Committed to increasing healthier options for students, Dole Food Company and Meijer have partnered to donate salad bars to public schools in Detroit, Cincinnati and South Bend, Ind. These self-serve produce bars will feature a wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables, to boost new choices for students at breakfast and lunch.
The salad bars were arranged through a partnership with the United Fresh Foundation to support the organization’s Let's Move Salad Bars to Midwest Schools initiative, a new multi-year campaign aimed at increasing produce consumption in children by donating salad bars to schools in six Midwest states: Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. The Midwest effort is a special campaign under the umbrella of the national Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative, which has donated salad bars to more than 2,800 schools nationwide.
New USDA nutrition standards for school lunch require schools to dramatically increase the amount and variety of fruits and vegetable served to students each day, and salad bars are the easiest way for schools to meet these requirements. Research and experience in schools across the country demonstrate that children significantly increase their fruit and vegetable consumption when given a variety of choices in a school salad bar. When offered multiple fruit and vegetable choices, children respond by incorporating greater variety and increasing their overall consumption.
