Washington DC - March 11 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture joined First Lady Michelle Obama in announcing the innovative Apps for Healthy Kids competition to Americans as part of the Let’s Move! initiative.

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Washington DC - March 9 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack marked National School Breakfast Week (March 8-12) by calling for national support for increased participation in the School Breakfast Program and advancing the health and nutrition of our Nation’s children.

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Washington DC - March 9 - The fifth edition of the Power of Meat, a joint study by the American Meat Institute and the Food Marketing Institute, finds that the recession is continuing to impact food purchasing and consumption behavior, including the meat department.

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Washington DC - March 1 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the USDA will donate more than 100,000 tons of U.S. agricultural commodities valued at nearly $170 million in fiscal year 2010 under the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.

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Washington DC - March 1 - Agriculture Deputy Secretary Merrigan announced the availability of $5 Million in funding for the Farmers Market Promotion Program with a goal of improved food access in local, rural and underserved communities to promote the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms.

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Washington DC - February 26 - Roger Beachy, director of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture announced a new grant program to develop healthier food products for humanitarian assistance programs.

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Washington DC - February 25 - USDA officials highlighted one of its newest web-based mapping tool, Your Food Environment Atlas, which will enable researchers, policy makers, and the public to find information on a range of factors that affect access to healthy, affordable food, and will allow users to map the data by county.

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Washington DC - February 24 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke at a National Press Club luncheon to highlight the Obama Administration’s priorities for the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act to improve the health and nutrition of our nation’s children.

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Washington DC - February 23 - Public health officials and health care providers need to step up their efforts to reduce Americans’ increasing rates of high blood pressure, which triggers more than one-third of heart attacks and almost half of heart failures in the United States each year, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

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Washington DC - February 22 - Marking one year of the Recovery Act, USDA received funding to provide food to local food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens through the Emergency Food Assistance Program. Local school systems were also beneficiaries of funding in an effort to enhance the nutritional quality of school meals.

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Washington DC - February 22 - The Obama Administration released details of an over $400 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which will bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved urban and rural communities across America.

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Washington DC - February 19 - Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack unveiled the latest data on U.S. food availability per capita in a USDA database that researchers, policymakers, media, and marketers use to gauge consumption of individual foods and food groups.

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Washington DC - February 12 - Eating chocolate may lower your risk of having a stroke, according to an analysis of available research just released and to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto.

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Washington DC - February 10 - First Lady Michelle Obama announced an ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight and unveiled a nationwide campaign – Let’s Move – to help achieve it.

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Washington DC - February 5 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced several new initiatives to assure the safety and quality of food purchased by USDA for the National School Lunch Program and other food and nutrition assistance programs.

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