According to GDOE interim Superintendent Taling Taitano, the pilot salad bar opened last week to a strong and positive response from students.
Okkodo’s lunch clerk has reported an increase in students buying lunch tickets the following day as word of the salad and fruit bar spread.
Though the salad and fruit bar is a first for the school system, GDOE has already begun serving healthier meals by introducing all students to whole grains like brown rice and wheat bread as part of the National School Lunch Program.
“These new healthier changes to school lunches are just the beginning,” said Taitano.
“A salad bar in a school cafeteria provides a healthy option for students on a daily basis and I hope GDOE’s goal is to provide one in every public school,” said Speaker Judi Won Pat, who chairs the Legislature’s education committee.
With rates of nutrition-related disease and childhood obesity on the rise, Guam must implement aggressive prevention programs that begin in the home, where parents are educated and given more options when they prepare food for their children, said Won Pat.
The salad bar pilot project is part of the National School Lunch Program. The National School Lunch Program is a federally-funded program that provides low-cost or free meals to children across the country. Children who participate in the National School Lunch Program are often most at risk for the effects of a poor diet.
A national food service website states: This could quite possibly be the first generation of children in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents. It is predicted by the Centers for Disease Control that of all children born in the year 2000, a third will contract diabetes.
