USDA Shifting Toward Healthier Commodities Program for School Meals

By Mark Bishop, HSC Deputy Director

Earlier this month, I participated in a U.S. Senate briefing on improving the nutritional quality of school commodity foods. Ensuring healthy commodities is an important component of a healthy and properly funded school meal program.

First a bit of a background on commodity foods. . .

The USDA runs the Commodity Foods Program, which essentially provides schools agricultural products -- both whole and processed foods. The availability of this food can often make the difference between a program that loses or makes money by providing about 15 to 20 percent of the food items for a lunch menu. At the same time, this program has also been criticized for distributing unhealthful processed foods and low-quality proteins.

However, things have changed at the USDA, and their commodity food offerings are getting better. Currently the program is offering low-fat cheeses, lean meats and bread products that are whole grain. And they are committed to bringing more and healthier options to their listing of available food items.

One day prior to this briefing, Senator Blanche Lincoln, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, introduced S1650, a bill to improve the purchase and processing of healthful commodities for use in school meal programs. This bill would essentially put into law the healthful improvements that the USDA has been making. We believe that this should and will become an important part of the discussion around the Child Nutrition Act.

The briefing was sponsored by Senator Lincoln and organized by the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. As a NANA partner, we were excited about the well-attended briefing and the changes this means for school food.

Thank you to NANA and Senator Lincoln for their leadership on this issue.

And if you're interested in improving school food, support HSC's efforts to bring healthier options to the table. Our annual Cooking Up Change healthy cooking contest puts the task of creating a healthy menu in the hands of student chefs, who always cook up healthy, tasty options while exceeding USDA guidelines on a very, very tight budget. Imagine what they -- and our school food service providers across the nation -- could do with more money for better food.