old el paso says... start somewhere fresh good morning, welcome to "viewpoint." i'm pat lawson muse. childhood hunger is a serious problem in our communities. in the washington region, an estimated 200,000 children and teens are at risk of hunger. in the district alone an estimated 75% to 80% of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals. after the blizzard officials worried shutting down schools meant thousands of students who depend on school breakfast and lunch were going to go hungry. joining us to talk about childhood hunger and efforts to promote healthy eating among our children, dr. beverly wheeler, director of d.c. hunger solutions. kim young is a culinary nutrition expert, also president of healthy little cooks, an

organization that promotes children and healthy eating. welcome both of you. >> thank you. >> it's good to see you and see you survived the snow. dr. wheeler and ms. young, after the blizzard all of the schools were closed, but as you know, many students in the city were able to eat because d.c. opened their cafeterias in about ten schools so hungry children were able to get breakfast and lunch, which had to have been a big help to the children, as well as their parents. >> absolutely. thursday when we knew the snow was coming we started to contact different organizations. we have a lot of partners. what are we going to do to feed the children. and so it was absolutely marvelous when the schools opened up on monday to say here we go, you can eat, you're going to have breakfast and lunch. >> and to my knowledge it was the first time d.c. opened school cafeterias to feed children because of a weather-related issue. >> absolutely, and it was

wonderful. you have no idea those of us in the anti-hunger movement how excited we were to hear about that. >> and ms. young also did that in prince georges county on wednesday. they were feeding lunch. in laouden county they've been doing something all along that's been helping to feed children, send food home on fridays. they send bags of food home so the kids can eat throughout the weekend. talk about the problem of hunger. so many children who only eat when they go to school. >> i know that's something i hear a lot with our partners and our sponsors, and that's why i just admire d.c. and prince georges county for opening their schools. one problem that they do have, when there's a half day on friday or no school or a snow day, a lot of these kids go through a whole weekend without eating. so it's just, you know, i commend them for doing that.

one thing that i try to work with is helping them take that food and making it healthy. sometimes i've heard that they, you know, they don't know how to cook with certain foods, or they keep making the same thing over and over again, so we try to give kids and families creative meals that they can try over the weekend. and that is a great opportunity for kids to cook with their parents, where they may not have that opportunity during the week. >> dr. wheeler, we talked about widespread hunger in this region. are we making any progress in reducing those numbers? >> i think we're making progress and reducing the numbers, but i think we need to understand a basic thing, poverty leads to hunger, which often leads to health issues like obesity. so we need to accept the fact that people need to make enough money in order to eat. there needs to be -- we have to deal with poverty. while we're dealing with

poverty, there are a number of federal programs that are here to help. the snap program, formerly known as food stamps, is a critical way to raise people out of poverty and to help families. now, one of the wonderful things that the district of columbia did recently was the minimum snap benefit used to be $16. we added our local dollars, and now it's $30. it still may not get you through the end of the month, but it has done wonderful things to improve the opportunity for parents to buy food. produce plus, we're trying to get people to eat healthy. this allows them extra dollars so that they can buy fresh fruits and vegetables. we're looking at our food deserts. those are often one of the reasons why parents, even when they have some of the money, they don't have an opportunity or access to healthy, fresh

fruits. so there once again, our children are hungry or they are not eating healthy food. >> all right. we've got to take a break. we'll continue talking about ways to reduce childhood hunger when we come back. stay with us.

welcome back. we're talking about childhood hunger this morning, and kim young, you were telling me during the break that there's some misconceptions about low

income families, how they cook and how they prepare their foods. what are some of those misconceptions? >> well, the assumption is, is that low income families don't cook. that's what we hear in the media, because we also hear to support that is that healthy eating is very, very expensive. and that's true in some regards, but the reality is, 61% of low income families cook from scratch, and they do that five out of seven nights a week. the problem that we have is the difference between the families agreeing and supporting the healthy cooking is important for their family, which is around 72% and the families that are actually cooking healthy, which is around 54%. and the reason, the number one reason they are saying is, obviously, price and access, but it's 72% is due to education. they just don't know how to cook or they don't know how to shop,

and that's where cooking matters came in and they started doing healthy shopping tours. and we've partnered with them in some areas, and after the healthy shopping tour, we actually take some of the foods that they recommend and we do cooking demonstrations to show people actually how to apply the healthy cooking knowledge that they are getting. >> then, of course, you mentioned food deserts before in communities where, you know, there's a corner store, maybe a couple of bananas there, access can be a big, big hurdle. >> we did a study, d.c. hunger solutions did a study about five years ago around grocery stores, and where they were. we worked with the feed d.c. act, which was to bring grocery stores into the food deserts. what we're finding is, it doesn't necessarily work, that we still have food deserts, so we're taking another look to see what will work in order to

encourage grocery stores. what's an alternative to grocery stores? do we do mobile markets? how do we fortify what's in the corner stores? with the healthy corner stores, with d.c. central kitchen, those kind of programs, but we have got to do something about access, because even if i want to shop, and we do like to shop, to cook at home, where am i going to get the food? how am i going to get it? >> you mentioned to me during our conversation before the show that d.c. used to be first among cities that make sure school children got meals. d.c. is no longer first. what happened? >> there was a dropoff. i think we were very excited about breakfast in the classroom, lunch in the classroom, there might be some fatigue around it, but we need to get back to it, because it is, in fact, one of the best ways, i believe, to help educate children.

because hungry children aren't thinking about anything. hungry children get sicker. hungry children are then out of school. we can do a lot around this, and it doesn't cost us anything except to make our children, and everyone around them, excited about it. breakfast is really good, it's the best meal of the day, and make it fun. >> ms. young, you're a parent, so you have children at home who can find every reason in a book not to eat the food they are provided at school or they pick up along the way, food that is healthy and good for them. what are some of the excuses you use, and how do you counter those as a parent? >> well, healthy little cooks, what we focus on is helping kids make great decisions, great food decisions. we want them to be healthy food ambassadors and one challenge we find, we as adults and grown people are working hard to get food options in the cafeteria, but there's also this point of

transition where we have to get kids to make the right choice, make healthy choices. so with that, there has to be dialogue at home, as well as in the classroom, teaching kids why they are making the right choices. and then working with kids on a buddy system. i've worked with an$@ñ organizan in harlem and they have buddy systems, and they have almost team coaches and cafeteria that sit down and eat with the kids and make it a game. and make it a game. there's a trend in social media1

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welcome back. we're talking this morning about childhood hunger and healthy eating among children, and dr. wheeler, you've mentioned that there are federal nutrition programs and everybody has access to them, but everybody's not taking advantage, communities not taking full advantage of them, many schools not taking full advantage. you have teachers still going into their own pockets to buy food to feed their students. you say they don't have to do that.

why is it more schools aren't taking advantage of the federal nutrition programs? why aren't more communities taking full advantage? >> i think one of the challenges we have, particularly in the classroom with some teachers, many teachers understand students need to eat in order to be able to learn, but we pressure our teachers into we have common core, i have to teach, i have tests, i'm going to test them, i need to teach them, i need to feed them, too. what else am i supposed to do, we need to make it and we have an opportunity to make it so that teachers can feed and teach. okay, we're not -- because we're going to make the food available. breakfast and lunch, snacks in the afternoon, after school programs, and so that's what we get to do, and make them more excited about it. >> ms. young, there are debates actually in classrooms about whether the feeding should take place in the classroom or in the

cafeteria, because there's so many reasons kids don't eat, even though it's available. there may be a stigma, you mentioned boys don't want to be seen eating salads. there are teachers who, although their suggestions feeding them in the classroom might help kids deal with stigmas, teachers don't want to deal with, you know, the disruption and the mess, and as you said, dr. wheeler, they have so many other things to deal with. how do you sort of neutralize all of these issues, get boys to eat salad, and deal with the stigmas that children from low income families do have to deal with? >> i think the reality is, we just need to feed our kids. we need to make food accessible for them and not worry about everyone's opinion is, because if we sat and listened to everyone's opinion, nothing would get done. and then we need to go from there. first we need to make it accessible, then we need to help teach the kids how to make the

healthy choices. my boys, i told you i have six kids, five boys and one girl, and i work with a lot of boys and girls, and a lot of teenagers don't like to eat salads. and -- >> it's not cool? >> well, you know, i think we're getting past the uncool salad phase, you know, when it was first rolled out a few years ago, salad bars in the cafeteria, i don't think that's it. i think that we need to be -- if we want to have a debate, let's have a cleaning debate. imagine you going through a salad bar at a restaurant and you see two people ahead of you grabbing the lettuce with their fingers or picking their nose and grabbing a grape, or not using the tongs, then it's your turn. would you want to eat that salad? we need to pull together to make sure not only are we making it accessible, but we're making food appetizing and good and we're having conversations, hey, what is this grape tomato do for

you, for your body, for your brain, you know, versus -- or a soda versus water. healthy little cooks has a program called the seven day healthy cooking challenge, and i created it because i work with low income schools that couldn't afford food and education and this was ten years ago, and i wanted a program that even if you don't have healthy food or food accessible in the classroom that we're equipping these children to make the right decision, so we go through kitchen safety and gardening, we talked about being able to take a ten-cent fee and go home with a styrofoam cup and see basil grow and start appreciating healthy food. so when you have healthier options, you as a child will make those decisions that are good for your body. >> in the meantime, dr. wheeler, there are programs like grab and go and second chance. what are they? >> so, one of the things, particularly with teenagers or

high school students, they are not going to necessarily sit in a classroom and eat this, or they may be late, or they may be doing something before school. grab and go, you come in the front door of the school, there's a container full of food, grab your milk, go straight to class. this takes care of some of the issue about how long is it going to take the students to come up from the cafeteria where we traditionally serve breakfast. second chance, you come in really late, after breakfast is technically over, yet you also still get to eat. we have got to provide food. we have got to have the access at all points, when they eat, how they eat. one of the things i would love to work on, particularly for the summer meals, is we have metropolitan police department, they do midnight basketball, why can't we feed the kids then? okay, let's figure out, feed

them where they are. >> any time is a good time. >> feed them. >> got to take a break. we'll be right back. here in vineland, home of progresso, we love all kinds of chicken soups... but just one kind of chicken. white breast meat chicken every time. so if you're not going to make your own chicken soup tonight, do what we do...make it progresso. look at this sweet face.

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president obama last week asked for $12 billion to feed low income students in schools over the summer. it would be a ten-year program. dr. wheeler, you were at the white house for the announcement. >> and it is wonderful. once again, access to food is really important. we understand the importance of students eating, i mean, of young low income students eating. it's got to be one of the scourges of our nation.

>> how would that program work? >> so in the summer, one of the things that we have is the students have the summer meals program, but parents still need more money, so you get some additional funding with your snap ebt program, or we try to also have universal food, so it doesn't sort of stop at the end of the school year, you also have your summer meals program, which is really important. so it's a support for the summer meals program. >> and the parents would get debit cards, money placed on debit cards that can only be used at grocery stores? >> wherever our ebt cards are used, so we in the district of columbia, we've worked to have them used at the farmers markets, different places that you can use your ebt card. this way they don't have to ask for the extra funds, the funds are automatically put on their cards for the summer. so that's critical. >> ms. young, you've written a book entitled "five minute

lunchbox." what's it about? >> it's a journey of a mom trying to make healthy lunches for her kids and spending an hour trying to figure out what's going on. i wrote the book for anyone trying to attack healthy lunches, and the premise is, you can create a healthy lunch in five minutes or less, and it's four weeks of lunches. there's prep work, nutritional information, and for the picky eaters, there's a tip for every day. >> i was going to ask you about that. my sister has three children with very different appetites and we both learned that children like what they like and they hate what they hate. how do you train children's taste buds? >> children are visual learners, and they are hands-on learners for the most part, so you have to start incorporating vegetables in the foods that you want them to eat and have them throw it in so they see it's going in, so when they see it in raw form they won't freak out. and eventually after you start decreasing the sugar and increasing the vegetables, they

are going to start having cravings for healthier food. >> you agree with that? >> oh, absolutely. >> carrots and broccoli? >> absolutely. as i mentioned, we have a lot of partners. fresh farms is one of our partners, and in the schools they have cooking programs, and children have gardens in some of the schools, i think they are in six schools now. i went over and saw one of the cooking demonstrations, the students were learning about fractions, they are learning about all sorts of things, and they are excited about cooking and they have really good food. >> all right. well, it is a challenge, but we can accomplish it one step at a time. dr. beverly wheeler and kim young, thank you so much. and thank you for being with us. that's "viewpoint." i'm pat lawson muse. stay with us for news 4 today.

right now on "news 4 today," the party is over. police break up a big group of people setting up road blocks. kidnapped and found dead, the heartwrenching end for a missing 13-year-old girl. and big round of applause, say good-bye to the cold. yes! we're tracking a major warm-up and shaome showers, too, that could cause trouble in the week ahead. good morning. welcome in on this sunday morning to "news 4 today." i'm adam tuss. >> and i'm angie goff. it is so crazy that we go one week discussing the winter storm to talking about