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USDA Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Julie Paradis today highlighted the Obama Administration’s priorities for improving school meals and the health of children across the nation.

The call came during a roundtable discussion at the annual Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) National Professional Association Conference in Charleston.

Cayenne Walters might not know it, but she is on the front lines of a battle.

A seventh-grader at King Middle School, she says she wants more healthful choices in her school cafeteria's offerings.

"I have to stay fit," she said. "There should be more healthy food, especially on the salad bar, like cucumbers and tomatoes."

A bill before the U.S. Senate is bolstering the fight against childhood obesity by setting new national nutrition standards for all foods sold on school campuses from breakfasts to vending machines.

Q: What do you think of Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move" campaign against childhood obesity? It doesn't say much about junk food or food marketing. Isn't this a cop-out?

A: Skeptic that I usually am, I have nothing but applause for Michelle Obama's decision to adopt childhood obesity as the first lady's official cause. Lady Bird Johnson's legacy is the flowers that bloom throughout the nation's capital. Obama must want hers to be the flowering of better health for our nation's children.

Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza, and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.

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Mrs. Q is an anonymous midwestern public-school teacher who has vowed to eat the rotten dreck being served up in her school cafeteria for an entire school year. Anyone who doesn't understand all the fuss around school lunches must check out her blog, Fed UP with Lunch, where she documents these unhappy meals.

WATSONVILLE — Children at Martinelli Head Start Preschool are learning hands-on that planting their own vegetables and fruits is not only fun, but will make them healthier.

"When kids have a chance to grow their own food, they're more likely to eat it," said Ana Rasmussen, program coordinator of Mesa Verde Gardens, a new local nonprofit.

The Tribune asked the five Columbia Board of Education candidates how they view the district’s breakfast and lunch offerings. Dan Holt and board members Jan Mees and Jim Whitt are vying for two three-year seats on the April 6 ballot. Jonathan Sessions and Phil Peters are running for a one-year seat. Their responses to our questions follow.

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Chef Duane Drake lines a dozen pie shells on sheet pans and begins
filling them for breakfast quiche. First, he scatters freshly torn
spinach leaves at the bottom of the shells. Then he begins cutting
blocks of Muenster cheese into cubes. He works quickly. "This morning,
I'm speedballing," he explains. Two of his assistants have been out
sick. He's behind with the prep work.

Advocates for improved school nutrition hope the Healthy,
Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a bill cleared for a final vote by the
Senate this past Wednesday, might pave the way for lunch programs
across the country to replicate the success of a deliciously successful
pilot project in Berkeley, California.

It’s been an unusually tough month for the people who make school lunches.

Sunday, six million people watched a sneak preview of ABC’s “Food Revolution,’’ a reality series in which the British chef Jamie Oliver storms the kitchens of Huntington, W.Va., to improve the town’s collective diet. (The series begins Friday at 8 p.m.)