Food Corps founder speaks at Luther College

FoodCorps is an AmeriCorps program that focuses on bringing healthy foods to rural, urban and suburban school food systems that have children challenged with high rates of obesity and limited access to healthy foods.

On Tuesday night, FoodCorps founding member Curt Ellis, the Yale graduate who co-produced the documentary "King Corn," told a Luther College audience that school food service is the front line of the fight to make America's food system healthier.

The vision for FoodCorps is to recruit young adults for a yearlong term of public service in school food systems. Once stationed, FoodCorps members will build Farm to School supply chains, expand food system and nutrition education programs, and build and tend school food gardens.

The ultimate goal of the organization is to increase the health and prosperity of vulnerable children while investing in the next generation of farmers and public health leaders.

Ellis told the Luther College audience that one in three children will develop type two diabetes during their lifetimes--a result of the choices that have been made by the American food industry, which creates foods loaded with processed sugar.