Labor Day is synonymous with the picnic. This year, as you make plans and begin to draw up a menu, put a spin on the celebration: Gather friends and family at Fairmont Elementary School for a worthy cause—Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch campaign. Showing your support for this movement means you believe that when our children are at school they should be fed tasty, nutritious meals instead of high-calorie, high-fat fast food. As the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act nears, Slow Food USA is asking Congress to consider the following improvements to school lunch programs:

Increasing school lunch reimbursements by $1 per child per day Protecting against food that threatens children’s health Teaching children healthy habits that will last a lifetime

If this is important to you (and given our country’s escalating obesity rates and diabetes epidemic, it should be), sign the online petition and show up at Fairmont Elementary with a homemade picnic lunch. The event is sponsored by the Denver chapter of Slow Food, and it’s one of more than 250 eat-ins taking place across the country on Monday. Bonus: Read our interview with Ann Cooper, a chef who has overhauled school lunch menus across the country. Now she’s doing it in Boulder. Noon to 3 p.m., 520 W. Third Ave.

Amanda M. Faison
Amanda M. Faison
Freelance writer Amanda M. Faison spent 20 years at 5280 Magazine, 12 of those as Food Editor.