School Meals Super Chef from CT Headed To the White House

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
May 30, 2010

Chef Timothy Cipriano of Thomaston, CT is the Executive Director of Food Services for New Haven Public Schools. In March, Chef Tim was one of ten chefs handpicked by the White House to meet with Sam Kass, White House Assistant Chef and Food Initiative Coordinator and the USDA at the White House to coordinate a program for chefs to adopt schools, part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move Campaign. The program, Chefs Move to Schools, will be rolled out this Friday June 4th on the South Lawn of the White House by Michelle Obama. Chef Tim will join roughly 1,000 other Chefs from across the nation to officially kick off the new program. Chefs Move to Schools, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, asks chefs from around the country to adopt schools in their communities to work with teachers, parents and school nutrition professionals to help educate kids about food and nutrition. The goal is to promote chefs as the catalyst for creating a new nation of child food advocates.

Preceding the kick off at the White House, Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger, will be hosting a Breakfast Symposium - Healthy Schools, Healthy Kids: How Chefs Can Make a Difference. Confirmed speakers include Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass, Share Our Strength Foundation and Executive Director Billy Shore, author of “Free for All: Fixing School Food in America” Janet Poppendieck, and a panel with chefs and school officials already successfully working together to ensure schools are a healthy food environment for kids.

“Systematic change in needed in this country to control childhood obesity and to educate our children on proper nutrition and choosing REAL foods. With the support of the Obama Administration, Share Our Strength, School Nutrition Association and many other local and national organizations this change has begun. Chefs are rock stars; children look up to us,” says Cipriano. “When I walk into one of my schools in my chef jacket the eyes of the children light up and I am asked if I am on Food TV, or Iron Chef. The children are interested to what I have to say, it is very easy to engage children with food, real food from local farms. Children want to learn and Chefs Move to Schools is the program to see through with the necessary change. I am very happy to be working so close with the White House to help make these changes.”