By Living Sky and Light of Christ School Divisions

Promoting Healthy Eating

The Big Crunch Pilot Project

Mar 10, 2021 | 9:21 AM

Battleford Mayor Ames Leslie has proclaimed March 11, 2021 Great Big Crunch – Healthy School Food Day. The event is usually organized at elementary schools, but all are welcome to join in crunching for lunch.

The Great Big Crunch is an annual event organized by the Coalition for Healthy School Food (CHSF) which is a branch of Food Secure Canada.

The CHSF works to advocate for healthy school food to lay the foundation for healthy habits that will last a lifetime. Canada is ranked 37^th of 41 countries on providing healthy food through school food programs.

The Great Big Crunch was started in Toronto schools and served as a photo opportunity for Toronto politicians to visit the city’s elementary schools to see firsthand how the school food funding was used. It has grown into a nation-wide annual event for ‘foodies’ of all ages.

Every year since 2008, Canadians from coast to coast have participated for a grand total of 1, 246, 668 people crunching.

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This year both Living Sky S.D. and Light of Christ S.D. will be participating.

Students and staff are invited to bring crunchy foods to school on March 11. Schools that provide in-house food will be serving apples, carrots, celery sticks, etc. to stick with the theme of “crunching.”

The Great Big Crunch is now a national movement and an annual moment of anti-silence in which students, school staff, parents, and others create a Canada-wide “CRUNCH” to make noise for healthy school food. The “crunching” used to be coordinated across time zones, but this year’s event will occur at the convenience of each site.

The Great Big Crunch event can also be adapted for other situations, even for adults-only. Please organize a lunch of healthy, fresh, crunchy foods at your workplace, and at home!

For more information, visit the website at www.healthyschoolfood.ca/great-big-crunch. If you are interested in learning more about healthy school food advocacy locally, please visit the website of Pilot Project for Universal Lunches in Schools Inc. (PPULS) at www.ppuls.org