin, nutrient, protein deficiencies; vitamin/mineral overdoses; nutrient absorption problems, etc. Doctors also get help from Registered Dietitians who are the true experts in nutrition (not nutritionists, anyone can call themself a nutritionist).
What you should actually want is more access Registered Dietitians and more funding for nutrition research, unlike RFK's cuts to nutrition research funding.
OK. Doctors need more help than just Registered Dieticians. Especially the young ones. I learned early on that I had to educate myself after some serious iatrogenic 'illnesses'. If I could educate myself than so can they. Schools teach you how to pass tests the rest is practical experience. They all need to lose their bad, egotistical attitude.
Who better to help with nutrition than a registered dietitian?
I hear you, Sonia, but if there's going to be a step it would be better to reinstate mandatory Home Ec than just having one good meal. While school lunches account for a lot, if the kid is pre diabetic and eats a low glycemic, non processed lunch, then goes home to parents who don't cook and pop a pre made dinner in the microwave and serve it with several cans of soft drinks, that can undo all the good at school. I'm amazed at how few adults cook at all.
I believe a multi-prong approach is needed. This is why the school will blend a healthy eating program, with organic culinary arts, organic agriscience, wellness newsletters for families, and some nutrition education classes.
Can a Revolutionary School Lunch Program in a Small Florida Town Change the Way Children Eat Across America?
Yes, it can and will, but it requires a lot of background knowledge. My long life experiences prove it beyond a doubt. A small example: Food grown within one mile of a golf course cannot be considered as "organically grown."
The elementary gardens are within a mile. The jr/sr organic farm is almost 3 miles. The golf course has not be utilized as a golf course for around 10 years.
They most certainly can. A harsh and unfounded generalization.
Why not? Organic crops use pesticides too. They generally use larger doses of more toxic pesticides more frequently than conventional farming.
Bullshit
Who told you that? You should find them and beat some truth into them.
Small scale home gardens, or ones like this school may not. Every piece of produce labeled "organic" in a grocery store was grown with the help of "organic" pesticides.
BTW...I farm a bit over 1200 acres. ALL CERTIFIED ORGANIC.
Simply NOT true. I've used a toxic organic pesticide ONCE in over 40 years of organic farming.
Kudos to this team for their vision!
Here in our ag county near the California state capital of Sacramento, we have many organic farms. The local schools often serve organic produce.
Here's a proposal to further upgrade school meals so that ALL the ingredients are organic because stats from Moms Across America show excessive toxins in school food.
Pesticide and herbicide residues in food aren't easily eliminated from the body but are often stored in body fat, hence it would be wise for the milk, eggs, cheese, and meat in school breakfast and lunch to also be organic.
Furthermore, baked goods are often made with wheat that’s been sprayed with Roundup (glyphosate) a week before harvest to dry it out, and there’s plenty of evidence of the toxicity of this “safe” herbicide.
For all these reasons, we need to feed our children organic food!
Our students also need the long-chain omega-3s (DHA, EPA), which are now scarce in the American diet, as are vitamins and minerals.
The proposal describes what can be done about these deficiencies:
https://laurenayers.substack.com/p/good-school-food-in-yolo-county
Hi Lauren, I am an educator and I have proposed going all organic to a school district in L.A. starting in 2019 due to the lawsuits surrounding Roundup, one of which RFK Jr. won. I would share with you the video clip, but YouTube eliminated my 5-year account in 2021 when I forewarned people about the covid shot. In addition, I addressed it in a bulletin, which went out to 7,000 educators at the NEA Annual Meeting in 2024. What I did get passed, was for legislation to be lobbied for the federal "Farm to School Program." I am now working on getting publicity amongst educators on a state level, in California, with the state teachers' union, as no new federal grants are being issued. I do see dairy and meat as violations towards other beings, though. I personally take https://amandean.com/collections/vegan/products/vegan-omega-3 for DHA and EPA. Here is the Farm to School program if you would like to share with your local school district, in case they have yet to implement it: https://cdfa.ca.gov/caf2sgrant.
If you have a chance to call me, it would be great to talk about progress on all organic meals in schools! My phone is 530 7nueve6-246threee.
You probably know that a small school district in Marin County, which happens to be in a relatively low income area, has been providing al organic meals for 12 years!!
More info here:
https://www.consciouskitchen.org/sausalito-marin-city-school-district/
I am aware of the school. I was outside it in August 2019 on a return drive from NoCal. I let the district cafeteria manager know about it. I had a conference call with him and a rep from "Organic Consumers Association" on Skype. I pulled over. In the end, the district café manager said it would be too expensive. We were supposed to have a follow-up meeting, but it was brushed aside, then "con"vid happened, and the district did many "non-organic" things. I'm a guest teacher, not even a contracted one. I cared enough, so I spoke out. I gained volunteer positions within the teachers unions to combat the covid injection, mainly. While I had the opportunity, I created proposals on other important issues. When I had the "Farm to School program" pass in the national union, my initial idea of only organic produce was removed because not all local farms would be able to certify. I was still glad, because some local farms are organic, even if not certified. This was the language, as found here: https://nea.org/about-nea/governance-policies/nea-legislative-program: "supports a sustainable farm to school program as a means of improving student nutrition, supporting local food producers, and providing other health, economical, and environmental benefits"
Please look into veganic farming, even better. It's practiced around the word. Videos are hosted here: https://veganicsummit.com, https://veganicsummit.com/talks-2025. No animal labor. No animals used. All plant.
Veganic wins. https://vox.com/future-perfect/459417/dairy-farm-deaths-cow-manure-osha-colorado?utm_source=feedingcuriosity.com RIP.
This sounds very promising! I'd like to hear about an approach to parents to gain their understanding and support of this initiative. Perhaps, at the end of this trial phase a mapping of impact on families food practices.
OFF TOPIC:
Read the EPA banned entry of a pesticide shipment. Encouraging sign the EPA is moving toward MAHA support. Maybe take note and register appreciation?
Excellent example of changing the dietary habit of junk food to healthy food for children, and adults associated with them.
This wonderful, crucial endeavor makes me so happy!
https://www.ewg.org/
Cows' Milk is for "these" babies:
instagram.com/reel/DWCcF8bCaPp/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
It's great that children are growing their own gardens in schools. This is a great direction for future generations to come, and a great model for schools everywhere. The issue is a lack of funding. How can schools get the funding they need for their own garden?
I think it is impossible to live up to vegan standards. I don’t see any way out of the cycle of life that Nature evolved, which requires both lions and antelope. This cycle is epitomized by regenerative farming (such as Joel Salatin et al have demonstrated) and by nature conservancy (as practiced by Allan Savory et al), which requires both grazers and their predators to be in balance.
Neither antelope nor cows fear death the way we do. Yet vegans seem to project our human capacity for anticipation onto all the other animals in our subphylum (vertebrates). To paraphrase Joel Salatin, ‘The animals on our farm have a beautiful life and one bad day.’ (Actually, it’s one bad instant.)
My main objection to veganism is that there is no way for humans to get certain essential nutrients only from plant sources, such as B12, sufficient fat-based vitamins (A, D, MK-4), long-chain omega-3s (DHA and EPA), and butyrate.
The reality of life as we know it is that death is unavoidable even to vegans. A vegan friend of mine couldn’t resolve the dilemma that her beloved feline pets could not live on a vegan diet, which is also a conflict for dogs loved by vegans.
As an extreme example of taking one’s ideals to an impossible extreme, a vegan suggested building a fence dividing Africa in half—the grazing animals would be on one side, the predators on the other.
As I witness when I visit local organic farms to buy food, respect for animals and their welfare is orders of magnitude higher on organic farms than is likely on farms rearing livestock in conventional feed-lots. In other words, the real goal in food production is to care for livestock humanely when they’re alive so that their contribution of good nutrition to us is both high quality and ethical.
The Wheel of Life on Earth is based on 3 essential categories:
● Producers: use sunlight and photosynthesis to form food that is the basis of all food chains
● Consumers: must eat other organisms (either producers or other consumers) to survive
● Decomposers: return nutrients from dead animals and plants to the countless wheels of life throughout nature.
Death is unavoidably part of that vast cycle. Care of our earth, and gratitude for our sustenance, are fundamental to human consciousness.
Yup. Only a fool would contradict over half a million years of evolution.
I'd say it's impossible to live up to the standards where we kill animals and then call it a circle of life when it's a circle of death (especially because we just don't need to cut an animal's life short. A true circle of life for them is them dying on their own from natural causes, no artificial human interference needed to be involved). I agree - a circle of life would involve antelope and lions, but we can't have that if we keep killing them for trophy hunts! What's the point of that for the 'circle of life'?
Well because overgrazing has led to desertification worldwide, so it's planting trees that is true regenerative farming, because they create microclimates to support all sorts of plants and life. From plants come animals.
It's actually carnists that project their human capacity on animals, but who project their views onto them by eating them.
We have to think - where does b12 come from for an animal? From the foods they eat! B12 comes from bacteria, so it's the bacteria in the soil and the b12 that plants absorb that allows animals to have b12 in the 1st place. In this hypersanitized day and age, most animal products just lack b12. It's the vegan food that tends to have more of it.
Vitamin D is from the sun, DHA in fish comes from algae (because again, most vitamins come from microbes), and mk-4 isn't what we should seek, because it's less absorbable. That's in animal products. The one to seek out is mk-7, which is really high in lichen and natto - again microbes.
What's ethical about animals being on a farm for a human's whim?
We can avoid a whole lot of death based on what we eat and you know that.
Yes, yes. YES! Children deserve to be provided with the knowledge needed to understand good health & the opportunity to build a solid foundation of healthy habits! I am so grateful I am alive and reading this! 💗🌱
This is a great step in the right direction. What we need next is a similar school that feeds the kids the same food but also accepts only totally unvaccinated kids to compare outcomes to the students at this school.
WHAT? WE KNOW WHAT VACCINES DO! They create ADULTS. DUMMY
Wonderful concept...I truly hope it's successful!
From scratch meals were served in my school when I was growing up. They were served in the cafeterias at the schools where my kids grew up. It all started to change when they started using one cafeteria in a district and carting the food to all the schools in the district. Then they started bringing in prepared food for ‘cooks’ to warm up. Now there’s the added responsibility of feeding students breakfast. All this to be done in a few minutes in the morning and half an hour at lunch. Most of the food goes in the garbage as the kids would rather go to recess than eat. At least in the school district where I live now that is the case.