Reinventing the Meal offers health education and nutrition programs for children and families with a focus upon sustainability and the local food resource chain. We are offering an innovative nutrition education enhancement program for schools that provides a skills based, experiential learning and mentoring environment for children and would like to work with your school. This project will efficiently teach nutrition lifeskills and media literacy to help youth become informed consumers of food and to address childhood obesity. It will educate youth about the food on their plate, reconnecting them to the land, the agricultural resources around them and strengthen bonds between youth and the agricultural heritage of the Earth.

The goals of this program are to foster nutrition lifeskills and media literacy - reconnecting youth to the land, the agricultural resources around them and the food on their plate, to address childhood obesity and rebuild the historical link with the land and its life sustaining resources.

The Reinventing the Meal program consists of a combination of professionally guided classroom learning exercises combined with volunteer led activities in which children become engaged in the potential of their communities to sustain and promote food resources.

The classroom content is delivered by individuals selected for their experience and qualifications in childhood nutrition. Volunteers will lead other activities including student groups called Nutrition Action Teams. These teams will use the concept of peer to peer learning to identify and pursue opportunities to enhance nutrition knowledge and behaviors among their fellow students and in the community at large.

Examples of projects that may be undertaken by the nutrition teams include:

• Working creatively with school lunch providers to enhance local food choices available in lunch programs and to improve nutrition and food service programs that provide food options which are low in fat, calories and added sugar;
  
  
• Starting school based gardens as learning laboratories;
  
  
• Establishing graphic displays and signage within the school to encourage improved dietary habits among students, faculty and families;
  
  
• Working with sports activity programs to encourage proper nutritional choices among participants;
  
  
• Evaluating the impact of nutrition on dental health in their schools;
  
  
• Mapping of community food and agriculture resources;
  
  
• Working with local food purveyors, especially those serving to children, to review and enhance their menus with nutritious choices.