Logo Contest for "Real Food for Kids - Montgomery"

"Real Food for Kids – Montgomery" is a grass-roots parent advocacy group working to promote whole, delicious, fresh foods in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

We are having a contest to design a logo for our group with a prize of $50 and invite students in the Montgomery County Schools to enter.

Logo Guidelines

The logo should contain our name "Real Food for Kids - Montgomery," no more than 4 colors and have a white background. The logo should be a scalable vector graphic in EPS format. The logo will be used online, in print and on items like t-shirts and water bottles. Flexibility is a key requirement, including the need to resize easily and to look good in black and white as well as color. No fine line or small detailed areas, as they won't translate well when the logo is reduced. Image integrity to be maintained from a size of 1" square (business card, letterhead, etc) to 8" square (tee shirt, signage) to a max of 12" (banner). The final version of the logo will need to be suitable for high quality printing. Because of the requirement to register the logo as a Trademark, entrants should take care to ensure that their entries are not in any way similar to existing logos or other copyrighted images. We advise against the use of halftones and gradients unless created inside a vector graphics program. The colors should be CMYK, no spot colors. A JPG file 1000 pixels square of the logo is also requested so that entries can be posted to our web site without the need for conversion. The logo should convey the purpose of our group, so appropriate colors and images are recommended.

The deadline for the contest is February 8, 2013. Entries should be submitted to realfoodMCPS@gmail.com by 5 p.m. on February 8 in a zipped file containing all versions of the logo (EPS black and white, EPS color and JPG color). The e-mail containing the logos should include your full name, the name to which you would like a prize check to be written in the case that your logo is selected, your grade, your school name and your phone number. By entering the contest you give all rights and ownership of your design to "Real Food for Kids - Montgomery." By entering the contest, you also agree to have your name, school and grade mentioned on our Facebook page, web site and in publicity in any media who cover the logo contest.

Please direct any questions to realfoodMCPS@gmail.com 
You can also visit us on Facebook at ‘Real Food for Kids – Montgomery.’  Thank you!  We look forward to hearing from you!

Why Aren’t I Celebrating?

Guest Post from Real Food for Real Kids - Montgomery.  Their next meeting will be held this Wednesday, Jan 23rd, in Silver Spring.

Why Aren’t I Celebrating? 

I just read an article in the Washington Post on Wednesday, Jan. 16 – DC schools’ director of food services lost his job. Apparently, their operation has been losing $10 million a year. On the other hand, MCPS Division of Food and Nutrition Services (DFNS) earned a profit last year of $2 million. Why aren’t I celebrating? DFNS takes in over $42 million in revenue each year, 17% of that from the sale of snack/a la carte items (anything not part of the lunch meal). So, MCPS DFNS earns over $7 million a year by selling what is basically junk food to 150,000 kids. Now there’s a captive market. Every day of the school year in the lunch line at my daughter’s middle school you can purchase: 7 types of ice cream/frozen desserts; strawberry flavored milk (HFCS, artificial color and flavor, 22 g of sugar); Doritos, Welch’s Fruit Snacks, Rice Krispie Treats, cookies, Fruit Wave H20 flavored water (80 calories, 20 g of sugar, the artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium); V8 Fusion (more calories and sugar than soda!), and a few other similar items. To round this out, the vending machines in the cafeteria (available all day every school day) sell: Cheetos, Cheez-It’s, Goldfish, Rice Krispie Treats, Kellogg’s Pop Tarts, Fruit by the Foot, cookies, Kellogg’s Pastry Chips, the aforementioned Fruit Wave H20 flavored water, plus a few other items.  An additional vending machine outside the media center (turned on at 2:40 pm when the school bell rings), sells Doritos, Cheetos, Cheezits, Andy Capp Hot Fries, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, M&M's, Peanut Chews, Reese's Pieces, Caramel Creams, Danish Pastry, plus a few more items.  Next to this is a drink machine stocked with Coke, Diet Coke, Dasani, Coke Cherry, Nestea, Fanta, Sprite, and Barg's Root Beer.  It's a shame for MCPS to waste all that money on nutrition education when they're modeling such abysmal food practices.  If this information concerns you, please consider joining our advocacy group.

"Real Food for Kids - Montgomery" is a grass-roots parent advocacy group promoting whole, delicious, fresh foods in the Montgomery County Public Schools. Formed in October of 2012, we currently have parents representing 25 different elementary, middle, and high schools. We are looking for at least one parent from each of the 202 schools in the county to share their expertise and passion for this issue, and who would be willing to work on a variety of topics including but not limited to: opting out of school snacks; teachers rewarding children with food; free water in the cafeteria; sugar in the schools; vending machines; and processed food. If you are part of a wellness committee in your school, or just a lone crusader, please consider joining us. Our next general meeting is scheduled for Wednesday evening, January 23, 2013 from 7:30-9:00 pm in downtown Silver Spring. For more information, exact location of meeting, and to RSVP, email us at RealFoodMCPS@gmail.com.

Healthy and Sustainable School Food Journalism Awards

The Earth Day Network, the Edible Schoolyard Project and the Berkeley School of Journalism are teaming up for a high school journalism contest about healthy school food.  For all the information go here.

Deadline: February 28, 2013

The Healthy and Sustainable School Food Journalism Competition is designed to bring the hard facts about school food to entire school communities – in the students’ own words.

What could I win? First prize: $1,500. Second prize: $1,000. Third prize $500. Fourth Prize (x3): $300
…Plus, $200 for your journalism class and the opportunity to have your work publicized on our websites and through our extensive networks.

What is it? A competition for student journalists. Articles submitted for consideration must be about the need for healthy, sustainable school food and must have been published in a school newspaper.

Who can enter? U.S. high school students ages 13 to 18.

Who’s judging? Best-selling author and food activist Michael Pollan will judge the finalists and select the winners!