So, the huge news in the school food world this week is the fact that corporate lobbyists are apparently succeeding in their efforts in Congress to keep pizza classified as a school food “vegetable.” (Yesterday’s TLT post on the issue is here, including a link to a Change.org petition if you’d like to register your protest.)
But there’s also a subsidiary issue related to pizza on school lunch trays, and with all the pizza buzz in the air this seems like a good time to raise it: namely, the frequency with which pizza should be appearing on school menus at all.
Should this be a kid's lunch every single day?
Let me first say, as I did in yesterday’s post, that I certainly don’t demonize pizza as a food. Indeed, if you’ve ever read my About page, you know I’m actually a little pizza-obsessed, having routinely crossed state lines by train to get the pizza I love most. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a nutritionist or registered dietician who would recommend that children eat pizza on a daily basis.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happening here in Houston ISD (and presumably in other districts as well), where our middle and high schoolers have access to pizza as part of the federal reimbursable school meal every single day. Concerned parents have actually contacted me about this, alarmed that their children are able to eat five days week what most people would regard as a “special treat” sort of food. And on the a la carte line, kids can and often do come back for multiple pizza slices at a single meal. (I should note that on the HISD reimbursable line, the pizza comes with a vegetable like baby carrots, so I’m assuming the ruckus in Congress right now would not affect HISD’s menus one way or the other.)
Here’s why I’m concerned. As I’ve said often, including in my very first post on this blog, what school cafeterias implicitly teach our children about food and food choices is as important as the food itself. That’s why I took issue in that first blog post with Houston ISD’s reliance on what I called “doctored junk food:” i.e., its pizza (which uses a 51% whole grain crust and lower-fat cheese), along with items like “Frito Pie” made with baked corn chips, turkey corn dogs and all the rest. As I wrote back then:
. . . meals served in our school cafeterias are as much a “teaching moment” as what happens in the classroom. So when a child walks into a lunch room and sees the aforementioned array of fast food-like items, he or she doesn’t have any idea that they’re somehow nutritionally superior to what’s offered at the Pizza Hut or McDonald’s down the street (except for the fact that maybe they don’t taste as good).
What he or she learns instead is that pizza, hamburgers and chicken nuggets must be perfectly acceptable lunch options to be consumed on a daily basis - or why else would the school serve them? This is especially true of our most vulnerable children who are dependent upon HISD for one or two meals a day and don’t have anyone in their homes who are modeling more healthful eating. Are we surprised, then, when these same children go on to make poor eating choices in later life, compromising their own health?
Indeed, just last week I shared with someone at HISD Food Services my concern over the daily serving of pizza and this person agreed with me, saying more needed to be done to make sure kids knew about the “main” food line (the one serving non-pizza entrees) and that the pizza was just “an extra” line. But that struck me as a tad naive: kids love pizza, and most will eat it to the exclusion of other foods so long as it’s offered. Forward-thinking districts like San Francisco USD, to their credit, have reduced the frequency of pizza on the menu to just once a week and I’d love for Houston ISD to consider following suit.
But what do you think about all this? Should we just say, “kids will be kids,” and there’s no real harm in a daily slice (or two or three)? Let me know your thoughts.
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The short answer: Almost no food item should be served to children daily. It thwarts the principles of variety, broad-based nutrition, and expanding horizons/palates. I don’t care if it’s pizza or grilled chicken; if children are not encouraged to eat different foods each day, they will not learn to be well-rounded eaters. Period.
That’s RIDICULOUS. I don’t even like weekly pizza on menus, let alone daily. And classifying it as a VEGETABLE??? How are kids supposed to understand what healthy is? How do these lobbyists and politicians sleep at night? The whole thing makes me kind of sick. Here I am, not letting my daughter have juice, varying her daily meals, making her homemade muffins, to know that her school may be offering up junk food daily by the time she attends at the age of five. How disappointing.
Another reason why HISD should go above ferderal standards and set policy dictated by what is best for our children and not what is best for the potato lobby.
Yes, the frustration is always there. What to serve that students will consume, nutritious and healthful, but not so out of their zone of acceptability that they won’t eat at all?
I’m not in any way, shape or form saying that we need or want to bend to what students want (even though for quite a few years food service departments were instructed by administration to see the student as a customer & please them, so as to be self supporting) but it is a fine line to walk.
I do “get” the point (made in previous blog post) that the concern is about the political involvement in the tomato paste question. I would like to note, that I would disagree that pizza is being called a vegetable. Yes, an ingredient/component is a vegetable (this vegetable is allowed to “count” as more than it’s actual volume), the crust counts as bread, the toppings count as meat/meat alternate.
Maggie: As I was writing that post, of course in the back of my mind was the ever present question of student acceptability and the need for participation. But if we let that cart lead the horse, how will we ever make progress? I honestly don’t know the answer.
And if you or I had the answer for that, well, we’d probably be famous.
It is just frustrating to be, as you say it, “on the ground” and watch students refuse foods, choose very limited items, throw out food…
It’s a long road, and often frustrating when it seems like there simply are not any answers (or, easy answers, at least) and there is only contention and derision. (not specifically directed at you or the blog!) Thanks for a location for civil discussion.
Hi, Good read, thanks for sharing. Super greasy pizza was a daily a la carte lunch offering in my school in the 80s, along with a Jolt cola machine right there in the cafeteria. Honestly, I thought it was all normal, and my parents bought lots of convenience foods too. Parents just weren’t as aware back then. I became more aware of food ingredients in my late twenties, but didn’t get serious about researching food additives and nutrition until my late thirties – when we discovered that our child had a bad sensitivity to FD&C food coloring. I write about it in my blog at http://www.DieFoodDye.com. Our child is so much more well-versed about food additives, at six years old, than I was for my first 39 years! I want those questions she asks about everything she eats to become the norm for her. I want her to be accustomed to investigating and making good choices, because I was never taught to do that – we just trusted that if products were sold in stores and school cafeterias, they must be tested and safe for human consumption. Hopefully, with awareness campaigns, junk food will go the way of orange and olive green shag carpeting…
Good for you, for doing such a good job educating your child!
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