There are only ten days left for the House of Representatives to pass the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization.
Read this post from Slow Food USA, then use their link to contact your own House member.
kids and food, in school and out
by Bettina Elias Siegel
There are only ten days left for the House of Representatives to pass the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization.
Read this post from Slow Food USA, then use their link to contact your own House member.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
As we draw closer the September 30th deadline for the House of Representatives to act on the pending child nutrition bill, First Lady Michelle Obama addressed an elementary school in Slidell, Louisiana last week and urged passage of the legislation. (You may recall that just before the Senate vote on the bill, Ms. Obama published a Washington Post editorial to encourage lawmakers to vote yes.) You can read more about her Slidell speech here.
Meanwhile, D.C.-based celebrity Chef Jose Andres wrote this moving editorial urging passage of the bill for The Altantic Monthly. Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve learned that feeding someone is more than giving them a meal. It is a way of saying “you are part of my community”, “you are my neighbor”, “I see you”, “I care.” These children need that in their lives. . . . . As a chef and father, it kills me that children are fed processed foods, fast food clones, foods loaded with preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup. How can it be that our schools are full of soda machines and that many kids go without fresh fruit or vegetables?
The clock is ticking on improving our children’s food . . . will our legislators rise to the occasion?
by Bettina Elias Siegel
Yesterday HISD Food Services sent me another, minor correction to my initial post about forthcoming changes in Houston’s school food. Lunch Tray readers come from all over the U.S. (and the world), so I don’t want to get too deep into a Houston-specific issue, but then I realized that this correction could be a springboard for a bigger discussion about the future of school food in America.
First, the correction- I’d originally reported that the district would no longer continue its practice of requiring kids to take a package of animal crackers as part of the in-classroom, universal breakfast service that was instituted last year at the elementary level. Then, prompted by an email from HISD, I made a correction and said that animal crackers will be served twice a week (at least until October when the entire breakfast menu may be revamped).
But what I should have said, apparently, was that graham crackers, not animal crackers, will be served twice a week.
Nutritionally speaking, when you pit animal crackers against graham crackers I think what you have — to quote my old law school professors — is “a distinction without a difference.” (The nutritional stats I found on the internet are virtually identical.) The real question you might be asking is, why on earth are kids required to take what are essentially cookies as part of a school breakfast? (According to my Google searching, a serving of graham crackers has about as much sugar as, e.g., a serving of’Nilla Wafers).
The answer is that, under current USDA guidelines, a single school breakfast must supply children in grades K-12 with over 500 calories (as averaged on a weekly basis), but without exceeding 30% of calories from fat. There are also specific requirements for iron, calcium and other nutrients. It’s easy, then, to see the appeal to a school district of a cheap, processed food like graham crackers, which are relatively low in fat but provide a fair number of calories, and which also are artificially fortified by the manufacturer to provide key nutrients like iron.
But here’s the good news. Under the school food legislation currently pending in Congress, new nutritional requirements will be promulgated, and it’s expected that they’ll follow recent Institute of Medicine recommendations for school meals. It’s assumed that calorie requirements will be revisited, and that there will be at least a partial return to the old concept of “food groups” as opposed to merely looking at nutrients in a vacuum. Under such a scheme, a school district could no longer, e.g., meet its vitamin C requirement by serving a vitamin C-fortified, processed fruit snack; real fruit would have to be served. (What a novel concept!) And perhaps there will be no need for sugary crackers — animal or graham — at any meal in any school district in the future.
I’ll keep you posted here.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
I’m pleased to report that the Senate has passed unanimously the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which will provide $4.5 billion over the next decade on improved child nutrition programs, including the school lunch program. The bill now moves to the House, where passage is expected.
You can read more at the New York Times, and you can visit the Obama Foodorama blog for statements from First Lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
[Ed. Note: When I switched from a three-day-a-week publishing schedule to multiple posts, five-days-a-week, I did so in part because I had a backlog of posts that I just couldn’t squeeze in. Here’s one such post, which I wrote several weeks ago. A small portion of it also appeared in my recent guest blog post over at Slow Food USA]:
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A few weeks ago I ended my post, “Confessions of a Sideline-Sitter,” by urging Lunch Tray readers to get actively involved in improving school food (as well as food outside the school setting). But then a reader left this comment (somewhat hortened here):
The problem is, in order to start anything you have to be REALLY dedicated and have lots of time. I tried starting something but found that being a leader requires unearthly strength and you must be ok with working all day long, then leaving your children in the evening to go to a meeting or fulfill some other kind of commitment. What I am trying to say is that it is easier said than done. This is why things are the way they are. It is easier to generate mass-produced preservative-laden lunches than to serve fresh food. It is easier to stay at home and tend to my regular evening-time ritual. It is better for my job-security to actually do my work while I am on the job rather than type emails and flyers and blog posts for a cause. I often felt I was going it alone, and because I held so much of the burden, it was easy to let it die.
This comment reminded me of a rather dispiriting (but, I believe, accurate) quote from Janet Poppendieck’s Free for All: Fixing School Lunch in America:
I found the individuals and groups working for school food change – both paid staff and parent and citizen activists — to be so extraordinary, so dedicated, patient, persistant and creative that there seems to me little likelihood that more typical communities will achieve such improvements under current federal rules and within current funding constraints. . . . It shouldn’t be so hard. One should not have to be a superhero, a magician or a saint to get healthy, tasty food into the school cafeteria. . . . Counting on saints and heroes is not good public policy.
The truth is, I completely relate to Poppendeick’s quote and the reader’s frustration. I’ve come to recognize that “school food” is a behemoth of an issue, with longstanding, complex problems that are rooted primarily at a federal — not district or school — level, and which are compounded by much larger societal issues relating to food production and consumption. Moreover, school districts themselves are too often cash-strapped and preoccupied with other goals to focus on changing their food.
There are glimmers of hope, of course. My own district, for example, has taken some laudable steps like removing fried foods from the menu and trying to incorporate whole grains in baked goods. But when viewed against the entire array of what’s served by the district — the amount of processed, prepackaged food, the predominance of “kid food” like chicken nuggets and hamburgers, the sub-par “a la carte” offerings (especially at the middle and high school levels) — these improvements don’t seem terribly significant.
So lately I’m starting to rethink the question of which levers we should be pushing. It seems to me that the most promising mechanisms for real change are at the federal level, by influencing Congress at it considers the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, and at the most local of levels — the individual school — where parents and sympathetic principals can work together to, for example, eliminate treats in the classroom or the sale of objectionable a la carte foods. But real, meaningful change at a district level — at least in an huge, urban district like mine — often feels out of reach.
Am I too pessimistic? Do you have success stories from your own area that took place at the school district level? If so, please share them here.
In the end, I do believe that if we could look into a crystal ball and get a glimpse of America’s future school cafeterias, we’d see dramatic improvement. So many recent cultural shifts — a growing sense of alarm over childhood (and adult) obesity, a new interest in where our food comes from and how its production affects our health and environment, concern about climate change and the need to source food locally — all point in that direction.
It’s just hard sometimes to see how we’re going to get from here to there.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
Michelle Obama had an op-ed in today’s Washington Post urging passage of the pending child nutrition legislation. It is, according to the Obama Foodorama blog, the first time the First Lady has addressed the issue in print media.
To urge your own Congressional representatives to pass the bill before the August legislative recess, you can go here or here.
[Hat tip: Healthy Schools Campaign]
by Bettina Elias Siegel
I just learned that late last month, the USDA announced the federal reimbursement rates for the 2010-2011 school lunch program (for background on federal reimbursement and how it works, see my School Lunch FAQs).
According to information I learned from my school district, historically over the last five years the rates have increased annually by 2.5% to 4.1%. In the prior two years the rates have increased by at least 4.0% each year. However, for this coming school year the USDA has approved a 1.3% increase in the reimbursement rate — the lowest increase over the last five years.
I’ve Googled a bit to find out what’s going on here but to no avail. My guess – and hope – is that USDA is holding back pending the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which should result in an increase in school lunch reimbursements across the board.
If anyone has any light to shed on this issue, feel free to contact me or comment below. In the meantime, time is running out for a Congressional vote on the child nutrition legislation before the August recess. Take a moment to go here or here and send a letter to your own representatives urging them to act now.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
Earlier today I circulated an NPR report on the co-existence of hunger and obesity among the poor. In that report, it was asked why a cash-strapped parent might give a child soda instead of milk and a representative of a local food pantry commented: “A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents . . . Do the math.”
I was so pleased to see the milk-soda comparison made in this story; this is something that’s been bugging me every since my earlier post about how the far-right wing Heritage Foundation points to obesity in America as proof that hunger isn’t a real problem. (These are the same people who snarkily accuse the Obamas of “flip-flopping” because of their simultaneous anti-childhood hunger and anti-childhood obesity efforts. Yuk, yuk.)
In making their case, one “myth” the Heritage Foundation likes to attack is the fact that poor people often turn to fast food and processed foods because such foods are cheaper, and thus a person can be both food-insecure and obese. Not true, says the HF! And then it trots out this little factoid, among others:
“[A]s a source of calories, brand name soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are often more expensive (in terms of calories per dollar) than milk.”
This “fact” about milk and soda is such a favorite of the HF that it was even included in its recent Congressional testimony submitted in opposition to any increase in funding for childhood nutrition programs.
But ever since I saw this milk/soda comparison, I’ve been wondering: Could it be true? Is milk really somehow cheaper than soda, despite the glaring difference in price tags ($2.99 per half gallon (which is almost exactly 2 liters) for milk in my area vs. $1.69 for two liters of soda)?
Now, I’ll say up front that I’m a liberal arts major and a lawyer, and there’s a reason I never went to business school — math is not my strong suit. But here’s what I was able to figure out:
Using the prices quoted above, two liters of soda costs .03 dollars per ounce and each ounce provides 12 calories. That means that for one dollar, I get about 396 calories. Approximately two liters of skim milk, on the other hand, costs .05 dollars per ounce and each ounce provides 10 calories. So, for one dollar, I get 200 calories.
Hey, wait a minute! That doesn’t work at all! On a calorie-per-dollar basis, soda is the hands-down winner. Am I missing something?
You bet I am. What the HF conveniently forgot to tell Congress, but which is buried in a footnote in their original report, is that it bases its comparison on “the non-sale prices of two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi, and Dr Pepper compared to two-gallon containers of whole milk in six stores in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.”
Whoa there, HF. What’s up with that?
First, why are you comparing two gallons of milk with two liters of soda, when the actual volume equivalent of two liters of soda is a 1/2 gallon carton of milk?
Second, in a position paper all about combatting obesity, why would you use WHOLE milk as the basis for comparison, when every dietician in America would agree that a person seeking to lose weight shouldn’t be drinking whole milk?
Could it possibly be that this is the only way to make your specious milk-is-cheaper-than-soda claim remotely plausible? (Sure enough, when you use whole milk and the price for two gallons, milk “wins.”)
Moreover, what all of these details miss is the fact that it took this over-educated person about twenty minutes to figure out an accurate “calorie per dollar” calculation; the average shopper had better not head off to the market without solid math skills, a calculator, and a whole lot of extra time.
The bottom line is, we’d all like to see poverty-stricken people cook up a nutritious, cheap and filling pot of beans and rice, but maybe that’s not always realistic for a person who lacks education (to know this is the better choice), cooking skills (maybe these weren’t modeled at home), time (working two jobs?) or access to such foods (as when one has to rely on a convenience store for groceries). The sad truth is, when real people want to get the most filling food for their money in the most convenient way possible, they’re often intuitively drawn to high-fat, dirt cheap items — fast food, candy, soda and the like.
There are arguments to be made against using federal funding to provide food assistance to the poor and I’m fine if the HF wants to make them. But stop trotting out the “myth-busters” that rest on squirrelly math.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
Yesterday the House Education & Labor Committee approved the bipartisan Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act. The bill will significantly increase access and remove barriers to child nutrition programs, improve the quality of the meals served and implement new school food safety guidelines. It would also increase how much the federal government reimburses schools for meals served — the first such increase in over 30 years. Additionally, for the first time, it would require schools to set standards for foods served outside the cafeteria, including vending machines.
You can read more from the Committee here.
Words of praise from First Lady Michelle Obama here.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
For today’s Friday Buffet: a call to action, teaching British kids about veggies, a school lunch option that may make you lose your lunch, and The Lunch Tray eats a little crow.
A Call to Action from Slow Food USA
I’m passing on a reminder from Slow Food USA that — right now — the House Education & Labor Committee is considering the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 (H.R. 5504). Slow Food USA asks that if your own Rep is on the committee (you can check this list), to please call today or Monday “to urge them to bring H.R. 5504 up for committee vote quickly and to fully fund the bill with at least an additional $1 billion per year.”
Food Education Across the Pond
I “met” (via Twitter) the UK-based Joanne Roach, a kid-and-food advocate who’s created a series of twelve little books called “The Foodies.” Each book (one for each month of the year) is designed to teach British children about the fruits and vegetables that grow in their country during that particular month. After watching Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution,” in which some American school children were unable to identify even the most common supermarket vegetables, I now understand the need for such books. Joanne’s site is also full of other helpful resources, including recipes you can cook with kids. (But be warned: the recipes all use metric measurements and British terminology. E.g., zucchini = courgette. Who knew?)
I Think I’ve Found the Perfect Side Dish for The Candwich
Over at Slow Food USA’s blog, a student described and photographed this unbelievable concoction, sold in his cafeteria as an “a la carte” option for kids who don’t want to wait in the long lunch line. (Thanks to Lisa S. for the tip.) A la carte (or “competitive”) foods are a big, problematic issue in American public schools –more on a la carte next week.
The Lunch Tray’s First Editorial Correction
In my post yesterday (with the somewhat inflammatory title, “Rush Limbaugh, Heritage Foundation: Let Fat Kids Starve“), I quoted Chef Tom Colicchio about House testimony given by the Heritage Foundation in connection with the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 (H.R. 5504). Colicchio quoted the representative of the Heritage Foundation as saying, “if children are getting obese, then maybe we should stop feeding them.”
I wrote that post late at night and the next morning decided that I really should have taken the time to track down the actual testimony in question. I’ve now done so — it’s here, by Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. In fairness, the written testimony doesn’t include this glib comment — although that was likely Colicchio’s takeaway impression of the Heritage Foundation’s position, which opposes any increase in funding for child nutrition programs and uses obesity as one justification. (FYI, I’ve appended an editorial update to the original post for any future readers.)
Have a great weekend, everyone! And if you come across an interesting or offbeat kid-and-food news item you’d like me to consider for a future Friday Buffet, just email me using the Contact tab above.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
As noted in my last Friday Buffet, hearings have begun on the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 (H.R. 5504), which is the House version of the Child Nutrition Bill. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio gave impassioned tesitmony in support of the bill, in which he cited his experience as a business owner, a parent of two children and the son of a “lunch lady.” You can read his full testimony here.
A passage that particularly resonated with me as I work with my district’s Parent Advisory Committee to improve school lunch menus was this one:
My kids, like kids everywhere, are more than happy to slurp down junk food and empty calories –pizza, sodas, candy and deep-fried anything. But the fact that they would eat this whenever doesn’t give me permission to shrug my shoulders and say, ‘well, that’s what they want!’ It’s my job as a parent to make sure they have a variety of real, nutritious foods served to them at every meal so that they grow into robust, healthy kids capable of meeting their full potential in life. And yet, I hear people say, “we’d like to improve school lunch, but all the kids want to eat are pizzas and burgers. If we give them good food they won’t eat it” Come on, people! We’re the adults. It’s up to us to do better. My kids would also happily live in front of the Xbox and never take another shower as long as they live. Not gonna happen. When I give them healthy, delicious food they eat it, with gusto.
Hat tip: Serious Eats.
by Bettina Elias Siegel
For today’s Friday Buffet: school lunches from around the world, lunches that are works of art, and a few other tidbits that may be of interest to Lunch Tray readers:
House Hearings Begin on the Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization
Yesterday, House legislators began holding a full committee hearing on the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010 (H.R. 5504), which is the House version of the Child Nutrition Bill. Read more about it at Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch blog — including ways to contact your own House representatives as they consider this crucial school food legislation.
Something Really Fun (At Least for the School-Lunch-Obsessed)
Wanna know what they’re eating in school cafeterias in Estonia, Finland or Dijbouti? Here’s a site just for you — a blog devoted entirely to photos of school lunches around the world! I could look at these for hours. (Scary, I know.)
Apparently Not Everyone’s A Fan of the Food Revolution
Britain’s new health minister recently made news by saying that Jamie Oliver’s efforts to improve children’s eating habits in that country were actually unsucessful, and Oliver has now responded. You can read the back-and-forth at the Daily Mail.
No More Happy Meal Toys?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is threatening to sue McDonald’s on the grounds that the use of Happy Meals toys lures children into consuming unhealthful food. I’m guessing this litigation (if eventually filed) is unlikely to succeed, but you never know. More here.
For Parents Who Don’t Have Enough to Do on School Mornings
Perhaps this site will keep you busy as you pack your kids’ lunches this fall. (Actually, I’m quite fascinated by these exquisitely beautiful lunches – the cultural underpinnings, the attitudes of the moms who make them, how the kids react to them – and will post more about them later.)
Have a great Fourth of July weekend, everyone. More Lunch Tray on Monday!
by Bettina Elias Siegel
A reader recently wrote a comment which I imagine reflects the views of a lot of people:
I’m confused about the goals of the CNA [Child Nutrition Act, the legislation governing school breakfast and lunch, among other programs]. Why do we need to increase participation in school meal programs? When these programs were first introduced, malnutrition and hunger were significant issues in our country. . . . Back then, teachers could see hunger by observing how skinny the children are. These days, teachers in the same school districts observe how obesity is endemic in their students.
I would guess that in the US today, hunger is not a prevalent problem. Malnutrition might be, especially in certain demographics, and if that is the case then that should be the focus of federally mandated school meals. . . . . With our country’s culture of fast food and packaged processed meals, I find it hard to believe that even the most financially strapped community has children who are starving for calories.
Before I dove into the school lunch issue, I felt exactly the same way. One only has to look around a mall or theme park to know that we need to offer our kids fewer calories, not more, right?
As it turns out, though, both I and this reader were wrong. While childhood obesity is of course a real problem in America, so, too, is childhood hunger.
According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), “In 2008, nearly 16.7 million American children, or almost one in four, lived in food insecure households where their families faced a constant struggle against hunger” (emphasis mine). And, according to Share our Strength, the number of children going hungry has only increased from last year, perhaps an unsurprising finding given the growing economic insecurity many American families currently face. Indeed, according to FRAC, in 2008, the number of people (adults and children) falling in the “very low food security” category more than doubled since 2000.
Childhood hunger is also very much an issue in American schools. In Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, Janet Poppendieck interviews food service directors and principals around the country (and, surprisingly, not just in impoverished areas) who describe how the school breakfast line on a Monday morning (especially following a long weekend or a vacation) is always noticeably longer than other days of the week, as hungry children return to school and get what may be their first adequate meal in days. One director quoted in the book says, “You can tell the hungry kids when they come through a line . . . . They are not misbehaving, but they are just . . . it’s almost like they are grabbing the food. . . . [T]hey will start eating in line, that kind of thing.”
Moreover, hunger has been implicated in impaired cognitive function and lower test scores, student absenteeism, tardiness, visits to the school nurse and discipline problems. In a very real sense, hunger is an educational issue as much as it is a moral one.
As explained in my School Lunch FAQs and elsewhere, under the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, schools are required to offer free and reduced price meals to any child who qualifies. So, theoretically, every one of those 16.7 million hungry children – if they’re of school age and enrolled in school that participates in the both programs – should be eating at least two free (or affordable) meals a day during the school week. But that’s far from the current reality. Many hungry children stay hungry, even in American schools.
Why is this so? The answers to this question are complex and too long to be addressed in a single blog post. I’ll take them on, one at a time, over the coming days. Stay tuned.