foodmuseumblog

School Lunch Reform--A Full Report, PLUS " The White Meal"

The FOOD Museum's motto is from famed writer about food and eating, MFK Fisher, who said in an interview once, "First we eat. Then we do everything else."
Right--before we can build, paint, teach, fight, play, write, manage, jog,  organize, research, act, compete, we must be fueled.  This includes children, too, oddly.

How well are we feeding schoolchildren in the US? How well elsewhere in the world?  Morgan Sperlock, the fellow who ate McDonald's for a month and recorded his "findings" on film for his award-winning documentary "Super Size Me,"  has a book out called Don't Eat This Book.   In it he states: " Some 23,000 of our public schools now have fast-food franchises in them."   And, the US government tosses in vatfuls of surplus milk, cheese, and oodles of meat. Clearly we in the US are really really doing a swell job at feeding our kids at school.

But enough. The tide may be turning. For a full  and positive report on this topic, with sources, links and looks at countries beyond the US, please visit The FOOD Museum's newest offering compiled by Tom Hughes,  all about school lunch reform.

Hey--remember "mystery meat?"  Remember "the white meal?"  It appeared once a week when Foodie went to college back when dinos roamed the quad,  and she knows college kids are not school children but still, it was a school, and even then, before Foodie became, well, Foodie, she had been raised on tasty, healthy, colorful food. So "the white meal" really had an impact.
Now Foodie is willing to reveal the makeup of "the white meal," but first, let's see what you Blog commenters think it contained, ok?  Weigh in..........
   

SCHOOL LUNCH REFORM: THE COHASSET STORY

Officials, experts grapple with school lunch problem
Faulty standards, no enforcement and cost hinder efforts

COHASSET, Massachusetts (AP) --Worried about all the fatty foods children were eating, town health officer Joseph Godzik recently ordered junk food purged from the local school lunch menu one day a week.

No pizza. No burgers. No fries.

School officials said, No way.

Eliminate such popular items and students will switch from buying to brown-bagging, school officials reasoned. Because lunch programs must pay for themselves, messing with the menu can mean losing money.

But money is only part of the problem. Three out of four schools serve too much fat; many schools undercut healthy offerings by selling junk food; there aren't enough vegetables and fruits; and not enough is done to teach good eating habits, according to government studies and nutrition experts.

Those problems persist despite a decade of federal efforts to improve school meals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the National School Lunch Program for 28 million children in 98,000 public and non-profit private schools, says it has toughened its rules and worked to get more fresh fruits and vegetables to schools.

Some schools themselves try to improve their meals, but progress is often slowed by a morass of financial, bureaucratic and social impediments.

In Cohasset, a well-to-do town of 7,300, Godzik acknowledges that even doing the right thing sometimes is wrong.

"One of the things we don't want to do is have the school cafeteria just offer healthy stuff and have the kids all bring lunch from home and have it all be junk," he said.

What are schools feeding children?
In theory, serving healthy lunches should be easy. Federal regulations dictate calories and nutrients, and the USDA provides 20 percent of school lunch food.

In reality, enforcement of the rules is spotty, and critics complain that the farm products the government buys for schools cater more to agricultural interests than healthy meal-planning.

Dr. Walter Willett, head of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, is a harsh critic of the School Lunch Program: "Their foods tend to be at the bottom of the barrel in terms of healthy nutrition."

Jean Daniel, spokeswoman for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services program, says there have been significant improvements, however, and many schools offer healthy lunches. She believes new data in 2006 will prove that.

She also argues that involving the entire community and requiring physical fitness classes should be of equal concern.

But even federal studies show most lunches have too much fat, even after the USDA overhauled the program in 1994 and limited fat to 30 percent of a lunch's calories .Three-quarters of all schools still don't meet the new limit, according to a 2001 USDA study.

Daniel said the study analyzed what children ate, not what they were offered. She said 80 percent of schools offer combinations of foods that meet the guidelines, but children often make unhealthy choices.

Experts say choices are fine, but that children shouldn't be given unhealthy options.

Willett complains that the focus on fat has obscured an equally important issue -- the starches and refined carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta and white bread) that make up half of school lunch calories.

Others complain about the amount of meat and dairy, saying the commodity program favors those producers in part because of the USDA's other responsibility -- ensuring stable farm prices.

Two-thirds of the $939.5 million the USDA spent on lunch commodities in fiscal 2003 went toward meat and dairy products. A little more than one-quarter of the total went toward fruits and vegetables, mostly canned and frozen.

The government guidelines say meals should be based on grains (especially whole grains), fruits and vegetables, accompanied by moderate amounts of lowfat meat, fish, beans and dairy products.

Fast and junk food also complicate the healthy lunch equation. More than a fifth of lunch programs offer brand-name fast food, and nearly all high schools have vending machines selling junk food, according to a 2000 CDC study.

But the picture isn't entirely bleak. State lawmakers around the country are pushing for limits. California and New York City recently passed bans on junk food in school vending machines.

And nearly 60 percent of districts have upped fresh fruit and vegetable purchases, according to the USDA. Nearly half also are buying more lowfat and reduced-fat foods.

What should schools be feeding children?
Alison Forrest doesn't mind working hard to feed her children healthy lunches. She bakes whole-wheat bread from scratch and turns fresh tomatoes into marinara. She prepares salad greens from a neighboring farm and cottage cheese from a Vermont dairy.

The result is a welcoming kitchen filled with homey, tempting aromas.

But the kitchen isn't in her home, and the children aren't her own. Forrest is food service director at Brewster-Pierce Memorial School in rural Huntington, Vermont, where little comes from a can and nearly everything is organic.

Forrest takes a holistic approach to nutrition. She introduces new ingredients in the classroom, not on the lunch line. She says children embrace new foods when they know more about them.

What should children be eating? What the USDA regulations call for might be a good start; they're healthier than the average American diet, many nutritionists say.

Despite the gap between standards and execution, many want even tougher regulations. Willett wants more whole grains, others want soy milk and vegetarian meals, and everyone wants more fresh produce.

Antonia Demas, director of the Food Studies Institute in Trumansburg, New York, said the classroom must be part of any solution. She wants nutrition education mandated the same way New York schools are required to teach HIV prevention.

Forrest said her homegrown approach -- the children plant potatoes and shell their own beans -- is a model that can be applied anywhere. In fact, large urban schools often have better access to fresh produce because they are closer to shipping routes and can order more, she said.

Barry Sackin, spokesman for the American School Food Service Association in Alexandria, Virginia, agreed schools have a role in the obesity battle, but so do parents.

"If kids eat (school) lunches five days a week, that's still less than 25 percent of the meals that kids eat," Sackin said.

Why aren't schools feeding children better?
When ideas for better menus are rejected by schools such as Cohasset, where the lunch program has run a deficit during five of the past six years, many point to the money.

Most programs get little or no local funding, leaving them to pay their way with meal sales and federal reimbursements.

Those finances create a sometimes impossible juggle in which schools must serve meals that are cost-effective to prepare, appeal to children and meet federal guidelines.

Even with food that marries healthy, cheap and flavorful, it's more complicated than a simple menu change. Training cafeteria staff to prepare new foods and educating pupils and parents takes time and money. It's a balance that can make even small changes difficult.

Barbara Gates thought she was starting small in her battle to get more vegetables on the menu at Crest Elementary School in El Cajon, California. She wanted minestrone soup substituted for pepperoni pizza twice a month.

"Are you kidding? Pizza is our biggest seller. I'm surprised we're not selling it more," Gates said a USDA consultant told her and other parents in a meeting two years ago.

Even if money wasn't an issue, enforcement is.

The school lunch program was created in 1946 to prevent malnutrition, and the only real penalties are for schools that fail to feed children enough.

Faced with the opposite problem, the government could withhold reimbursements. It never has happened. Daniel said her agency prefers to work with schools for improvement rather than punish them. Limitations in the commodity program are another concern. The USDA says the agency isn't set up to handle large quantities of perishables.

Though she praises some commodities, Forrest said others seem a waste of taxpayer money.

She said the USDA once offered her some vanilla pudding. "They said, 'It has no nutritional value. How much do you want?'

"I didn't take any," she said.