Project Bread bringing healthy foods to school

REVERE-Dumping doughnuts and sugary cereals for whole wheat bagels and fruit may not be every kid’s vision of a great breakfast, but healthy foods is what students can look forward to when they take a seat starting Wednesday in their school cafeteria.Public schools and Project Bread, a Boston-based nutritional organization, are teaming up to expand their Better Breakfast program to every school. Only a fraction of Massachusetts public schools, Garfield among them, serve breakfasts offering high fiber, low sugar and fruit. Its efforts to start students off every weekday with a healthy meal will get a district-wide boost with $12,000 allocated to the School Department by Project Bread.”Schools provide 55 percent of calories consumed by children whose families struggle to put food on the table,” the organization stated in announcing the allocation.Project Bread’s research into hunger in Revere indicates one child in three in some sections of the city “live in a family unable to meet its basic need for food.”The organization’s free summer meals, served through local schools like Garfield Elementary, provided with help from the schools, save parents an average three dollars a day per child on lunch costs. Project Bread education policy director Elaine Taber said the savings are important at a time when basic food prices are rising.Project Bread spokeswoman Rita Guastella said the healthy meals are aimed at counteracting childhood obesity spurred on by an overabundance of processed, high fat food in adolescent diets.Project Bread and the city feed about 1,300 children a day during the summer at other sites across the city. The organization also sponsors The Walk for Hunger and provides millions of dollars each year in privately donated funds to 400 emergency food programs in 128 communities statewide.