8/23/2012
By Ivan Pereira
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that 57 salad bars will be introduced at schools throughout the five boroughs this school year. There are already 1,000 school salad bars and the city plans to have them installed in all schools by 2015 to fight obesity.
“Kids love salad bars in schools. I keep hearing that they are often the first choice for lunch,” the mayor said in a statement.
The food for the salad bars, which is valued at $300,000, was donated by Whole Foods Market.
Bloomberg said that although obesity rates among children have dropped over the last six years, two out of every five city elementary school students are overweight.
In addition to the salad bars, the city has instituted other plans to improve public school students’ diets, including changing cafeteria milk to low-fat.
