(article, Culinate staff)
First came Martha Payne, a Scottish 9-year-old so disgusted by her school's lunch offerings that she started a blog about it titled Never Seconds. Her blog went viral — and her school got mad, banning her from taking any more photos of her meals. On the Wired blog Superbug, science writer Maryn McKenna wasn't pleased: bq. Here we have a kid who got excited enough about feeding children well that she not only changed the food in her own district — within two weeks, officials were allowing children in her school to have “unlimited salads, fruit and bread,” which apparently was the policy all along, only someone forgot to say so — but also got children around the world excited about their lunches too. Over the blog’s seven weeks, she received images of school lunches from Germany, Japan, Finland, Illinois, Spain, Washington State, a school in Atlanta that keeps kosher, and on. The frustration was also viral, and Payne got so much support that (as McKenna's updates noted) the school backed down. Bonus: All the "rage donations" on Payne's behalf raised some $72,000 for Mary's Meals, a charity that provides school meals in impoverished communities around the world. Back Stateside, a 12-year-old in Illinois named Abby Goldberg has been busy trying to get rid of plastic bags in her community. What's the problem? As the Chicago Tribune reported, the state of Illinois recently passed a law preventing towns from banning plastic bags. So Goldberg started an online petition asking the governor to veto the law.