NY Coalition For Healthy School Food Website

Phone: 631-525-3650
Email: amie@healthylunches.org
Contact: Amie Hamlin, Executive Director

The New York Coalition for Healthy School Food is a statewide nonprofit that works to improve the health and well-being of New York's students by advocating for healthy plant-based foods, comprehensive nutrition policy, and education to create food- and health-literate students.

They give presentations to parents, students, school personnel, and others all over New York State. They are passionate about what they do. Less than 2% of children are eating in line with the US Dietary Guidelines. As a percentage of calories, we get 51% of our calories from refined and processed foods, 42% from animal foods, 2% from white potato products, and that includes potato chips and French fries, and shockingly, only an embarrassing 5% from whole plant foods - the foods we know support good health and protect us from disease.

Click here to view a chart showing US Food Consumption by Calories.

Is it any wonder then, that 50% of children between the ages of 2 - 15 have fatty streaks in their arteries, literally, the beginning stages of heart disease? Or that 30 - 40% of children born in the year 2000 will develop Type 2 Diabetes in their lifetime (and the statistics are even worse for ethnic minorities - between 40 - 53% of African Americans and Hispanics will develop Type 2 Diabetes). This is a disease that was once called "adult-onset" diabetes and was only seen in adults. It is almost entirely preventable through proper nutrition and exercise! The rates of cancer are expected to increase by 50% by the year 2020, and children's exposure to carcinogens puts them at far greater risk than adults because of their rapid growth. Finally, 25% of children in New York State are either overweight or obese.

Please join them by signing up for their email list on the homepage of their website AND joining as a supporter of the coalition (which for the time being, is free). You can do both from their homepage.

Please get involved! They need your help. Contact them to find out how!