The Mercury News – Sam Richards
“When Jim Houston was growing up, he said, “Eating was considered healthy.” Thousands of cases of childhood obesity and millions of skipped school lunches later, school districts and nutrition experts are working together in earnest to make sure eating really does equal good health for young students. Houston — now California’s undersecretary for food and agriculture — was at Heights Elementary School on Thursday to help celebrate “California Thursdays,” a joint project coordinated by 42 state public school districts and the Berkeley-based Center for Ecoliteracy, a nonprofit that promotes ecological education, with the full blessing of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. In Contra Costa and elsewhere, the school districts use their joint purchasing power to buy healthy, regionally grown food at the lowest price possible. For now an initiative to provide lunches on Thursdays, officials hope to one day expand the new healthier food to every day of the week. On Thursday, the gym/cafeteria at Heights was serving roasted chicken drumsticks from a Fresno County producer, as well as asparagus grown on a Stockton-area farm.”(more)