Who's feeding your kids at school?

From K through college, school cafeteria food has been the topic of see-sawing public policy for years, from Reagan's "ketchup as a vegetable" proclamation to Obama and McCain's competing platform soundbites.

For years parents and teachers have been seeing the disastrous effects of standard-issue cafeteria (or worse, canteen) food on kids...the sugar highs, the afternoon lethargy, not to mention the obesity and diabetes risks...made worse for those students who had little or no nutritious food at home.

What is relatively new, however, is the approach offered by nutritionist/educators such as Antonia Demas, Ph.D (foodstudies.org) and Tony Geraci (bcps.k12.md.us). Both advocate healthy, balanced lunches based on locally-grown foods, and teaching students the principles of good nutrition to enable them to make their own good decisions.

And together, Demas and Geraci will present a keynote discussion titled "School Food and Nutrition: Baltimore as a National Model for Local Farm to Cafeteria and Food Education" at the Baltimore Bioneeers Conference on Friday, 11/7.

Founder and Director of the Food Studies Institute, Dr. Demas has a Ph.D. in education, nutrition, and anthropology from Cornell University. For more than 35 years she has developed food-based curriculums and taught food studies in a variety of educational settings with people of diverse ages, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds.

She is the founder and director of the Food Studies Institute, based in Trumansburg, New York, a nonprofit devoted to improving the long-term health and education of children. Her curriculum, “Food is Elementary,” has been successfully implemented in eight Baltimore City schools and extended across the U.S. to more than 1,500 schools in 30 states. A Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Demas consults throughout the U.S. and abroad, and trains and certifies teachers as food educators.

As the food and nutrition director for Baltimore City Public Schools, Tony Geraci received national recognition in the August 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine as “the new school chef of Baltimore City.”

A New Orleans native, he has held positions as a food broker, restaurateur, and specialty food manufacturer. Most recently, he served as food services director for the New Hampshire Schools where he overhauled the menus and implemented a culinary career training program for low-income and developmentally disabled adults.

Since taking his latest post in Baltimore, Geraci has inaugurated a similar overhaul for the Baltimore City Public School menus, meshing USDA guidelines and government-supplied foods with fresh produce from local farms to create healthy, appealing lunches.

If you are a parent, a student, an educator, or if you have an interest in nourishing and empowering a healthy generation of children, don't miss this keynote.

To register for the Bioneers conference, visit http://www.cultivatingchange.org.

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