Their mission: Nutrition

USA TODAY’s Nanci Hellmich talks to three women with the same goal: to make sure kids are getting more nutritious foods every day — at school, in restaurants and at home.

Sylvia Dunn calls fruit “nature’s candy” and teaches children to think of it as a tasty dessert.

As the school food services supervisor for St. Tammany Parish Public School System in Covington, La., Dunn has spent 26 years trying to teach students to eat and enjoy nutritious foods. “We are the bedroom of New Orleans, and food is very important in this part of the country,” she says.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group, has been working for years to get soda, candy, snack cakes and other processed foods out of schools.

A few years ago, MeMe Roth of New York City was so concerned about escalating obesity and the marketing of “fake foods” to children that she founded the advocacy group National Action Against Obesity. She’s a former corporate public relations and marketing executive and the mother of two children, ages 6 and 8.

Read more about Sylvia, Margo and MeMe in the complete article at USAToday.com