“Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools”
Supermarket partners with Del Monte for salad bar program
The donations were celebrated on Thursday, Oct. 8 with a ribbon-cutting at Mentor High School, in front of the school’s new salad bar. The event brought together school administrators, students and produce and retail grocery executives to celebrate the donations and observe students as they used the salad bar to fill-up their lunch trays with fresh fruit and vegetables.
The salad bars donated to Mentor Public Schools are the first salad bars implemented by the school district. The district was interested in using salad bars as a way to encourage more students to participate in their meal program, as well as to meet new federal school lunch nutrition standards that require schools to serve an increased amount and variety of fruit and vegetables each day.
Del Monte and Marc’s coordinated the donations with the United Fresh Start Foundation, a founding partner of the national Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative, which works with the produce industry, non-profit foundations, healthcare partners and allied business to support salad bars for schools, as a strategy to increase children’s consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables every day at school.
To date, the Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative has facilitated the donation of salad bars to more than 4,100 schools nationwide, benefitting nearly 3 million children every school day. This includes 150 salad bars for Ohio schools. Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools supports First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative to end childhood obesity in a generation.
More information can be found online at www.saladbars2schools.org.