Celebrity Chefs Create Healthy School Meal Recipes to Help Reduce Childhood Obesity

Alliance for a Healthier Generation Expands Celebrity Chef Recipes with Reed Alexander and Lorena Garcia in 2012

(PALM SPRINGS) January 17, 2011 – iCarly star Reed Alexander and world-class chef Lorena Garcia have pledged to collaborate with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to create healthier school meal recipes that will be available for free to any school in the country. The announcement was made today by Chelsea Clinton at the Health Matters: Activating Health in Every Generation, a special conference kicking off The Humana Challenge this week in Indian Wells, CA.

“This announcement builds on the successful launch of healthy school lunch recipes from Rachael Ray and the Alliance last fall,” said Ms. Clinton at the event. “Since the launch, thousands of schools have joined the Alliance’s Healthy Schools Program. We are grateful to Reed and Lorena for lending us their talents and for helping inspire thousands of students, parents, teachers and schools to take action and make health a priority.”

Recipes created by Reed Alexander (www.kewlbites.com), celebrity food star and breakthrough actor, best known for starring as Nevel Papperman on Nickelodeon’s #1 rated comedy iCarly, will be available to schools across the country in February.

Lorena Garcia, one of the country’s leading Latina chefs, will be piloting her recipes in select schools this spring and will officially launch them nationwide in the fall of 2012.

“With students often consuming up to 50 percent of their daily calories at school, school meals are one of the clearest avenues to positively impact the health and nutrition of America’s youth,” says Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of the Alliance. “We are excited to have Reed and Lorena’s assistance and culinary expertise to create healthy, easy-to-prepare recipes for schools and commend them both for their commitment to the health of students across the country.”

Parents, school administrators and food service professionals can access any recipes created by the Alliance by visiting the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s website at www.healthiergeneration.org and joining the Alliance’s Healthy Schools Program.
The Healthy Schools Program currently supports more than 14,000 schools and more than nine million students nationwide and is available to anyone—at no cost—who is interested in improving health and wellness initiatives on a school campus. Healthy Schools Program members have access to hundreds of resources including technical tools that enable anyone who makes purchasing decisions about school meals to implement and promote healthier options for students.

About the Alliance for a Healthier Generation
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation works to address one of the nation’s leading public health threats – childhood obesity. The goal of the Alliance is to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity by 2015, and to empower kids nationwide to make healthy lifestyle choices. Founded in 2005 by the American Heart Association and William J. Clinton Foundation, the Alliance works to positively affect the places that can make a difference to a child’s health: homes, schools, doctor’s offices and communities. For more information please visit: HealthierGeneration.org.