Shame on me — I haven’t awarded a Titanium Spork Award for a long time. You probably have been wondering why I haven’t mentioned the awards in awhile. Well, Dana Woldow from peachsf.org, who won one of the more recent awards, suggested that I work on putting some kind of logo together. What a great idea! So I emailed the designer who developed my header logo and I have been waiting for her to design some spectacular, but I think she’s too busy. If you know of someone who would be available and has graphic design experience, please let me know.
Titanium Spork Awards are given to people working diligently to change school food in big and small ways. I developed the award because I didn’t see anything like that out there and I wanted people committed to reform to receive something tangible for their efforts. However, I didn’t know enough about the school food reform movement to decide on my own who deserved this honor. That’s where you guys came in. All of the recipients were nominated and voted on by Fed Up With Lunch readers. Previous Titanium Spork Award winners included:
April 2010 – Jamie Oliver, Food Revolution
May 2010 – Lisa Suriano, Veggiecation
June 2010 – Laura De Santis, Marblehead Community Charter Public School
September 2010 – Dr. Susan Rubin, Better School Food
October/November 2010 – Ed Bruske, The Slow Cook
December 2010 – Dana Woldow, PEACHSF.org
January/February 2011 – Ann Cooper, Renegade Lunch Lady
It all started when I joked about titanium sporks in a blog post about sporks and all of a sudden I got an email from ThinkGeek (the company that sells them). It just goes to show you, you never know who is reading! They sent me some sporks and I wanted to give them away. When I said that I wanted to continue the award, they sent me more sporks. By the way, I’m a big fan of titanium sporks — they are so light and fun.
Please nominate a candidate for this summer’s Titanium Spork Award by making a comment below this post with the nominee’s name.
Here’s a link to a friend with graphic design experience. This is his facebook page, and you can link directly to his website from there.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Print-Market-Direct/144769675595916?sk=info
Can I nominate Veggie U? I visited them this spring as a part of a project on my blog (http://www.jennahsgarden.com) and was very impressed. They’ve designed a program for classrooms that integrates science and healthy eating, and are a nonprofit. They had kids excited about eating micro-corn-stalks!
http://www.veggieu.org/index.php
I have a friend that does graphic design, here’s his site.
http://www.qabria.com/
He’s got more up to date stuff at home that’s not on his site that he can email you to look at.
I would like to nominate food blogger and activist parent Jenna Pepper from Food With Kid Appeal
http://www.foodwithkidappeal.com/aboutMe.htm
Jenna has been active at her own child’s school organizing and running pilot programs to get high sugar food out of the school meals and promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables. One great example is the Eat to Learn curriculum that she helped create and implement. As a result, raw broccoli consumption skyrocketed 80% and fresh fruit consumption is up 14%.
Read more about Eat to Learn here
http://tinyurl.com/3e4w2pl
Jenna also ran a very successful breakfast pilot last year which demonstrated that breakfast participation would not decline even if the popular highly sweetened cereals and chocolate milk were replaced with a choice of either a hot breakfast or plain Cheerios, fresh fruit, and white milk. Read more about that pilot here
http://tinyurl.com/3vs4obw
In my 10 years of working as an advocate for better school food, I have met few parents as inspiring as Jenna is; her commitment to better nutrition for children, and her willingness to persevere even when faced with bureaucratic challenges, make her the perfect candidate for a Titanium Spork!
Hello, I think this is a great idea. I also have used the “spork” idea as well. So here comes the confession, I stole a sterling silver spork from a conference once. Since most all FS operations know what a “spork” is, this is perfect. I mountd the “spork” on a plaque and gave it to the winning school on a quarterly basis. Along the same lines of “making the difference”, I based it on Q3; quality of food, quality of service, quality of operations.
Good Day~
I know there are many operators that are doing a great job of “making a difference”. School Food Service has become a hot topic in media now.
I would like to nominate food blogger and activist parent Jenna Pepper from Food With Kid Appeal
http://www.foodwithkidappeal.com/aboutMe.htm
Jenna has been active at her own child’s school organizing and running pilot programs to get high sugar food out of the school meals and promote the consumption of fruits and vegetables. One great example is the Eat to Learn curriculum that she helped create and implement. As a result, raw broccoli consumption skyrocketed 80% and fresh fruit consumption is up 14%.
Read more about Eat to Learn here
http://tinyurl.com/3e4w2pl
Jenna also ran a very successful breakfast pilot last year which demonstrated that breakfast participation would not decline even if the popular highly sweetened cereals and chocolate milk were replaced with a choice of either a hot breakfast or plain Cheerios, fresh fruit, and white milk. Read more about that pilot here
http://tinyurl.com/3vs4obw
In my 10 years of working as an advocate for better school food, I have met few parents as inspiring as Jenna is; her commitment to better nutrition for children, and her willingness to persevere even when faced with bureaucratic challenges, make her the perfect candidate for a Titanium Spork!
Another vote for Jenna Pepper!
I’d happily second the nomination of Jenna from Food with Kid Appeal! As a fellow Houston area parent of kids in public school, and as someone who is also active in school food reform in this area, I’ve been really impressed by Jenna’s self-led efforts to get her school to make positive changes, sometimes against a lot of resistance. And her blog is a great resource. Go Jenna!
We here at Central third the nomination of Jenna from Food with Kid Appeal! She not only has a great opinion, but is doing wonderful things to get the word out to others. Plus she’s always posting great info for us to share with our customers in schools all over the place!
Add my vote for Jenna Pepper, too. Jenna is an inspiration not only because of her tenacity in improving school food in her district and sharing that experience with others, but also because she respects kids’ palates and knows that children are capable of understanding, appreciating and choosing real food.