Eat Real Certified

It was a great weekend in Chattanooga at #TSNA 2024! Eat Real team members Jiwon Jun and Sarah Doherty joined Milan Special School District and Trenton Special School District to talk about how Eat Real and our partner districts are nourishing students throughout the Mid-South with reimagined school meal programs and the importance of the #farmtoschool movement. Highlights: 🍎 Our team was joined by partners Vickie Dunaway from Milan and Lisa Sieber-Garland from Trenton to discuss to discuss small but impactful changes they're making to their school meals and the important roles school site staff play in their districts 🍎 We had the pleasure of bumping into friend of Eat Real and fellow USDA Farm-to-School Grant recipient, Daniel Spatz from Healthy Flavors Farm 🍎 Enjoyed an incredible presentation by Liz Clark from Forward Food about Plant Powered Plates: Nurturing Healthy Habits in K-12 Cafeterias Our team was grateful for the opportunity to provide our food service partners with a platform to share their expertise and to empower partner districts to find avenues to share their stories. #eatreal #eatrealcertified #schoolfood #childnutrition #nutrition #schoolnutrition #k12

We kicked off our School Lunch Tour Series on May 13th at Capistrano Unified School District (CUSD) in San Juan Capistrano, California. CUSD, who certified Eat Real Green last October, is the 9th largest district in California, serving 42,000 kids. Director of Food and Nutrition Services, Kristin Hilleman, and the food service team took us on a tour of their central kitchen and treated all 30 attendees to a taste of their delicious menu items! Thank you to all who attended, but especially Kristin Hilleman, CUSD’s Nutrition Specialist Shannon Illingworth, MDA, RDN, and their entire foodservice team. It was an incredible kickoff to our tour. We can’t wait for the next one! Read the blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gepW6Adc Tu David Phu Alex Jermasek Nora LaTorre Molly Daugherty Sarah Doherty Natalie Linden Kristy Khachigian Maia Meunier, MBA Jill O'Connell Dickinson Family Farms Victor Trejo, RDN Claudia Martinez Sunny R. Jimmy Knodel, MBA Ramiro Contreras Josh Cruz Greg Iorio Gila Jones Lisa Davis

Brigaid is a group of experienced chefs who use their culinary expertise to help institutional foodservice programs of all types and sizes achieve their goals. Eat Real Certified district North Monterey County Unified School District worked with Brigaid Chef Stefanie to aid them in the development of new recipes for their school food menu. The result—delicious, nutritious, scratch cooked meals.#EatRealStandards #schoolfood #farmtoschool #usdafarmtoschool #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems #MinimalProcessing #FoodisMedicine #ProcessedFood #RealFood Read Chef Stefanie's interview on the blog! https://lnkd.in/gHnd6ieV

Check out this new episode of “Small Talk” by our partner Communities Unlimited, featuring Eat Real's K-12 Program Director, Jiwon Jun! Dive deep into the heart of school food programs and discover the challenges and triumphs of integrating minimally processed and locally-sourced meals into public schools in the Mid-South and across the nation. Special thanks to podcast host, Chris Baker, for guiding this insightful conversation! Listen to the episode here: https://lnkd.in/gF9pQQr8 #thisisschoolfood #EatRealStandards #schoolfood #farmtoschool #usdafarmtoschool #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems #MinimalProcessing #FoodisMedicine #ProcessedFood #RealFood

Join us in congratulating our partners at North Monterey County Unified School District in achieving their Eat Real Green Certification! This achievement demonstrates NMCUSD’s unwavering commitment to serving nutritious, fresh and high-quality meals that support the health and well-being of their students. In the last few years, NMCUSD's Nutrition Services and Wellness staff have been able to: ✅ Cook 1200 lbs each month of responsibly raised meat ✅ Source more than 50% of produce from local farms ✅ Transition to making many items in house, including dressings, pizza sauce, pesto, hummus, & salsa NMCUSD’s Nutrition and Wellness team is going to keep building on their wins, increasing their scratch recipes and staff training, and continuing to shift their purchasing power to local, organic small farms and local businesses. Read more about NMCUSD's certification journey on the blog! https://lnkd.in/g5bEBhhn #eatreal #foodsystems #farmtoschool #schoolfood #schoolnutrition #eatrealcertified

Dive into this podcast episode of The Journey podcast featuring Eat Real CEO Nora LaTorre and Plunge co-founder Ryan Duey talking about the importance of healthy food options in schools. We're so grateful for our partners at Plunge for their commitment to the planet and in supporting schools become the biggest buyers of regenerative agriculture and responsible proteins. Responsible proteins is one of our Eat Real standards because they’re vital to reversing our health and climate crisis. Thank you Plunge for your bold support for healthier communities!  Listen to the podcast episode here: https://lnkd.in/gDswJZAR

Thank you to those who joined the Eat Real 100 this week, including our friends at Kettle & Fire for their $15K match! Your incredible generosity will help us reach our goal of bringing better school nutrition to 1M students by 2025! #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems

As America's largest restaurant chain, serving 7B meals per year, school cafeterias have the potential to make a huge impact. Help us give our kids a healthy, delicious future on a livable planet. Join the Eat Real 100 💪 🚨TRIPLE your donation thanks to our friends at Kettle & Fire 🚨 Donate today eatreal.org/power-of-100 #WhiteHouseChallenge #WHConfHungerHealth #WHChallenge #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems #schoolnutrition #schoolfood #foodsystems #powerof100 https://lnkd.in/g_UnG_K8

“I have been packing my son's lunch since first grade. Sometime in second grade, I saw a photo session the school had of their lunches one afternoon, and I thought: "We have to be able to do better.'" - Lynn Choi, Eat Real Donor and CUSD parent. We’ve pledged to help school districts provide 1 million children with delicious, nutritious, planet-sustaining meals by 2025. And we’ve committed to finding 100 donors to help us get there. Let’s show the world how powerful 100 people can be 💪 Thank you to our partners at Kettle & Fire for generously matching all donations made today May 13th, up to $15,000! Last chance to 2x your donation! Donate now to become one of the Eat Real 100 https://lnkd.in/gd8M6T3F #WhiteHouseChallenge #WHConfHungerHealth #WHChallenge #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems #schoolnutrition #schoolfood #foodsystems #powerof100

“I grew up food insecure in Oakland, CA. For me, free lunch and breakfast was a lifeline. I don’t know where I would be now without it. Serving real food in our nation’s cafeterias is the way we can nourish our youth. It warms my heart when there’s an effort to nourish our children through school food.” We are proud to work with an incredible group of chefs from across the United States who share our passion for nourishing school kids. Top Chef alum Chef Tu David Phu volunteered to co-chair our Chefs for Kids Council. Help us give our kids a healthy, delicious future on a livable planet. Join the Eat Real 100 💪 🚨4 days left to DOUBLE your donation! 🚨 eatreal.org/power-of-100 #WhiteHouseChallenge #WHConfHungerHealth #WHChallenge #EatReal #EatRealCertified #realschoolfood #SchoolLunch #FoodSystems #schoolnutrition #schoolfood