Rachael Ray and Senator Lobby for School Lunch

By MICHAEL BARBARO

WASHINGTON — Rachael Ray’s signature smile evaporated during a car ride to the Capitol on Tuesday. None of her trademark catchphrases — “Yum-o” or “fantabulous” — tumbled from her mouth.

Instead, she grimaced, leaned in and sounded off about the federal Child Nutrition Act and what she considers to be the government’s stingy reimbursement rates for school lunches. “Ridiculous,” she said.

“How could you go to any state in the union and say you are not for an extra couple of cents to eradicate hunger, to make our kids healthier, stronger, better focused?” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense that you would even have to have a long conversation about that, to me.”

As New York’s junior senator, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, tries to squeeze billions of extra dollars for public school lunch programs into a pinched budget, she is relying on a powerful and garrulous megaphone: Ms. Ray.

Or as the master of the 30-minute meal said repeatedly, “I am using my big Sicilian mouth.”

For four hours, Ms. Gillibrand unleashed the celebrity chef, cookbook author and talk show host to lobby lawmakers on the reauthorization of the nutrition act, which determines how much money schools are given for meals and how much control regulators can exercise over food outside of cafeterias, like the sugary snacks sold in vending machines.

Ms. Gillibrand and Ms. Ray argue that the reimbursement rate should be bumped up by 70 cents a child. That figure is unlikely to fly in the current budget, but they said they would settle for a smaller increase. (The current bill would increase reimbursements by 6 cents to $2.74, from $2.68.)

Another goal is a ban on trans fats in school cafeterias. The Agriculture Committee, on which Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat, sits, has balked, but she plans to force the issue with an amendment on the Senate floor. The Senate is likely to vote on the legislation this summer.

Ms. Ray, 41, who grew up in Ms. Gillibrand’s former Congressional district in northeast New York State, has made school nutrition something of a personal crusade. She has helped the New York City school system develop a healthier menu, creating a chicken taco dish for cafeterias using a whole wheat flatbread, roasted chicken and a ratatouille-style stew. Her latest coup was persuading the city’s schools to use whole wheat pasta in macaroni and cheese.

More at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05...sch&pagewanted=print

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There are also higher ups in the military saying that childhood obesity could lead to a national security crisis. Too many H.S. graduates who would like to go into the military are now too overweight to be accepted into the miliary.

Dawn

A few of my former coworkers got to meet Rachael Ray, no doubt. I worked for the Federal agency that administers the School Lunch Program and some of my agency's bigwigs would have likely been there.

Between Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and Rachael Ray yelling at Congress, the Govt. is going to have to get sooner or later that you can't continue to feed our children crap just because it's cheaper.