As the seasons change and the calendar turns to October, we take time to reflect on how successful Hunger Action Month was in the fight to end hunger. Nobody should have to choose between food and other basic needs like medicine or electricity and meaningful progress was made towards the noble goal of eliminating nutrition security in California and beyond.

White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health

It’s been more half a century since the first and only White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health was held in 1969. That pivotal event helped galvanize actions that included the creation of life changing programs like school lunches, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and changes to how we label foods. 

The 2022 White House Conference, held on September 28, catalyzed the public and private sectors around a coordinated strategy to accelerate progress and drive transformative change in the U.S. to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, and close the disparities surrounding them. The strategy was organized around five key pillars:

• Improve food access and affordability.
• Integrate nutrition and health.
• Empower all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices.
• Support physical activity for all.
• Enhance nutrition and food security research.

The Conference’s pillars have strong alignment to the Let’s Eat Healthy Initiative’s strategic framework and allow Dairy Council of California to bring partners’ with shared goals to the table with these similar tenants. Further proving that solving complex problems require collaboration at all levels. 

World School Milk Day 2022

Also on September 28th this year, World School Milk Day allowed Dairy Council of California to emphasize school milk’s role as a solution to hunger and nutrition security. As a whole, minimally processed food, dairy milk brings significant value to school meals. Milk and dairy foods’ unique package of nutrients, including vitamin D, calcium and protein, help to bridge the nutrient gaps that currently exist in children’s diets.¹ This contribution is important to all children, but especially those in marginalized and underserved communities who are already struggling to access healthy foods.

During the 2022-23 school year, California implemented the nation’s first statewide Universal Meals program, which ensures all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, are eligible to receive a free nutritious breakfast and lunch each school day. ² Programs like this can help achieve nutrition security by increasing students’ access to nutritious foods, like milk, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein, to support optimal growth and development.

World School Milk Day Events Across California

Dairy Council of California had numerous events throughout the Golden State on September 28 including:

• Partnering with Fuel Up to Play 60 and the Los Angeles Rams to award the Culver City Unified School District a $10,000 Hometown Grant. The event included a World School Milk Day themed Mobile Dairy Classroom event at Farragut Elementary and concluded with a check presentation to the district that saw the Rams’ mascot, Rampage, and two cheerleaders come to celebrate the district’s Hometown Grant.
• World School Milk Day-themed Mobile Dairy Classroom assemblies occurred throughout the state including in southern, central and northern California engaging students with fun milk and dairy trivia and numerous ‘milk cheers’ to celebrate the unique global event. 
  
• An activation guide was produced this year and shared with contacts throughout California. The World School Milk Day Activation Guide included activities and resources for schools and districts, student school milk pledge cards and an activity sheet for students to explain why they drink school milk. Local partners elevated World School Milk Day using resources from the activation guide:
  • On social media, Lodi Unified School District shared awareness of World School Milk Day on Instagram
  • Hollandia Dairy and six others shared our WSMD celebration post on Facebook
  • San Diego Unified students completed the school milk worksheet and student pledge cards 

The Fight to End Hunger Continues

Dairy Council of California is committed to finding collaborative solutions to help end hunger in California and beyond. We thank all of those engaging with their local communities to make a difference on an issue that affects all individuals, consuming and accessing highly nutritious and affordable foods such as milk and dairy. As we look to the future, we are encouraged by the focus at the national-level with events such as the White House Conference and will continue to help the most vulnerable California communities achieve nutrition security through nutrition education, access to culturally relevant nutrient dense foods and environments that support optimal health. You can be a part of the solution by joining the Let’s Eat Healthy Initiative, improving the lives of Californians through collaboration.

References

1. Fulgoni VL, Keast DR, Auestad N et al. Nutrients from dairy foods are difficult to replace in diets of Americans: food pattern modeling and an analyses of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey2003-2006. Nut Res. 2001;31(10):759-765.

2. California Universal Meals. California Department of Education website. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/sn/cauniversalmeals.asp. Published September 19, 2022. Accessed September 21, 2022.