Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) says a bill will be introduced in the House that will “put a salad bar in every single school in the United States of America.”

Speaking at the Religious Action Center’s ‘Consultation on Conscience’ event last month, Ryan told the Washington D.C. audience about efforts that will help “begin to end poverty.”

“We have a bill we’re going to drop in the next few weeks to put a salad bar – the goal is to put a salad bar in every single school in the United States of America,” Ryan said.

“It starts to paint the picture of the kind of system that we want,” Ryan continued. “Now, we have a lot of school districts in Ohio and across the country 70, 80, 90 percent of the kids in the school will be Medicaid – free and reduced lunch.”

“We’ll sit there and we’ll wait and we’ll say, ‘well, when you get sick Medicaid program will take you in, when you get diabetes we’ll take you in’ – as we should.”

“But why wouldn’t we make investments on the front end to teach them what to eat, how to eat and investments in their neighborhood that will give them access to the kind of food to make sure that they don’t get diabetes in the long run.

And bend the cost curve on Medicaid and then we have investments to make into their schools, so that we can put in social and emotional learning and 3D printing and we don’t have to ask for pay to play for sports - we don’t have to get rid of the art and music programs because we will have money to reinvest back into that school,” Ryan added.

“Those provide avenues for young kids to grab something that they love, and get excited about and pull themselves up.”