At TPMDC, Brian Beutler explains why the U.S. does not have enough money to pay for food assistance programs, safety regulation, better school food, or support for sustainable agriculture.
Thanks to a reader, Sam Boutelle, I have now been introduced to the Cool School Café. This is a company that markets special deals on processed food products to school food service directors:
Cool School Cafe® Manufacturer Alliance (CSCMA), founded in 1995, is an industry leader in School Foodservice marketing. CSCMA is a unique resource for you, SFS Directors and purchase decision-makers, to learn about food manufacturers serving the industry plus have the opportunity to earn valuable marketing support for their meal program.
The way this works is that your school joins the program, and CSCMA lets you know about manufacturers’ special offers. You buy the stuff and get points for everything you buy. You redeem the points for free stuff. Clever, no?
And what kinds of products are targeting schools? Try this, for example:
I’ll bet you never would have guessed that something like this could be a health food! Zero grams trans fat! Only 35% sugar by weight!
Let’s hear it for nutritionism in action. All a company has to do to get its products into schools is to get them to meet USDA’s standards for nutrients.
You think USDA should change from nutrient-based to food-based standards? Here’s all the evidence you need.
I am starting to put together a resource list for anyone who would like to advocate for better school food.
I began by asking Margo Wootan, of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) how she answers questions about how to help schools improve their food. Her advice is to visit your local school (CSPI has a ToolKit for this):
It’s also useful to work on national policies to make it easier for schools to serve healthier meals (CSPI has guidelines and resources for this).
I also know about a few groups that are working on school food issues. Some have published guides to getting started or other useful materials. These range in scope from local to national, and from hands on to policy.:
Do you know of other resources to help beginners get started on school food advocacy? Please send. My plan is to post a revised version as a Q and A. Thanks!
Today’s New York Times has a story about how Mexico is trying to improve school food in an effort to help prevent childhood obesity.
By all measures, Mexico is one of the fattest countries in the world, and the obesity starts early. One in three children is overweight or obese, according to the government. So the nation’s health and education officials stepped in last year to limit what schools could sell at recess. (Schools in Mexico do not provide lunch.)
The officials quickly became snared in a web of special interests led by Mexico’s powerful snack food companies, which found support from regulators in the Ministry of the Economy. The result was a knot of rules that went into effect on Jan. 1.
“What’s left is a regulatory Frankenstein,” said Alejandro Calvillo, Mexico’s most vocal opponent of junk food, particularly soft drinks, in the schools. “They are surrendering a captive market to the companies to generate consumers at a young age.”
By all reports, schools in many Latin American countries sell candy and soft drinks in lieu of real food. Kids pretty quickly get used to the idea that those foods mean lunch, and eating them is normal. Never mind the effects of such diets on teeth—dental decay is increasing rapidly—and body weights.
By coincidence, I just received a paper from Brazilian investigators documenting the way soft drink companies are funding physical education activities in that country. That’s one way to deflect attention from aggressive marketing in schools and other venues.
Last year, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and Kraft reported rising profits from overseas sales. With the U.S. market for their products flat or declining, companies are looking to developing markets for increased sales. Obesity is sure to follow.
I was pleased to see the article in last Sunday’s New York Times about New York City’s efforts to improve school food. The story focused on PS 56, a school that serves low-income kids in Brooklyn.
The article describes the food revolution that is taking place in New York City schools, one described in an excellent report by Hunter College faculty.
In singling out PS 56, the writer chose a good example.
I visited there a year or so ago, and wrote about it at the time under the title “School food: it can be done!” Its cafeteria is an astonishing place. The food smelled good. It tasted good. The staff cared whether the kids ate what they cooked.
When I asked whether this school was typical, the answer was “not exactly.” How come it worked? Everyone pointed to the principal, Deborah Clark-Johnson, who believes it’s important to feed kids well and who totally supported the cafeteria staff.
So one way to improve school food is to recruit caring staff.
Another, for older kids, is to encourage them to make better choices. An article in the Boston Globe discusses Cornell professor Brian Wansink’s work in this area:
But it turns out that students are susceptible to the same marketing strategies that grocery stores have been using for years. Several experiments have shown that children will be more likely to eat items if they see them early in the lunch line and find them attractive and convenient to pick up. Putting fruit in a good-looking bowl works. So does putting a salad bar in a prominent place. Calling your carrots “X-ray vision carrots” can double sales.
I’ve discussed Professor Wansink’s work on lunch line redesign in an earlier post. It raises an interesting question: is this the right strategy, or should schools just serve healthy food in the first place?
This is worth discussion. Want to weigh in?
The USDA announced today that it is starting the interminable rulemaking process for new nutrition standards for school breakfasts and lunches.
The new standards are designed to add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat milk to school meals.
These are food-based standards. The lengthy Federal Register notice specifies the number and size of servings of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and grains (table 3, page 2516). This is a huge step forward and USDA deserves lots of support for doing this.
I am somewhat less enthusiastic about some of the other provisions, but perhaps they are the price to pay for progress:
Nutrient-based standards? The standards also are designed to limit levels of saturated fat, sodium, calories, and trans fats. They specify a range of calories as well as maximum values for saturated fat and sodium (trans fats have to be zero).
Alas, the devil is in the details.
Nutrient-based standards force some questionable choices on menu planners. This is evident from the menus comparing the old and new standards. The old menus included “kids food”—food-like objects such as pizza sticks and breaded beef patties.
Happily, the new menus drop those and call for real foods. Some of them—jicama, kiwi, and grape tomatoes, for example—are likely to seem exotic to kids accustomed to chicken fingers. So far, so good.
But the foods are accompanied by strangely tasting miracles of food technology such as reduced-fat mayonnaise, low-fat salad dressings, and soft margarines. Why? To meet nutrient standards.
What about sugars? The standards don’t mention sugars except to say that if the others are followed, there isn’t much room allowed for sugary foods. Canned fruits are to be low in sugar. Use of highly fortified sugary foods is discouraged.
Chocolate and other flavored milk? The new standards allow skim “flavored” milk (translation: sugar-sweetened). Otherwise, says USDA, kids might not drink milk and will not get enough calcium. Sigh. Milk, as I keep saying, is not an essential nutrient. Chocolate or strawberry milk is a dessert. Chalk this one up to dairy lobbying.
The USDA based the new standards on the report released in October 2009 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM): School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children. It looks to me as though the USDA actually followed the IOM recommendations, a miracle in itself.
If you want to comment on the new standards, you can do so until April 13 at http://www.regulations.gov. Enjoy!
My first San Francisco Chronicle “Food Matters” column for the new year deals with some predictions:
Q: Whatever you used as a crystal ball last year turned out to be a pretty good predictor of the most prominent food issues of 2010. How about trying again: What food matters will we be hearing about in 2011?
A: It doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure out what’s coming up with food issues. I’m happy to make predictions, especially since most seem fairly safe.
Dietary guidelines will be released this month. By law, they were due last year and are already late. What will they say? The 2010 guidelines advisory committee recommended eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, but introduced a new euphemism – SOFAs, or Solid Fats and Added Sugars – for the “eat less” advice. SOFAs really mean “cut down on fatty meat and dairy products” and “avoid sugary sodas.”
Will government agencies have the nerve to say so? Let’s hope.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will issue a new food guide. The 2005 pyramid’s rainbow stripes proved impossible to teach and useless to anyone without a computer. I’ve heard a rumor that I will love the new design. I’m skeptical. I liked the original 1992 pyramid. It showed that bottom-of-the-pyramid foods were healthiest, making it unpopular with companies selling top-of-the-pyramid products. But it is healthier to eat some foods than others (see: dietary guidelines).
Will the USDA improve on the 1992 design? We will soon find out.
The fights over food safety will continue. At the last possible moment, Congress passed the food safety bill by a large majority. Now the fights really begin.
Funding will be most contentious, with the actual regulations not far behind. The Congressional Budget Office absurdly considered the bill’s provisions to be “budget neutral.” They are anything but.
The bill’s provisions require the Food and Drug Administration to hire more inspectors just at a time when Republican lawmakers have sworn to cut domestic spending. The FDA also must translate the bill’s requirements and exemptions for small farmers into regulations.
Rule-making is a lengthy process subject to public comment and, therefore, political maneuvering. Watch the lobbying efforts ratchet up as food producers, large and small, attempt to head off safety rules they think they won’t like.
Expect more lawsuits over the scientific basis of health claims. The Federal Trade Commission just settled a $21 million claim against Dannon for advertising that yogurt protects against the flu. The agency also has gone after scientifically unsubstantiated claims that omega-3s in kiddie supplements promote brain development and that pomegranate juice protects against prostate problems. POM Wonderful has already countersued the FTC on grounds that the First Amendment protects commercial speech. I’ll be watching this case carefully.
The FDA will issue new front-of-package label regulations. The FDA has promised to propose an at-a-glance symbol to indicate the overall nutritional value of food products. Food companies like the Guideline Daily Amount spots they are using in the upper corners of food packages because the symbols are factual but nonjudgmental. The FDA, however, is considering red, yellow and green traffic-light symbols that do convey judgments. Food companies say they will not voluntarily use a symbol that tells people to eat less of their products.
Will the FDA have the courage to make traffic lights mandatory? It will need courage. The new British government dealt with the traffic-light idea by summarily dismantling the food agency that suggested it.
Corporations will seek new ways to co-opt critics. Under the guise of corporate social responsibility, food companies have been making large donations to organizations that might otherwise criticize their products. The most recent example is the decision by Save the Children, formerly a staunch advocate of soda taxes, to drop that cause coincidentally at a time when its executives were negotiating funding from Coca-Cola.
Such strategies remind me of how the Philip Morris cigarette company distributed grants to leading arts groups. Expect food companies to use generosity to neutralize critics and buy silence.
School meals will make front-page news. Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act last month. Now the USDA must implement it by setting nutrition standards, adding fresh fruits and vegetables (some locally grown) and expanding eligibility.
President Obama has promised to restore the $4.5 billion “borrowed” from the SNAP (food stamp) program to fund this act. The scrambling over the regulations and financing should make excellent spectator sport.
Farm bill advocates will be mobilizing. You might think it too early to be worrying about the 2012 Farm Bill, but I’ve already gotten position papers analyzing commodity and food-assistance issues from groups gearing up to lobby Congress to bring agricultural policy in line with nutrition and public health policy.
I have a personal interest in such papers. I will be teaching a course on the Farm Bill at New York University next fall. Please get busy and write more of them!
Happy new year, and let’s see how my guesses play out.
Yesterday, President Obama signed the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (how do they name these things?)
White House, Pete Souza
The fact sheet on the bill lists what it will do with the additional $4.5 billion in funding (over 10 years), among other actions:
The sticking point is the funding. It is to be “borrowed” from an authorized increase in funding for SNAP (food stamps). As I discussed yesterday, enrollment in SNAP is rising rapidly, and so are its costs so the loss of this increase will hurt.
In his signing speech, President Obama explained:
It’s also important to note that while this bill is fully paid for, it won’t add a dime to the deficit, some of the funding comes from rolling back a temporary increase in food stamp benefits –- or SNAP as it’s now called -– starting in the fall of 2013. I know a number of members of Congress have expressed concerns about this offset being included in the bill, and I’m committed to working with them to restore these funds in the future.
He also said:
Not only am I very proud of the bill, but had I not been able to get this passed, I would be sleeping on the couch.
Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move campaign inspired this bill and her leadership had much to do with its enactment. Cheers for this, at last!
I’m speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Health. I’ll be interviewed by Helena Bottemiller Evich of FoodFix from 9:00 to 9:50 a.m.. Topic: “Making sense of nutrition science.”
