With a Potato Expo 2016 that promises to be the biggest and best ever, one thing is for certain: You will not want to miss the newly re-imagined and interactive “USPB Expo Experience” in Booth 602, right at the front entrance of the trade show floor.
The “USPB Expo Experience” will spotlight and feature the exciting new marketing programs now being conducted by the U.S. Potato Board (USPB):
Potatoes Raise the Bar
Beginning with the trade show opening at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 12, and continuing until the 5 p.m. start of the welcome reception, Chef Garrett Berdan, RDN, a well-known and highly respected school nutrition consultant, will be spotlighting his first recipe developed for the USPB’s new School Nutrition Program, smokey chipotle potato salad. Of course, no cooking demonstration would be complete without samples available for tasting! Wednesday morning, Jan. 13, from 8 a.m. to noon, Berdan will be demonstrating and delivering the nutrition story about his French dijon potato salad.
“The beginning of the 2015-16 school year was the official launch of the USPB’s School Nutrition Program to reach the 55.5 million strong—and growing—school students who are part of the ‘Salad Generation,’” says USPB global nutrition marketing manager Meredith Myers. “This youngest generation, a cohort stretching from newborns to age 23, represents the next generation of potato consumers and makes up about 32 percent of the U.S. population. Where better to reach, teach and instruct the Salad Generation about the health and nutrition of potatoes than in their schools, where 5 billion meals are served annually?”
The objective is straightforward: to increase healthy potato offerings at schools. Ultimately, this new direction will drive new and exciting uses of U.S. potatoes on school meals. You can find a wealth of information about the USPB’s new School Nutrition Program at PotatoesRaisetheBar.com.
Potato-Friendly Salad Bar Challenge
Unveiled by USPB president and CEO Blair Richardson at Potato Expo 2015, the industry’s Potato-Friendly Salad Bar Challenge supports the USPB School Nutrition Program. The salad bar challenge itself is a five-year U.S. potato industry initiative to connect more kids to healthy potato meals in school lunch programs across the nation.
Let’s get potato-friendly salad bars and potato nutrition materials in thousands of schools nationwide. Join the challenge today and support healthy eating, healthy learning and the next generation of potato lovers.
Students in grades K through 12 eat over 5 billion school lunches each year, and one more serving of potatoes equates to 3,750,000 hundredweight fresh-weight equivalent. For every salad bar donated, the USPB plans to match the donation. Sign up today and join the challenge, or email questions to saladbars@uspotatoes.com. As of mid-November, 146 salad bars had been donated since July 1 as a result of the industry’s challenge.
Alliance for Potato Research & Education (APRE)
Joining, for the first time ever, as part of the USPB at Potato Expo, APRE president and CEO Maureen Storey and USPB director of research and analysis Ryan Krabill will be on hand to discuss APRE’s commitment to informing the conversation that white potatoes are affordable, nutrient-dense vegetables and are an important part of USDA’s MyPlate. Further, they will teach how white potatoes, with skin, provide important nutrients such as potassium, magnesium, dietary fiber, vitamin C, vitamin B6, iron. Two of these nutrients—potassium and dietary fiber—have been identified by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as being under-consumed by children and adults. For more information, please visit apre.org