Every child at Gilroy Unified School District schools will have access to a leafy salad and fresh fruits at a refurbished or brand new salad bar starting in early November, as part of a trickle down effect of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to end childhood obesity.
“Every single school in the district will have at least one salad bar – some will have more than one,” said Executive Donna Pray of the Gilroy Foundation.
All 13 GUSD schools already had salad bars in place for at least six years, but private donations will make sure that seven salad bars are replaced completely and existing ones are refurbished. The work is being done thanks to donations from the local philanthropic Gilroy Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Kaiser Permanente and the Health Trust.
“These are either additions to what they already have or replacements to old salad bars,” said Nalani Battaglia, GUSD’s Child Nutrition Consultant.
Santa Clara County was one of three counties in California, including Sacramento and Monterey, to pilot the nationwide “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools.” Gilroy’s high rates of poverty and childhood obesity caused the city to be selected as the Santa Clara County kick-off city, explained Assistant Executive Director Gina Anderson with the Gilroy Foundation.
The “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools” initiative is supported by the Public Health Department and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson’s “Team California for Healthy Kids,” a campaign that focuses on making “healthy choices, the easy choices,” according to the California Department of Education website.
Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled, and today, nearly one in three children in America are overweight or obese, according to Obama’s “Let’s Go” website.
“There’s a lot of really good research out there that when you put these salad bars out there, kids do increase their fruit and vegetable consumption,” said Kris Vantornhout, a Health Program Specialist at the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. “Our goal is to have anyone that wants a salad bar get one.”
GUSD salad bars boast such ingredients as broccoli, carrots, different types of beans, leafy greens, apples, bananas, oranges, pineapples and peaches.
“It’s very site specific. They try to cater to what the students prefer,” said Battaglia.
The ingredients at the salad bar change daily and include seasonal favorites such as strawberries. Starting in early November, Gilroy students can make unlimited trips to the new salad bars as part of purchasing a school lunch, which costs $2.30 at the elementary school level and $2.55 at the middle and high school levels, explained Battaglia.
For Vantornhout, the success of the salad bars has a lot to do with making healthy options accessible to students.
“This is a way to help prevent obesity,” said Vantornhout. “I love that the salad bars are such a great hit with the kids.”
