Putting Real Food in School Lunches

Posted by Dawn Undurraga in Food, Nutrition, School Lunch on January 26, 2012 | 20 responses

More whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables will be on the menu for 31 million children who participate in the federally-supported National School Lunch Program under new nutrition standards announced Wednesday with the hearty support of First Lady Michelle Obama.

Imagine children coming home from school with a newfound love for spinach, sweet potatoes and whole-wheat spaghetti. Hoping to turn many parents’ dreams into reality, the Obama administration unveiled new school meal standards (PDF) on Wednesday as the First Lady looked on approvingly.

Based on the Institute of Medicine’s science-based recommendations, the new standards are the first upgrade to the nutritional standards for school meals since 1995, when dieting on low-fat cookies was the rage.

It marks an important milestone in the fight for good food for all. Schools’ misguided reliance on processed foods for speedy, low-labor cost production, industry’s $1.6 billion in child-targeted advertising and a lack of faith in our children’s dietary curiosity has created a generation of “picky eaters” with dull palates.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that a 2010 study by scientists at the National Cancer Institute found that nearly 40 percent of the calories American children eat come from empty calories – cookies, sodas, pizza and the rest.

Reversing this SALT! SUGAR! FAT!-conditioning is a daunting task, as many parents know. The new standards will help by giving the 31 million children served by the National School Lunch Program a chance to educate their palates and vary their dietary repertoire by exposing them to more whole grains, dark leafy greens, orange vegetables and often-overlooked legumes – all the stuff we say our children are supposed to eat!

The new policy sets calorie limits per meal and more than doubles the mandated minimum servings of fruits and vegetables. It will ensure that whole-grain foods, beans and dark green and orange vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, carrots and sweet potatoes become staples in school meals. It also sets targets for reducing the sodium, saturated and trans fats in school children’s diets.

School meals can help children develop healthy eating habits – or they can prime them for a life of poor health and unnecessary suffering (did you hear about Paula Deen’s statistically unsurprising diabetes diagnosis?). With nearly 17 percent (12.5 million) of America’s children now clinically obese and a staggering 32 percent overweight, the time is long past to address the unhealthy food environments our children live in.

School meals are an important piece of the puzzle. Done right, they can significantly expand access to and appreciation of healthy, nourishing food. Done right, they can help shift the eating norms in a school, in a community and – in tandem with other efforts such as the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Bill – in the entire country.

The school meal standards are a long-overdue investment in the future health and productivity of our children, and they will save billions of dollars in future health care costs. According to a report (PDF) by the Produce for Better Health Foundation, the diet-related medical costs of four illnesses alone – diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke – total $38 billion a year. There is substantial evidence that people who eat diets rich in fruits and vegetables are far less likely to suffer these health problems.

Despite the benefits (and deliciousness!) of fruits and vegetables, America’s children eat shockingly little produce. According to a 2009 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 1 percent of adolescents eat their recommended servings of fruit and vegetables.

Now, however, schools across the country (even those without activist parents or community members insisting on better food) will have the tools and – equally important – the financial support to re-imagine the meals (PDF) they serve their students.

The standards announced yesterday are a major step forward, but you can count on food and beverage makers with a vested interest in profits over progress to keep up their fight to blunt efforts to feed our nation’s neediest children better quality food.

You may remember the flurry of news coverage when Congress recently intervened to declare that pizza and French fries should remain in school meals as “vegetables.” The National Potato Council (PDF) insisted that there is “no value in limiting” foods like tater tots and French fries to only twice a week, and the National Frozen Pizza Institute protested strenuously against a rule that would limit the nutritional “credit” assigned to tomato paste. They wanted to keep a fudge factor that makes it easier for pizza to meet the new standards. Ironically, the pizza peddlers simultaneously heralded the release (PDF) of a better product that would meet the proposed standards.

It’s disheartening that the National Potato Council found more friends in Congress than did the 31 million children the National School Lunch Program serves. As a result of the lawmakers’ actions, the final standards allow fried potatoes to constitute up to 40 percent of the vegetables served during a week.  But despite this industry-sponsored congressional meddling, the release of the final standards is good news.

Coming next will be new standards for foods sold in schools that aren’t part of regular meals – in other words, snacks. Big Food – fresh from its success in getting Congress to weigh in on its behalf – will surely have a lot to say about them. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t succeed in compromising our children’s future.

 

  • Anonymous

    If we could only get Michelle O’Bama to get rid of GMO’s than maybe the food would be worth eating!!!

  • Anonymous

    This is great but, unfortunately, as the previous post indicates, the Obama’s are giving Monsanto everything they want so, the kids will continue to eat GMO foods which is linked to many disorders.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1411290824 Christina Rivard-Roberts

    Let’s not forget about Bill Gates who just purchased 500,000 share of Monsanto stocks and says that GMOs are needed to prevent starvation!!

    http://www.infowars.com/monsanto-investor-bill-gates-says-gmo-crops-needed-to-fight-starvation/

  • Anonymous

    I applaud the First Lady’s initiatives over the years, and perseverance with this important issue. Congratulations all, this is an achievement – sensible, forward-thinking, long overdue progress – in an increasingly difficult legislative environment. And I do agree with the last comment, that tackling GMO’s in our food supply is also urgent.

  • Anonymous

    For EWG readers, it still appears that both Bill Gates and the “Obama’s” do not yet have a full appreciation of sustainability principles, as GMO’s major problem is that it they are “man-made” – anything that does not readily assimilate back into nature is to be considered suspect, as mankind’s metabolism can only handle so much, and ‘synthetic’ (monsanto) maneuverings in the name of larger (or cheaper) crops (Gates) is therefore unsustainable, causing as they do many more problems than they solve. This is the cellular reality of the misgivings presented about GMO’s. . .

    A better corporate example would be Dow, which entered an alliance last year with the leading global sustainability framework, using as a justifiable premise the idea that “chemistry at its’ core is about the building blocks of life”, not manipulation to assure its’ “bottom line” performance.

    Sustainability is therefore about the “top line” issue of being conducive to life, in all of its’ forms. . .

  • Kaitlyn Federwitz

    I am a school Food Service Director, and while I do very much appreciate the direction that the new guidelines are taking us in, I must also point out that what parents feed kids at home makes a HUGE difference. The kids I serve definately are not chomping at the bit to eat healthier, and I do try to make things fun and offer samples first. When all kids eat at home are pizza, chicken nuggets, and fast food it is just as hard for me as it is for the parents to get them to eat healthier, or to even TRY a new food.
    It seems that people love to trash school food service (which I wont argue, may be sometimes be justified) but parents play a key role as well.

  • http://www.facebook.com/allison.allsopp Allison Allsopp

    I’ve worked in schools in Ohio for over a decade. What I notice is that vegetables are offered but kids leave them on their trays and throw them away. It’s fine to raise the standards but ultimately a child’s nutrition is the responsibility of the parents, not the government.

  • Trish Lefkowitz

    Let’s not go over board! Thin crusted veggie pizza is healthful. It stops being healthful when people…not just children eat too much. How, many adults are overweight? I live in Houston. Here, obesity is very high. And, we’re going to require kids to do more than what the adults are doing for their health? How many parents of overweight children are overweight themselves?

  • http://www.facebook.com/allison.allsopp Allison Allsopp

    If the Obama’s (and government in general) truly want to impact children’s nutrition, the government needs to offer more grants to schools and local sustainable farms. A #10 can of green beans DOES NOT have the same nutritional value as fresh, local, organic produce; where you give 2.5 cups a week or 5 cups a week.

  • Anonymous

    I always ask my daughter what she eats for breakfast and lunch at school. Her two meals usually consist primarily of flour products. She seldom has had a serving of fruit/vegetables, unless you want to count the cherry pie she had for breakfast. I don’t count the 4 oz box of apple juice (mostly fructose) she drinks as a fruit or vegetable. She may get a serving of cheese on her pizza. She gets whole grains from her Lucky Charms or perhaps her corn chips. I suspect that dieticians are just hired to keep costs down.

    We live in Elma, Washington, and she attends Elma High School.

  • Heather McNany

    No GMO !!! that would be the next blessing…. lets move forward.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000596726699 Brad Jennings

    I’m glad that we’re working to improve school lunches, they’ve clearly needed it. But allowing fried potatoes to make up 40% of the vegetables??????? Are you kidding me?? It’s not just about what they eat now, it’s about teaching them proper eating habits for the rest of their lives. That’s as important (maybe more) as any other class they have.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000596726699 Brad Jennings

    When the government supplies the food it absolutely is their responsibility to make sure it is as healthy and nutritional as possible.

  • Anonymous

    I am an American living in China. My husband teaches health and nutrition to high school students in English. We have faced the same nutritional issues at times (Yogurt that lists water and sugar as the first ingredients being given out for snacks), but I do believe the fact that our cafeteria purchases locally grown vegetables and actually COOKS for our kids really is inspiring, and I hope it inspires American schools lunchrooms to do the same. My kids are getting no peer pressure to eat unhealthy food and they are wolfing down their greens (Yes, even my 4 year old squeals with glee when she gets to eat seaweed!) My husband recently brought in our juicer and showed the students how to juice vegetables. Our high school students are on fire! They did research and reported before school leadership about why kids shouldn’t drink the sugar water yogurt and eat cake for snacks. Students are now eating real yogurt for snacks. I want to personally encourage American kids to study this stuff and understand that this is about our future. Healthy eating does make a difference!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000725537801 Brian Spears

    40% fried potatoes!? And where exactly in the Constitution is this so-called “National School Lunch Program” authorized? If we did this sort of thing at the State level, people would at least be able to follow their conscience by “voting with their feet”. I’m an environmentalist and a health nut, but I think anyone who believes a national school lunch program would fail to include fried potatoes for up to 40% of the vegetable content, as the above article says this program does, is a wild-eyed idealist. As Milton Friedman would say, “Every regulatory agency eventually comes to be controlled by the industry it is supposed to regulate.” Investopedia even has a term for this. It is called “regulatory capture”.

  • Anonymous

    Michelle doesn’t care about the health of our children – she sees it as a platform for her and her husband to have better ties with MONSTANTO

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/FVYGSVM3TN44OOTB2WCWFAMYSQ Eduardo

    And the anti fat craze goes on. There’s no serious and adequately designed study showing saturated from grass fed animals wreaks havoc on one’s health. Whole grains?? Seriously? They’re loaded with substances like lectins (causing sub clinical levels of systemic inflamation and hence CVD and arteriosclerosis among others), digestion inhibitors, alpha amylase inhibitors, some are loaded up with gluten, which is causally related to hipothyroidism, Alzheimer’s disease, DM-1, many sorts of autoimune diseases, pancreatitis, reduced IQ, Schizophrenia, among many more. It’s all published! Anyone interested in real and non biased information? I strongly recommend “The Perfect Health Diet”. State of the Art science-backed information. Go on their website and give good science a chance.

  • Anonymous

    This is good, EXCEPT they don’t allow for drinks for the huge percentage of kids who are DAIRY intolerant (and in fact if you read the book Whitewash by Jos. Keon you’ll doubt the validity of serving ANY milk to kids). They should have rice or almond or soy milk available. Also I don’t think they allow for Gluten Free alternatives to bread in sandwiches (tho I didn’t read the entire PDF). More and more people are finding they are Gluten intolerant, so this is an important consideration. And of course I agree w/ earlier writers: GMOs have to be LABELLED and preferably not served. and that parents have to educate their kids – many of those current parents grew up with school food that does not meet these new standards! So somehow we have to educate THEIR palates, too!

  • Anonymous

    I second the comments of Eduardo. A low-fat diet leads to poor health outcomes. Insufficent saturated fats in the diet, especially insufficent saturated animal fats, are associated with immune deficiency, imparied mental status, obesity(!!!), problems in pregnancy, neurological disorders, and the list goes on and on. Mary Enig, pre-eminent lipids researcher from the University of Maryland, sounded the alarm about trans-fats 35 years before the medical establishment took heed. Meantime, docs were advising their patients to substitute margarine for butter, pancakes for eggs, nondairy chemicals instead of cream, fake bacon bits and tofu burgers (some still do!) instead of actual food as it has been eaten for countless generations. That is, back before heart disease, cancer, asthma, autism, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune disorders, etc., became the epidemics they currently are.

  • Anonymous

    Same old crap, different smell. Low sodium, low saturated fat, this after the real nutritional science (not the politicised crooks working for government) had been pounding it down time and time again, there is nothing wrong with salt, and no, we don’t consume more salt than other nations. And saturated fat, well we actually need it to be healthy. What makes us sick is vegetable oils with far too much omega-6, which competes with omega-3 in liver and prevents it’s digestion.
    And Dr Keys who started this misguided advice, himself published a correction explaining the dietary cholesterol is not related to blood cholesterol, which was known by nutritionists, but suppressed by media and other elements who profited handsomely by public getting more and more sick.
    And cholesterol is not even a factor in heart disease anyway, as was proven by latest studies.