This week, the New York Daily News profiled the Food Bank’s CookShop program, citing it alongside the Let’s Move! campaign as the type of nutrition education initiative that helped contribute to the city’s 5.5 percent decline in childhood obesity over the last five years — the biggest decline of any major city. CookShop “does much to shatter the myth that becoming a healthy eater means renouncing the food you enjoy and grew up with,” columnist Albor Ruiz wrote. This year, 35,000 New Yorkers will take part in CookShop workshops. The Associated Press reported that schools across the country are increasingly taking advantage of federal funds to provide dinner options for their neediest students. Recognizing how much children rely on school for their nutrition, the Obama administration is considering stricter rules on school vending machines. The New York Times invited experts to debate the redraft of the farm bill, which sets funding and policy for food stamps, emergency food and nutrition education programs like CookShop. And The Atlantic argued that access to good, healthy food is a basic human right.

The Food Bank For New York City’s CookShop program on the ‘Move!’ in battle against obesity, Daily News, 2/19
Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign against the country’s obesity epidemic is a great, urgently-needed initiative. But in New York, the First Lady’s program is not the only game in town. Actually, CookShop, a program established by the Food Bank For New York City that incorporates nutrition education into a child’s core curriculum in the city’s public schools, has been around for 18 years with great success.

More public schools dish up 3 meals a day, Associated Press, 2/18
With breakfast and lunch already provided for poor students, many children now are getting all their meals at school. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2010, provides federal funds for the after-school dinner program in areas where at least half the students qualify for free or reduced price lunches. The Congressional Budget Office estimates there will be almost 21 million additional suppers served by 2015 and that number will rise to 29 million by 2020.

New Guidelines Planned on School Vending Machines, New York Times, 2/20
The Obama administration is working on setting nutritional standards for foods that children can buy outside the cafeteria. With students eating 19 percent to 50 percent of their daily food at school, the administration says it wants to ensure that what they eat contributes to good health and smaller waistlines. No details of the proposed guidelines have been released, but health advocates and snack food and soft drink industry representatives predict that the rules will be similar to those for the government’s school lunch program, which reduced amounts of sugar, salt and fat.

The Farm Bill, Beyond the Farm, “Room For Debate”, New York Times, 2/21
The Farm Bill, being debated in the Senate this month, is felt far beyond the cornfields of Iowa. It’s about what we grow, but it’s also about what we eat and how we live. On the potato chip aisle, Americans are seeing the farm bill’s market pressures. On the scale at the doctor’s office, we are seeing its health effects. It fuels the growth of agribusiness, and also sustains small farms. It dictates foreign food aid, school lunches and nutrition programs like food stamps. It can encourage stewardship of the land, or not.

Access to Good, Healthy Food Should Be a Basic Human Right, The Atlantic, 2/22
A new food system is now emerging, as more Americans see what's happening, understand the consequences -- and start to take action. Perhaps the most important change is a new attitude toward food, a change in mindset. Instead of being passive consumers, eating the junk food marketed on TV, millions of people are educating themselves, changing what they eat and where they buy it. They are becoming empowered.