Currently browsing posts about: School-food

A Canadian reader, Professor Amir Attaran of the Law and Medicine Faculties at the University of Ottawa, has just discovered UNICEF-Canada’s Halloween partnership with Cadbury:

I was not made cheery this morning when at the grocery store, I found UNICEF’s name and logo plastered all over the packages of Halloween candy.  On closer investigation, UNICEF Canada have struck a three-year partnership with Cadbury (this is the final year) where UNICEF lends its name and logo to advertising some 4 million packages of Cadbury candies each year.  In exchange, Cadbury donated some money ($500k) to UNICEF for schools in Africa.

The UNICEF Cadbury “Schoolhouse Project” (now closed) collected donations from Canadian communities for children in Africa.

UNICEF continues to collect funds for such purposes and has declared October 31 as National UNICEF Day.

Remember UNICEF’s orange trick-or-treat boxes? They helped make October 31 National UNICEF Day – and taught scores of Canadians that they can make a vital difference around the world. Today, it’s easier than ever to have an impact on the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children.

But UNICEF-Canada is aggressively seeking donations from corporate partners, apparently with little regard for what they sell.

Invest in the world’s children today to make a world of difference tomorrow. On behalf of UNICEF Canada, we invite you to involve your organization in a rewarding partnership and unique business opportunity. UNICEF Canada designs exclusive customized initiatives that achieve real, measurable business results while meeting your humanitarian goals.

Enhance your brand, drive sales, increase revenues. UNICEF delivers….We have built direct relationships with governments, businesses and community leaders in every jurisdiction where UNICEF is present.

No other aid organization engenders greater trust. None has greater impact.

Make us part of your business strategy and join us in building a better world for children. For your bottom line, for the sake of our children and for the future of our world, there is no better investment.

As I keep saying, you cannot make this stuff up.

Candy?  Or, UNICEF’s other Canadian partners such as Pizza Nova?

I know the argument: It’s Halloween and kids will eat candy anyway, so why not make some money from it.  This is the same argument used to promote sales of junk food in vending machines in U.S. schools.

But should UNICEF-Canada be doing this?  Canadians: how about doing some serious talking about this embarrassing partnership.

Addition, October 26:  Here’s what Cadbury gets for its $500,000 donation:

A cornerstone of the partnership is the dedication of significant space on approximately 4.3 million boxes and bags of mini-treats each year to raise awareness about UNICEF and the Schools for Africa programme. Cadbury Adams will also use point of purchase displays, flyers, advertising and the Web to promote the programme and its toll-free number.

Brian Wansink and his Cornell colleagues have teamed up with a designer to reconfigure school lunch lines to encourage kids to make healthier food choices, according to their op-ed—it’s interactive!—in yesterday’s New York Times.

My favorite part: “When cafeteria workers asked each child,”Do you want a salad” salad sales increased by a third.

Of course they did.  From my observations, the single factor that works best in getting kids to eat real food is exactly this: an adult who cares what kids eat.

I can go into a school lunchroom anywhere in America and tell right away whether there is any chance of getting kids to eat healthfully.  Do the cafeteria workers know the kids names and talk to them about the food?

If the answer is yes, the chances are really good.

If not?  Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution TV programs, if you can find them.

The USDA has issued a lengthy press release on its current efforts to improve school meals.  One part of this is the HealthierUS School Challenge, which awards grants to schools to create healthier school food environments.

I just received another press release from the USDA (not yet posted online), this one announcing that Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass are kicking off the 2nd annual Washington D.C. “Farm to School Week.”

Merrigan and Kass will visit Savoy Elementary School to highlight Obama administration efforts to improve school meals by incorporating locally-grown foods. Merrigan and Kass will also tour the Savoy school garden and emphasize healthy eating, locally grown ingredients, and farm to school programs.  Here’s the schedule:

	Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1 p.m. EDT
WHAT:	Agriculture Deputy Secretary Merrigan and White House Assistant Chef Sam Kass will kick-off the 2nd annual D.C. Farm to School Week.
WHERE:	Savoy Elementary School 2400 Shannon Place SE Washington, D.C.  20020

These are good things to do.  Now, how about some policy changes?

The Center for Ecoliteracy has produced the second edition of its useful guide to redoing school meals programs, “Rethinking School Lunch.”

This is a step-by-step blueprint for how to work with schools to produce healthier school meals.  It covers:

• The rationale for getting involved in projects like this
• Integration of school meals into wellness policies
• Methods for setting up the projects
• Practical matters such as procurement, facilities, finances, and waste management
• Staff training
• Marketing and communications
• Additional resources

I get asked all the time for help in changing school meal programs.  This guide is a good starting place.

Nick Freudenberg, Amy Kwan of the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College and Kristen Mancinelli of City Harvest have produced a report on the state of school food in New York City: Recipes for Health: Improving School Food in New York City.

The report is about the “vibrant and fast-growing school food movement in NYC.” It:

• Describes the various programs and activities that are transforming the food environment in city schools.
• Explains how the school food system works in New York City.
• Highlights recent improvements made by the Department of Education and other agencies to address food quality and nutrition concerns.
• Describes the continuing challenges the city faces in providing ideal school meals.
• Explains how to take action to support systemic improvements to the school food environment.

If this can be done in New York City, it can be done anywhere.  Get to work!

The new conservative government in Great Britain is doing all it can to promote unhealthy eating.

First, it backed down on traffic-light food labels.

Then, it took the food label regulatory functions away from its too-interventionist Food Standards Agency.

Now, it is reneging on regulations requiring schools to serve healthier foods:

Education Minister Nick Gibb has told MPs all new academies will not have to stick to tough rules limiting the fat, salt and sugar content in dinners…when asked if academies would have to comply with nutritional standards for school meals…Some existing academies are required to comply with these standards through their funding agreements.  However, new academies will not be required to comply with nutritional standards for school meals. They will be free to promote healthy eating and good nutrition as they see fit.

Oh.  Voluntary guidelines.  We know all about those.

As a disappointed Jamie Oliver puts it, as he watches his work undone: “This will take us back to the days of junk food vending machines in schools, and Turkey Twizzlers on the menu.”

Thanks to Daniel Bowman Simon who knows that I love old materials on American food politics.  He just sent me this 1917 World War I pamphlet—written by the distinguished educator, John Dewey—urging schools to teach kids how to farm.  Dewey was thinking of the war effort, of course, but also for kids’ health and character development.

What, then, is the duty of the school? In the fight for food, and it will be a fight, school children can  help…With some intelligent direction, these school children and older boys and girls and men and women might easily produce on the available land an average of $75 each in vegetables and fruits for their own tables or for sale in their immediate neighborhood; fresh and crisp through all the growing months and wholesomely canned and preserved for use in winter.

This would add $750,000,000 to the best form of food supply of the country without cost of transportation or storage and without profits of middlemen…In addition to the economic profits, there would be for the children health and strength, removal from temptation to vice, and education of the best type; and for older persons, rest and recreation in the open air and the joy of watching things grow.

What a good idea.

Dewey’s ideas remind me of the child nutrition reauthorization bills now languishing in Congress.    The bills fund school meals, WIC, and other programs in this country’s safety net for kids from poor families.  The bills have plenty of support from anti-hunger, health, and nutrition advocacy groups.  They even have bipartisan support says Senator Richard Lugar (Rep-Indiana).  The First Lady has called on Congress to pass them without delay.

What’s holding them up?  The same thing that is holding up the food safety bill: a dysfunctional Congress.

One can dream that the bills will help schools promote gardening along with everything else they are supposed to do.  But it sure seems like the time to push Congress to get busy and start doing its job.  Now!

Addition: The Senate passed the bill this afternoon!

Two articles I’ve written are in journals this week: a short one in Newsweek (!) and my monthly Food Matters column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

New York’s Calorie Counts: A Good National Model (Newsweek, April 30 online and May 10 in print)

The new health-care law contains an overlooked boost for nutritionists like me: by next year, all national chains with more than 20 locations must offer “clear and conspicuous” calorie information. It’s the most important obesity-related public policy since the USDA’s food pyramid. But reception to the new mandate has been muted so far, largely because the benefits of New York City’s similar 2008 law seem minor: one study found just 15 fewer calories were consumed per meal; another reported it was 30; and a third found that people ate more.

The problem with these studies is that they focus on Starbucks customers and fast-food goers in low-income neighborhoods—patrons who often care about convenience and value above all. They also fail to capture the long-term benefits of calorie counting, namely education and social pressure. Labels will offer case-by-case lessons in exactly what 1,000 calories looks like, and they may even spur restaurants to ease up on sugar and fat. (Denny’s, McDonald’s, and Cosi, among others, have debuted lighter fare in New York City.) Of course, much depends on the definition of “clear and conspicuous.” Still, the country’s nutritional literacy is about to improve—making my job a lot easier.

Sugary school meals hit lobbyists’ sweet spot (San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, May 2)

Nutrition and public policy expert Marion Nestle answers readers’ questions in this monthly column written exclusively for The Chronicle. E-mail your questions to food@sfchronicle.com, with “Marion Nestle” in the subject line.

Q: I’m stunned by the amount of sugar my daughter is served routinely in school: candied cereals, flavored milk, Pop Tarts, breakfast cookies, fruit juice – 15 teaspoons of sugar, just in breakfast. Why no standards for regulating sugar in school meals, especially when obesity and diabetes are such concerns?

A: Politics, of course. The U.S. Department of Agriculture spends $12 billion a year on school meals. Kids buy foods from snack carts and vending machines. Food companies fight fiercely to protect their shares in that bounty.

If you watched “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” you witnessed the struggle to get sugary foods out of schools. Fifteen teaspoons – 60 grams and 240 calories – is a lot for breakfast, but kids get even more sugar from snacks, treats from teachers and birthday cupcakes.

Sugars were never a problem when we supported school lunch programs decently. That changed when schools ran out of money, sought vending contracts with soft drink companies and encouraged kids to buy sodas and snacks. Schools evaded restrictions on snack sales during lunch periods. Nobody paid much attention to what kids ate in schools – until kids began getting fatter.

Why no standards? Nobody wants to take on the sugar lobbyists.

In 1977, a Senate committee recommended an upper limit of 10 percent of calories from added sugars. This was so controversial that from 1980 to 2000, the Dietary Guidelines gave no percentages when they said “eat less sugar.” The 1992 food pyramid said “Use sugars only in moderation.” It defined moderation in teaspoons – for example, 12 a day in a diet of 2,200 calories, which comes to less than 10 percent of calories. By then, health officials in at least 30 countries had adopted the 10 percent sugar guideline.

A committee of the Institute of Medicine undermined that consensus. Because science provides only circumstantial evidence for the effects of sugars on obesity and other health problems, the committee suggested a safe maximum of 25 percent of calories. Sugar trade associations happily interpreted this percentage as a recommendation.

In 2003, the World Health Organization issued a research report restating the 10 percent guideline. Using the IOM report as evidence, sugar trade associations enlisted senators from sugar-growing states to lobby U.S. government officials to withdraw funding from WHO. They also lobbied governments of sugar-growing countries to oppose the 10 percent guideline. WHO dropped the 10 percent sugar guideline.

Dietary guidelines are the basis of federal nutrition policy. The 2005 guidelines advised limits on sugars without stating a percentage. In a footnote, the guidelines said that sugars could be part of a day’s “discretionary calories,” defined as 2 to 8 teaspoons a day. This is less than 10 percent of calories, but the guidelines do not say so explicitly.

Neither does the USDA’s 2005 pyramid, which personalizes diet plans based on age, activity level and gender. I, for example, am allowed 195 discretionary calories for added fats and sugars. If I use them all for sugars, I get to eat 12 teaspoons – about 10 percent of my daily calories. This is less than the amount your daughter ate for breakfast or the sugars in a 20-ounce soda. Hence: lobbying.

Will we get an explicit sugar policy when Congress gets around to reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act? The draft bill says nothing about sugars but does require school foods to adhere to “science-based” nutrition standards based on the dietary guidelines. If so, this means a maximum of 10 percent of calories from added sugars.

The IOM has just released a “School Meals” report. This says that with careful planning, 10 percent should provide enough sugar discretionary calories to permit sweetened low-fat milk, yogurt and breakfast cereals. The IOM warns that without these sweetened foods, student participation rates and nutrient intakes might decline.

Sorry, but I don’t buy the “kids won’t eat it” argument. I’ve seen plenty of schools where kids eat unsweetened foods. Somehow, they survive. Kids will eat healthier foods when meals are prepared by adults who care what kids eat, as Oliver has demonstrated.

As for legislation, California led the way with the 2007 school food nutrition standards bill, which regulated soda sales and the amount of sugar in snacks. Companies responded by reducing the sugars in their products. Passing the Child Nutrition Act will help, but its big drawback is funding. The draft bill increases school reimbursements by only about 6 cents per meal, not enough to meet costs in many school districts and much less than the $1 increase that many believe necessary.

But with luck, 2010 will bring us national legislation and improved editions of the dietary guidelines and pyramid. Let’s hope these make it easier for schools to help kids cut down on sugars.

Note: Nestle and Malden Nesheim will speak about their new book, “Feed Your Pet Right,” at 3 p.m. May 22 at Omnivore Books in San Francisco and at 3 p.m. May 23 at Point Reyes Books in Point Reyes Station.  Addition: Holistic Hound, Berkeley, Tuesday, May 18, 6:30 p.m.

Marion Nestle is the author of “Food Politics,” “Safe Food” and “What to Eat,” and is a professor in the nutrition, food studies and public health department at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.  This article appeared on page K – 8.