Currently browsing posts about: School-food

While Weight of the Nation is airing on HBO this week (I’ll comment on it after it’s fully aired), here’s what happens when public health officials try to do something to make it easier for kids to eat more healthfully.

The Massachusetts public health department came up with a proposal to ban bake sales in public schools 30 minutes before, during and after classes.

The reaction?  An uproar.  The ban, according to critics, would

• Make it harder to raise money for class trips and athletic equipment
• Undermine the fundraising efforts of parent and student groups
• Not help prevent obesity
• Take away choice from school districts (“government gone awry”)

Under this kind of pressure, “the governor spoke, emergency orders were issued, and the Legislature voted.”

End of ban.

Massachusetts public health commissioner John Auerbach pointed out:

The school nutrition standards have always been about reducing childhood obesity in Massachusetts and protecting our kids from the serious long-term health impacts that obesity can cause…At the direction of Governor Patrick, the department will seek to remove these provisions.

We hope to return the focus to how we can work together to make our schools healthy environments in which our children can thrive.

Best of luck.

This reminds me of what happened in Texas, when Susan Combs, then state agriculture director, attempted to ban cupcakes from public schools.

As Dr. Cathy Isoldi described in her study of school celebrations earlier this year (on which I am a co-author),

Such bans have prompted intense opposition in many areas of the country. In Texas in 2005, a ban on food service during classroom celebrations elicited parent outrage and resulted in the addition of a Safe Cupcake Amendment to the state’s nutrition policy. The amendment, known as Lauren’s Law, ensures that parents and grandparents of schoolchildren celebrating a birthday can bring in whatever food items they choose for classroom celebrations.

Cathy’s work makes it clear that school celebrations alone can account for a whopping 20% to 35% of a child’s daily calorie needs.  This percentage does not account for additional treats sent home with children,  given to them by teachers as rewards, or purchased in school at bake sales.

You don’t see an occasional cupcake as a problem?  Read Bettina Siegel’s post on what goes on in her kids’ school and how often schoolkids are exposed to junk foods during the school day.

Of course kids will eat treats rather than healthier foods if given half a chance.  Isn’t it an adult responsibility—at home and at school—to make sure that kids eat healthfully?

The environment of many schools is anything but conducive to good health practices.  While outright bans may be seen as going too far, some kind of restriction on junk food in schools seems like a sensible adult decision, given the impact of obesity on children, families, and the health care system so well documented in Weight of the Nation.

State legislatures should be promoting such efforts, not overturning them.

I just got my copy of Kate Adamick’s Lunch Money:  Serving Healthy School Food in a Sick Economy (Cook for America, 2012).

I had seen it at an earlier stage and wrote a blurb for it:

Kate Adamick is my go-to guru for tough-minded practical advice about school food.  This book is a must read for anyone who works with school food as well as parents who care what their kids eat in school.

Kate Adamick knows more about how the school food financial system works than anyone I know.  She has figured out how to put the system to work so it produces healthy foods for kids.

Everyone I know who is involved with school food complains about lack of funds.  Kate runs workshops with school food personnel to help them access available funds that can be used to buy kitchen equipment and better foods.

Her secret?  Getting kids to eat breakfast and teaching cooks to cook.

Her book provides diagrams, charts, and worksheets to show how the system works and what to do to transform school food from something that feels like a problem into a program that makes cooks feel proud and kids happy to eat healthier food.

You don’t believe this?  Take a look.

I’m at the Emma Willard school in Troy, NY today and will miss the noon USDA conference call announcing new school nutrition standards.  I will post on them tomorrow.  In the meantime…

Sarah Wu (aka Mrs. Q), Fed Up With Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches–and How We Can Change Them!  Chronicle Books, 2011.

I did a blurb on this one:

Only someone who has actually eaten what our kids are fed in school—every day for an entire school year—could write so convincing an expose.  Mrs. Q did not set out to be an activist, but her book is a compelling case study of what’s wrong with our school food system and what all of us need to do to fix it.  Her account of what one person can do should inspire every parent to advocate for better food for kids in school as well as out.

Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal.  The Essential Urban Farmer.  Penguin, 2011. 

This book is a must for anyone interested in growing food plants in urban environments.  Carpenter wrote Farm City about her own inner city farm in Oakland, CA and teams up with the founder of City Slicker Farms, also in Oakland.  They cover everything you can think of, from dealing with contaminated soil to growing enough food to start your own business. 

They illustrate the how-to with photos, diagrams, and line drawings that make it all look easy.  Urban farming IS easy, at least in miniature (tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, and blueberries flourish on my Manhattan terrace).  It doesn’t have to be a big deal.  Go for it!

From comedian Mark Russell*

• No dessert until you finish your tomato paste.
• The push to limit pizza in school lunch programs has been derailed in Congress by members who classify tomato paste as a vegetable. Who says this is a do-nothing Congress?
• Their true quote: “An eighth of a cup of tomato paste has the nutritional value of a half-cup of vegetables and when mixed with water for pizza sauce, more of a vegetable is created.”
• Right. And when you add cheese, pepperoni and sausage — voila! — you have a healthy fruit salad.

* c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.

The word is out.  Congress caved in under pressure from lobbyists on the school nutrition standards (see yesterday’s post).

Pizza is now officially a vegetable!

Here’s what the press is saying:

• NPR
• Washington Post
• NY Daily News
• New York Times

Cartoonists: get to work.

Additions, November 17

• The Daily on the Frozen Food Association’s mistaken lobbying efforts
• Eat, Drink, Better on the background legislation
• San Francisco Chronicle on choice comments (mine is first)
• Michele Simon’s thoughtful summary
• Obama Foodorama’s deep background:

School meals are a high-profit market for major food corporations….Thus in the last year, powerful food companies, agriculture lobbies, and various coalitions of lawmakers have allied in battles over each food area that USDA sought to restrict. This has included the creation of slick PR campaigns.

For instance, ConAgra and the giant, privately held Schwans, which sell millions of processed school meals, including pizza, have funded the “Coalition for Sustainable School Meal Programs,” which includes a website with a campaign called “Fix the Reg,” asking parents and other “interested parties” to contact USDA and lawmakers to demand changes to the school nutrition rule.  This group was especially interested in keeping USDA’s current designation of tomato paste as a “vegetable” intact, something many nutritionists have argued makes poor sense.

Addition, November 18:  For even deeper background, see what Marian Burros has to say in Obamafoodorama.

Addition, November 22:  President Obama signed the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act into law.

SEC. 743. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement an interim final or final rule regarding nutrition programs under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq.) and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.) that—

(1) requires crediting of tomato paste and puree based on volume;

(2) implements a sodium reduction target beyond Target I, the 2-year target, specified in Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, ‘‘Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs’’ (FNS–2007–0038, RIN 0584–AD59) until the Secretary certifies that the Department has reviewed and evaluated relevant scientific studies and data relevant to the relationship of sodium reductions to human health; and

(3) establishes any whole grain requirement without defining ‘‘whole grain.’’

 

Food Chemical News (FCN) reports today that the USDA has sent its final rules on nutrition standards for school lunches and breakfasts to the Office of Management and Budget for approval.  The final content of what got submitted is not known.

These rules, you may recall from previous posts, are based on recommendations of the Institute of Medicine in a 2009 report on School Meals.

Several of the USDA’s proposals for implementing these suggestions have elicited more than the usual level of fuss.  The most controversial:

• Limits on starchy vegetables to two servings a week.  As I noted a few days ago, the Senate passed an amendment to the USDA’s appropriations bill to block any restrictions on potatoes.  Most observers think this means that unlimited potatoes will stay in the school meals.
• Preventing tomato paste on pizza from counting as a vegetable.  According to FCN, language in the appropriations bill “also stipulates that tomato paste used to make pizzas can be counted toward the weekly total of vegetable servings.”

Does the Senate think this can pass the laugh test?

Historical note:  Remember when the Reagan administration proposed to allow ketchup to count as a vegetable in school meals:

An additional proposed change in crediting policy would allow vegetable and fruit concentrates to be credited on a single-strength reconstituted basis rather than on the basis of the actual volume as served.

For example, one tablespoon of tomato paste could be credited as 1/4 cup single-strength tomato juice.  Previously, it was only credited as 1 tablespoon, the volume as served (Federal Register 9-4-81).

Meaning ketchup!

The press had a field day.  The  ensuing bipartisan hilarity and what Nutrition Action (November 1981) called a “maelstorm of criticism from Congress, the press, and the public alike” induced the USDA to rescind the rules one month later.

• The Washington Post (9-26-81) quoted the budget director’s comment that USDA “not only has egg on its face, but ketchup too.”
• Republican Senator John Heinz (whose company owns Heinz ketchup) said “Ketchup is a condiment.  This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of, and I suppose I need not add that I know something about ketchup and relish–or did at one time.”
• The New York Times (9-28-81) noted that “Democrats are still chortling at what they hail as ‘the Emperor’s New Condiments’—the attempt to declare ketchup a school-lunch vegetable.”

Times have changed.  Senators used to have the health of American school children in mind.  Now, they undermine efforts by USDA to improve meals for kids.

The Senate’s action has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with political posturing and caving in to lobbyists.

The Senate should reconsider its actions.  The USDA should not back down on this one.

Additions, November 17: background documents and additional links

• The School Nutrition Association’s summary of its concerns about the USDA’s proposed rules
• The full set of comments from the School Nutrition Association
• A letter from Senator Amy Klobuchar complaining to USDA about the proposed rules

Yesterday’s New York Times’ report (in which I am quoted) reminds me that it’s time I commented on the astonishing dispute about potatoes in school meals.

On October 20, 2009, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a report on nutrition standards for school meals.  It recommended that school meals be aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  To do so, the IOM said USDA should

Adopt standards for menu planning that increase the amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains; increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat and sodium provided; and set a minimum and maximum level of calories.

To do that, the IOM said USDA should establish (1) weekly requirements for dark green and orange vegetables and legumes, and (2) limits—of one cup a week—on starchy vegetables such as white potatoes, corn, lima beans, and peas.

The IOM’s quite sensible rationale?  To encourage students to try new vegetables in place of the familiar starchy ones.

In January this year, the USDA proposed new nutrition standards for school meals based on the IOM report.  These included the IOM’s recommendation of no more than one cup a week of starchy vegetables.

Please note: the proposal does not call for elimination of starchy vegetables.  It calls for a limit of two servings a week (one cup is two servings).

What’s wrong with that?  Plenty, according to the potato industry, which stands to sell fewer products to the government and could not care less about spreading the wealth around to other vegetable producersPotato lobbyists went to work (apparently the sweet corn, lima bean, and pea industries do not have the money to pay for high-priced lobbying talent).  The Potato Council held a press conference hosted by Senators from potato-growing states.

The result?  The U.S. Senate added an amendment to the 2012 agriculture spending bill blocking the USDA from “setting any maximum limits on the serving of vegetables in school meal programs.”

Mind you, I like potatoes.  They are thoroughly delicious when cooked well, have supported entire civilizations, and certainly can contribute to healthful diets.  Two servings a week seems quite reasonable.  So does encouraging consumption of other vegetables as well.

But what’s at stake here goes way beyond the choice of one vegetable over another.

At issue is Senate micromanagement of nutrition standards under pressure from food industry lobbyists. 

• Lobbyists have no business trying to influence nutrition standards.
• The Senate has no business micromanaging nutrition standards.

This is one more—and a particularly egregious—example of undue industry influence on federal dietary guidance policy.  It is just plain wrong.

I was fascinated by the story in yesterday’s New York Times about the problem schools are having as they try to replace the junk foods in vending machines with healthier options.

Students, it seems, prefer to buy the junk foods.

The Times photo says it all:

What are these machines doing in schools at all?

Schools didn’t used to have vending machines.  Somehow kids managed to survive for a few hours not eating between meals.

If schools must have vending machines—a highly debatable point—how about making everything in them be something you’d like your kid to be eating?

Just a thought.