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Chez Panisse Foundation

1517 Shattuck Avenue
510-843-3811

Mission & Vision

The Foundation envisions a public school curriculum that includes hands-on experiences in school kitchens, gardens, and lunchrooms, and that provides healthy, freshly prepared meals as part of each school day.

Our mass consumer culture has created an unprecedented crisis of diet-related disease among our nation's youth. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as a result of diabetes and obesity, this generation may be the first to die younger than its parents. Not only are children eating unhealthy food, they are absorbing the values that go with it: the notions that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that abundance is permanent; that it's ok to waste.

While we did not begin our work with the obesity epidemic in mind, comprehensive programs such as ours are an effective way to reach children, especially those at greatest risk. Over the past ten years, we have worked to establish groundbreaking models in the Berkeley Unified School District: the Edible Schoolyard and the School Lunch Initiative. Learn more about our work.