The United Fresh Foundation is pleased to announce a generous grant from the Save Mart CARES charitable organization to support Let’s Move Salad Bars to California Schools. The Save Mart CARES grant will provide salad bars to schools in three Central Valley school districts: Kern High School District in Bakersfield, Alview-Dairyland Unified School District in Chowchilla and the Armona Union Elementary School District in Armona. The donation will benefit 10,000 low-income students and help the United Fresh Foundation close in on their goal of donating salad bars to 350 California schools by May 2013.
”Encouraging families to eat more fruits and vegetables provides immeasurable lifetime health benefits. We believe the most powerful change starts with children. As they get excited about produce through school salad bars they will influence their family to try more fruits and vegetables at home,” Steve Junqueiro, Save Mart President and COO.
Save Mart CARES is the charitable organization of Save Mart Supermarkets that aims to support community initiatives in art, recreation, education and sports. Save Mart Supermarkets operates 226 stores throughout Northern California and Northern Nevada under the Save Mart, S-Mart Foods, Lucky, Maxx Value Foods, and FoodMaxx banners.
“We are very pleased to have Save Mart contribute to the growing momentum behind Let’s Move Salad Bars to California Schools and build on their commitment to local communities and schools,” said Tom Stenzel, United Fresh CEO. “The grant from Save Mart CARES is a great boon to our efforts to increase children’s consumption of fruits and vegetables and combat childhood obesity. Salad bars are the easiest, most effective way for schools to meet the new federal school lunch standards and make it possible for students to “make half their plate fruits and vegetables” as recommended by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for America,” added Stenzel.
The salad bars will be donated to Arvin High School, Golden Valley High School, South High School, West High School in the Kern High School District, Dairyland Elementary School in the Alview-Dairyland School District, and Armona Elementary School in the Armona Union Elementary School District.
The schools will use the salad bars every day during their lunch service to provide students greater access to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, to engage parents in conversations about healthier meals at home and to a create healthier school food environment.
Let’s Move Salad Bars to California Schools is a special campaign of the United Fresh Foundation, under the umbrella of the national Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative, of which the United Fresh is a founding partner. A press event to celebrate Let’s Move Salad Bars to California Schools will be held on May 15, 2013 at the United Fresh 2013 Convention in San Diego. California school food service directors and donors will be recognized at the press event.
United Fresh is collaborating with the California State Department of Education’s Team California for Healthy Kids, a program started by California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson to increase access to fresh foods and salad bars.
To learn how you can support Let’s Move Salad Bars to California Schools, contact Andrew Marshall, United Fresh policy and grassroots manager at 202-303-3407 or [email protected]. Schools interested in requesting salad bars can visit www.saladbars2schools.org.