In several posts written last year, I took the School Nutrition Association (SNA) to task for not asking Congress for more money to fund healthier school food, instead seeking only to roll-back school meal nutritional standards (“School Food Professionals Versus Kids: How Did It Come to This?“).
But the SNA’s spokesperson, Diane Pratt-Heavner, said the organization wouldn’t seek a funding increase because such a request would be a nonstarter on Capitol Hill. She told me last year:
Although SNA is emphasizing the extremely limited funding under which school meal programs must operate, members of Congress and their staff on both sides of the aisle from key authorizing committees have made it extremely clear that additional funding will not be available for child nutrition programs as part of reauthorization. It’s important to keep in mind that Congress has just cut funding for SNAP and advocates for child nutrition programs will need to fight to protect current funding in this difficult budget environment.
Then the SNA released its 2015 position paper. As expected, the organization continued to advocate for reversing key nutritional gains relating to sodium reduction, whole grains and requirement that children take a fruit or vegetable at lunch. But, to the surprise of many school food advocates, the organization also included a request that Congress increase meal reimbursements by 35 cents.
Based on my prior posts, you’d probably think I’d greet that development with great enthusiasm. And, to be clear, I am glad that the SNA is asking for more money, since almost everyone agrees that the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act has been underfunded since its passage in 2010.
But when the SNA’s members actually sit down with Congressional representatives at the organization’s Legislative Action Conference in Washington, DC next week, how strongly will they push for more funding? And what’s the likely effect of pairing the funding increase with the organization’s cost-free requests to roll back school food standards?
In an important piece written on today’s Beyond Chron, school food reformer Dana Woldow explains why so many of us who care about kids’ health feel uneasy about the SNA’s true priorities. Please take a moment to read it, and share your thoughts in a comment below.
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Megan Schaper says
Additional funding to the basic reimbursement rate will not solve the problems of school districts with medium to low percentages of free and reduced eligible students. Unfortunately, while most parents say that they support healthy school meals, they send children to school with palates that demand high salt and high sugar foods. And, when the school cafeterias don’t have those foods available, the parents are very willing to send them with a packed lunch. If we want the school cafeteria to be a place where children learn about food, it needs to be fully funded — not based on the number of children who choose to partake in the healthy school meal. Cafeterias currently have to appeal to children as customers rather than as students. An additional $.35 per meal will not change that paradigm. We all should be advocating for universal free programs.
Kate says
I disagree with Dana that “There is not a single “ask” in SNA’s Position Paper that would not be taken care of by more money”.
1. Smart Snacks (in regards to exemptions for reimbursable items): right now it is acceptable to serve hot Cheetos but not broccoli with cheese sauce, or baby carrots with (palatable) ranch as a la carte offerings. Vegetables in the reimbursable meal are often paired with a condiment that makes the food item more appealing for students for consumption. Giving a district more money still doesn’t fix the problem that we can market “healthy” WG brownies and hot Cheetos but cant serve a vegetable with dip.
2. Sodium restrictions: giving districts more money will not make low sodium items more appealing to students. As we move forward in the sodium restrictions we have found that removing sodium from certain products give sub-par quality. Beyond that, the food is not appealing to students and they would choose to consume fast food vs our meals most every day.
More money would help with incorporating spices (training, recipe formulation, increased scratch cooking, ect) to replace salt but there’s a certain level of sodium that is present in processed foods, even commodity processing: which is a staple in school districts.
Remember, we are still at a point in this industry that the final sodium target is deemed “unattainable” with the current products available on the market.
3. While whole grain acceptability isn’t a problem (per say) for us, giving districts more money isn’t going to solve the issue of kids not wanting whole grain items.
Its not nutrition if the students don’t eat it.
In some ways, the money would solve the problem for SOME of the position paper
1. Offer vs. serve for fruits and veggies. If we had more money, it would be a problem to require them to take a $.25 fruit or vegetable with every meal.
2. Bring in more scratch cooking to reduce sodium levels. This would be in the form of labor (training, more staff) and non processed foods.
3. Whole grain items do cost more, so the extra money would help with implementing the whole grain requirements and finding more acceptable forms of whole grain items.
While I love the idea of providing more money for the program, some of the issues are deeper than money can reach.
Dana Woldow says
Thanks to both Megan and Kate for taking the time to comment on my piece. I expect to continue writing about the CNR until it is completed, which will likely take all year and maybe into next year, so plenty of time to get into the details.
For now, suffice it to say I could have been more clear on how MUCH additional funding I think would be required to really run school meal programs properly. I don’t know an exact figure, but certainly 35 cents, even if it applied to every meal served to every child regardless of family income (and not just 35 cents extra per lunch served to a child qualified for free) is not enough. I don’t know how SNA settled on an ask of 35 cents, nor did they specify which meals would generate this extra money. All issues to look into in the future.
I agree with Megan (and with retired SFUSD nutrition director Ed Wilkins, whom I quoted in my article) that Universal Feeding is the way to go. That is a solution that for sure will require much higher funding. I would add that Universal Feeding cannot co-exist with a la carte; sales of snacks and alternate entrees need to go if UF is going to succeed. Again, more money required to make UF reimbursement cover the full cost of running the meal program.
Sufficient funding from reimbursements, enough to cover the full cost of meal programs, would also mean that schools would no longer have to rely on a la carte sales to generate revenue to underwrite the cost of reimbursable meals, even absent UF. Schools got addicted to this extra revenue stream back in the 1980’s and now many feel they can’t give it up, but that’s because the government reimbursement is not high enough to cover the real cost of the meals. If reimbursement were higher, schools wouldn’t have to sell snacks, “Smart” or otherwise, and that whole issue would go away.
The snacks are also where the big controversy over sodium originates. As Kate has pointed out, it is possible to use herbs and spices in entrees to replace the easy flavor boost that too much salt gives to food. The fact that kids have palates jaded from years of too much salt is not an excuse to continue overloading them with sodium. While those who are already in high school may not come around to enjoying lower sodium food, the kids who are just starting out in elementary school need to start eating a lower sodium diet right away, so that by the time they are in high school, they have learned to prefer it.
The idea that we must allow children as young as 5 years old to dictate what is served at school, even unhealthy food high in sodium, is ridiculous. Again, with sufficient funding, schools could weather even a drop in lunch participation when those with finicky palates addicted to high sodium decide to bring lunch from home in a bag. Most kids don’t do this; despite scare headlines making it sound like students have left school meal programs in droves, nationwide school meal participation has dropped less than 3% since new meal regs took effect. That’s hardly a mass exodus. And every year, one group of kids who remember the old less healthy food graduates out, to be replaced by a new group of incoming K students who have no expectations for what school food “should” taste like, and are most likely to accept whatever is offered.
Re whole grains, as Kate says, that has not been a problem in her district, nor has it been in mine. I get it that some schools struggle with this more than others, but again it is a learning process, with the youngest kids adapting more quickly than the older ones. We can’t just be thinking about how these foods are received in the first year or two of serving them; we need to be in it for the long haul. Underfunding of the program means that nutrition directors panic every time there is a drop of any kind in participation. With proper funding, programs would be more stable over the long haul and directors would be able to ride out any student protests over the loss of refined flour biscuits or whatever.
Again, thanks to both of you for commenting, and I hope you will continue to follow this story with me as it develops over the coming year.