After presenting last week at United's congressional salad bar briefings and meeting with their elected officials on Capitol Hill, United's top salad bar advocates knew there was still work to be done.       

The group, comprised of Dr. Wendy Slusser, medical director for the UCLA Fit for Healthy Weight Program, Harvinder Sareen, Ph.D., director of clinical programs at WellPoint Inc.,  Esperanza Zendejas, Ed.D., superintendent of the Alisal Union School District in Salinas, Calif., and Linda Moore, founder and executive director of D.C.'s Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School stayed in Washington on Friday to meet with high level officials at USDA's Food and Nutrition Service as well as with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack's special assistant, David Lazarus. In these meetings, the group presented evidence that school salad/fruit and vegetable bars are an effective strategy to increase children’s fruit and vegetable consumption.  Drs. Slusser and Sareen presented the positive findings from their research with several Los Angeles Unified School District schools, while Dr. Zendejas and Moore provided evidence of increased fruit and vegetable consumption due to salad bars in their schools before officials at USDA, the agency responsible for administering child nutrition and school feeding programs.

United Fresh organized these briefings to educate key stakeholders about the Institute of Medicine's recent report recommending increasing the amounts of fruit and vegetables served in school meals, and United's child nutrition priorities for the 2010 Child Nutrition Act, scheduled to be reauthorized by Congress next year.