Food Blogger, 9, Prompts School-Lunch Overhaul

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Martha's blog only started at the end of April - that's 6 weeks ago and more than 3,000,000 views later. She photographed and rated each meal, carefully scoring for taste, health rating, number of mouthfuls -- and "pieces of hair" (usually none). Other children from around the world -- U.S. students among them -- soon started to e-mail her their own school lunch descriptions and photos. Through her blog, Martha has raised more than £32,000 ($50,000) for a Scottish charity, Mary's Meals, which, she quotes her grandpa as saying, "feeds over 600,000 children in 16 countries, including Malawi, Liberia, Kenya and Haiti." The sum, far more than her original £7,000 target, is enough to set up a new kitchen at a Malawi school and feed all its 2,000 pupils for a whole school year, said Abeer Macintyre, a Mary's Meals spokeswoman. The charity is "flabbergasted" by the response to Martha's blog -- and delighted to see the donations on the schoolgirl's Just Giving page shoot up by thousands of pounds in a day, she told CNN. "We are wondering where it might end and how many children are going to be fed as a result of Martha and her supporters," she said, adding that the Payne family were long-term backers of the charity. Mary's Meals' determination to make sure as much money as possible is turned into food for the world's neediest children means it doesn't spend money on advertising, so the exposure through Martha's blog is a great way to raise global awareness, she said. "There are thousands of children's lives that will be changed today because of this," she said. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/15/world/europe/uk-school-dinner-blog/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Unoriginal. A schoolteacher did this for over a year, 3-4 yrs ago. Good for her for continuing the project and being interested enough, but it wasn't her idea. http://fedupwithlunch.com/

Good for her!! My daughter was a hang loose vegetarian for years after seeing "BABE".  Her inner city cafeteria workers thought that was the stupidest thing they ever heard of, and refused to give her extra veggies and no meat, till I wrote a letter. Then, when she decided to branch out to the occasional chicken nugget at lunchtime, they got really nasty with her, told her she was no longer a vegetarian, and refused to accommodate her anymore---as if there was a big run on overcooked peas!  Everything was black/white to them. Had to kick some serious ass at her school to make sure the kid got her squishy, canned vegetables, when she didn't want chemical ridden ham.