Protecting Children: Nutrition in School Lunches
Background
In the mid-thirties, the United States Department of Agriculture began purchasing surplus commodities from farmers in distress. This food was donated to schools, among other institutions, and thus began the National School Lunch Program. During World War II, state agencies were put in charge of administering commodity distribution, and the federal government began offering cash subsidies to schools to supplement their lunch funds. The National School Lunch Act, passed in 1946, made the program law. Today, the NSLP helps some 100,000 schools to serve lunch.
The USDA has developed nutrient standards for school lunches, which serve both as guidance for school food authorities and as a condition for subsidy payments to continue. Compliance monitoring is done by the states together with the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA. In view of the current increase in childhood obesity, the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act required that schools, beginning in fall 2006, implement Local Wellness Policies, aimed in part at improving children’s nutritional understandings.
Problems
The NSLA encourages the Agriculture Secretary, in discretionary (not triggered by producers’ needs) commodity distribution, to give priority to "high protein foods, meat, and meat alternates." The act omits mention of possibly unhealthful aspects (high saturated fat and cholesterol) of those products. Commodities are distributed to schools that exceed the FNS’s own limit for fat content (30%) in lunches. Full-fat cheddar cheese, for example, is 70% fat; even the low-fat version is 56% fat. If it were an occasional, minor item in menus, cheese might be a healthful and tasty addition. But federally donated cheese, in nachos, sandwiches, and casseroles, has become a mainstay of school lunches.
Even enlightened school districts are not necessarily able to avoid high-fat commodities and still receive 100% of their federal assistance entitlement. The NSLA requires that 12% of all school lunch assistance be in the form of commodities. And although the FNS takes state and school preferences into account in determining which commodities will be available for donation, anticipated market conditions for producers are also considered. This situation, in which producer needs are considered alongside of school preferences, looks increasingly like a conflict of interest. The goals of the NSLP as stated in a 2006 Congressional Research Service Report - to "improve children’s nutrition, increase lower-income children’s access to nutritious meals and snacks, and help support the agricultural economy" - reinforce this perception.
Traditional nutritional assumptions have given way more slowly in school lunch legislation than they have in the marketplace. One example is the prohibition, in the absence of certification of medical or dietary need by "a medical authority or by a student’s parent or legal guardian," (2004 Child Nutrition Act, Sec. 102) against milk substitutes like soymilk in school lunch menus. These substitutes are widely available and generally seen as safe and beneficial and often preferable to cow’s milk for children. Undue influence by producer organizations, in this case those representing the dairy industry, must therefore be considered a factor in this prohibition.
At the local level, fat-filled lunches built around donated beef and cheese predominate, often because of two assumptions: first, that this is what kids like, and second, that healthier lunches would be much more expensive and difficult. For the same reasons, many school districts are serving nutritionally questionable pre-processed meals and fast food. The obvious alternative - lunches prepared on site from fresh, local ingredients - is often viewed as impractical.
Policy Recommendations
Federal
Since there is no necessary connection between the rate of production of a commodity and its healthfulness, serious progress in improving the nutritional quality of school lunches requires that the economic needs of producers be considered separately from the nutritional needs of students. The logical outcome of such a policy would be to terminate, over time, all commodity-based assistance to schools in favor of monetary, advisory and administrative assistance only.
FNS nutritional guidelines should be evaluated for adequacy. In view of the fact that the FDA is now requiring separate listing of trans fats on labels, the FNS should establish a maximum percentage for trans fats as well as for saturated fats. Also, freshness of ingredients should be a consideration. The existence of nutritional guidelines makes the prohibition of a particular food, such as milk substitutes, unnecessary. Any such food-based prohibition should be avoided.
State
The state agencies responsible for administering the School Lunch Program are primarily the Departments of Education and Agriculture. These agencies are ideally positioned to help with coordination between schools and farms. One example of such help might be to introduce the DOD Fresh Program, a joint USDA/Department of Defense produce purchasing project, to school districts that are not already taking advantage of it.
Money can be raised by states for school lunches by taxation of junk food purchased at retail, as is done in California. This is one of several suggestions proposed in the publication Healthy School Food Policies (see Resources).
Because many schools lack the necessary computers and software for nutritional analysis of self-created menus, state agencies should provide access to their own analytical resources where this is not already being done.
If children are not educated to accept new foods and innovative menus, nothing will change. Similarly, if parents do not have the same level of nutritional understanding as their children, changes may not last. The federally mandated Local Wellness Policies mentioned above are an ideal vehicle for student/parent nutritional education. Action for Healthy Kids (see Resources) has been an effective partner for schools in this effort.
The Center for Ecoliteracy (see Resources) views the lunch period as part of the school curriculum. In the school kitchen and cafeteria, with parents as possible participants, students can work with food service staff to help prepare lunch, learn about and taste new foods, and practice using salad bars. Taste tests can also become part of parent/teacher/child activities outside of school hours. In the classroom, students can develop healthful menus and market them to other students, in the process learning good judgment in choosing their meals. All of the materials produced can be taken home to parents.
Students should be taught not only about food, but also about the bigger picture of how food gets to them. Farm guest lecturers, field trips and hands-on gardening can encourage a broader perspective, as well as providing lessons in sustainability. A coherent notion of how the food system works turns passive consumers and eaters into active participants who will work to make the system benefit them.
Schools can presently use commodity entitlement & other funds to purchase fruits and vegetables through the DOD Fresh Program (see Recommendations - State). A specified amount of money ($50 million in the 2006-07 school year) is set aside from the amount schools are entitled to in commodities for the purchase of fresh fruit and vegetables through DOD distribution systems. Other federal and state funding is available through the 2002 Farm Bill Fruit and Vegetable Pilot Program, which provides free fresh fruit and vegetables to all students in selected schools in 14 states and 3 Indian reservations.
School districts can partially self-fund fruit and vegetable programs through elimination of desserts.
Resources
These groups and publications offer ideas, practical help, and examples of successful farm-school efforts:
The nonprofit collaborative National Farm to School Program, which grew out of a project started in 2000 by the Center for Food and Justice, performs a significant coordination function.
The Rethinking School Lunch Guide, a publication covering a comprehensive range of topics related to improving school dining, is a product of five years of research by the Center for Ecoliteracy.
The nonprofit Action for Healthy Kids has a Campaign for School Wellness program aimed at helping schools develop effective wellness policies.
Healthy School Food Policies, a publication of the Center for Food and Justice, lists a number of innovative policies that have been successfully implemented across the country, with notes.
More information
Food For Students From Students (article) Apparently the Connecticut for Lieberman party supports school gardens.Grist: The School-Lunch Dog Fight (article) In the clash over school lunches, who's watching out for the kids?
Hartfort, CT Parents Win Important Changes to School Menu (news piece)
MJ: Unhappy Meals (article) January/February 2003.
Oregon HB 2650: School Food Nutritional Standards (bill) Passed in 2007.
PDF: School Food Sold Outside of Meals (Competitive Foods) (news piece)
Study: Kids Will Eat Healthy School Food - Nov 26, 2007 (article)
Sucker Lunch: It's Time to Get Serious About Reforming School Lunches (article) By Tom Philpott on Sept. 6, 2006
WaPo: Inertia at the Top: Belated, Patchy Response Further Hamstrung By Inadequate Federal Attention, Experts Say (article) May 19, 2008.
WaPo: Senate Drops Measure to Greatly Reduce Sugar and Fat in Food at Schools (article) December 15, 2007
WaPo: Should Drinks Like Gatorade Sport the 'Junk Food' Label? (article)
WaPo: Slimming Down Schools: A la Carte Menus, Parents Often Thwart Cafeteria Makeovers (article) May 21, 2008.
