Healthy Schools Campaign

Bills Would Reduce Paperwork, Increase Hungry Kids' Access to Healthy Meals

By Amanda Chablani, HSC policy specialist

There’s been a lot of response from the media to the recently released USDA report on food security, bringing attention to the often overlooked issue of hunger. While many were surprised to learn that food insecurity is at an all-time high, others were more disturbed to learn that it has been a large problem since long before the recession began.

Add to this the fact that many of the families that suffer from food insecurity have at least one full-time working adult and, as we’ve discussed, the 17 million children who are being brought up in food insecure families, and you get a lot of people suddenly paying attention to this huge national problem.

While I’m sure hunger is a complex and nuanced issue, I also know there are some fairly straightforward things that can be done that will have a large impact, especially when it comes to children. Children are in schools where free or reduced-price school meals are made available to those who qualify. Therefore, theoretically, we can make sure kids from food insecure families have access to healthy, nutritious meals.

Unfortunately, we also know that sometimes it is very hard to make sure that the kids most in need of food actually get it. Because of any number of issues, students are often not enrolled in the school lunch program. That’s why, in anticipation of the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, several bills have been introduced that aim to directly certify kids (using records from programs like SCHIP and Medicaid) so their families don’t need to fill out (and schools don’t need to process) additional paperwork. (More context and background from a January 2009 HSC blog post.)

As Senators Bennet, Brown, and Casey explain about one such bill:

“No child should miss out on nutritious meals because of needless red tape. By cutting through it, our bill would ensure access to meals for an estimated three million additional children. When Congress renews the child nutrition programs, the Hunger Free Schools Act must be incorporated.” 

To learn more about the Child Nutrition Act, visit HSC's website. 

Private Sector Solutions May Overlook True Cost of Healthy Meals

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

The media's interest in private sector responses to the challenges of school food fascinates me. For the most part it's good because it helps increase understanding of our food systems and highlight the barriers involved with serving healthy food in schools -- something that I believe can ultimately lead to greater support for increased resources and changes to our current system. But on the other hand, the coverage always seems a bit off to me.

USA Today recently ran a story about Revolution Foods, a company that is privatizing healthy food for schools. It's a model that is working in some areas and focuses on local and healthier options:

Revolution shuns high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, trans fats and deep-frying. Its meats and milk are hormone- and antibiotic-free, and many of its ingredients are organic and locally sourced.

As I wrote before, I think that it's great that the private industry is getting involved, and we're always glad to see kids being offered (and eating) healthier foods. And the USA Today article offers opposing views by quoting others in the field who ask if Revolution's priorities are right, or if their model is truly scalable. 

However, I have another concern. In short, saying that a company can provide a healthier meal for $3 doesn't account for all the costs that a school must cover. Let me break it down a bit. According to the story:

The federal government pays, on average, $2.68 per child per meal – and most food advocates say that simply isn't enough. A few insist it can't be done for less than $5.

(For reference, HSC believes that schools need an additional $1 to provide a healthy meal.)

What many people forget is what that federal reimbursement has to pay for. Not only does it have to cover food costs, labor, and prep, but it also has to pay for overhead and the facility. For most schools, the overhead and facility costs associated with serving a meal may be close to $1 per meal -- just to have a space and staffing for a kid to sit and eat.

So if you have to purchase a Revolution Foods meal for around $3.00 per meal (only losing $0.32 per meal based on federal reimbursements) you then need to add the cost of the facility, staffing, utilities etc. That means an outsourced $3.00 meal actually costs a school closer to $4.00 per meal by the time it reaches kids at their cafeteria tables. That's not too far off what the "advocates" cited in the story claim that schools need to spend for a more healthful meal.

We're all for creative private solutions, but in order to have meaningful and practical discussions about their impact, we need to come up with a common accounting system to track the true expenses of school food. We need to make sure we're comparing apples to apples when we discuss costs.

What we really see is that the solution to providing healthy school food is not based only in tweaking the existing system. Schools need increased funding to invest in healthier food -- and along the way, develop a system that supports children's health.

Rachael Ray & Jamie Oliver Add Star Power to Push for Healthy School Lunches

By Amanda Chablani, HSC Policy Specialist

In the past few years, we’ve seen several chefs and food writers talking about health, the environment, and national food policy. Most notably, Alice Waters, of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and the exciting Edible Schoolyard, has for years been outspoken about the availability of local sustainable farming. Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma spent an unprecedented number of weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and received a 2007 James Beard Award. And just last year, Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer, published Food Matters, a book he describes as exploring “the links among global warming and other environmental challenges, obesity and the so-called lifestyle diseases, and the overproduction and overconsumption of meat, simple carbohydrates, and junk food.” (For an excellent discussion on food policy with Bittman, check this out).  

But from what I can tell, until now, there hasn’t been a whole lot of interest in food policy from broadcast media, so I was happy to see this news story about Rachael Ray, the woman who made EVOO a household acronym, working to improve school food.    

I love how Rachael brings attention back to the powerful message that providing good nutrition to kids is a preventative health strategy and should be part of the national health care debate. And, as the kids of P.S. 89 make clear, healthy school food can be delicious! 

The New York Public School District had been successfully working to improve their school food before Rachael came along, as Rachael explains:

“With the small amount of money they have to spend, they’ve made such great strides. And I think this will really help with the obesity rates -- if we can get great nutrition into every public school coast to coast, for breakfast and lunch, that’s going to make a dent in it.” 

By lending her star power to the issue, Rachael brings attention at a vital moment in the policy debate around the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act.   

And she’s not the only one! 

Jamie Oliver is bringing his cooking skills, and the nation’s attention, to the school lunch offering in Huntington, West Virginia on his upcoming show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. On this side of the Atlantic, Jamie is known for his successful cooking show The Naked Chef, but on the other side of the pond he’s just as famous for his philanthropic work and his four-part special Jamie’s School Dinners that exposed, and attempted to improve, the state of school lunch in England. At least in part because of his efforts, the British government invested more than a billion dollars in improving school lunch nationally. 

These celebrity chefs are doing a great job raising awareness of this important issue, and while we think it is especially important for you to raise your voices in support of healthy school food, we are glad to see Rachael Ray and Jamie Oliver getting involved, too.  

In Defense of School Lunch (and Our Nation)

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

A report came out last month that shows that 75 percent of 17 to 24 year-olds are not eligible to enlist in the armed forces. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most significant is obesity. This made me think that the more things change, the more things stay the same. 

Prior to World War II, military and government leaders became concerned with the health of army recruits: as a whole, they were malnourished. In order to bring the population around with efforts needed to mobilize for war, in 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt convened a White House Nutrition Conference for Defense.

As Susan Levine wrote:

Chief among the conference concerns, of course, was the health of army recruits. Food and nutrition in this context were essential elements not only to physical health but to the nation's "virility" and its ability to defend itself. When the Selective Service Commission began drafting young men for service... alarming numbers of boys were found to be physically unfit... Surgeon General Parran warned that "the great preponderance of boys who were rejected for the draft were found to be boys who in earlier school life had poor nutrition." It was clear that these officials believed malnutrition to be a serious threat to the nation's strength on the battlefront.

And five years later...

...in June 1946, Congress created the National School Lunch Program "as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other foods."

And 63 years later (that's now - December 2009)...

According to the latest Pentagon figures, a full 35 percent, or more than one-third, of the roughly 31.2 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified for military service because of physical and medical issues. And, said Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, “the major component of this is obesity. We have an obesity crisis in the country. There’s no question about it.”

Things have changed dramatically in the last 60 years, but what hasn't changed is that school food still plays an important role in addressing the health of our nation's children.

We currently have a 60-year-old system designed to get more calories to a malnourished student population, delivering too many calories to a student population facing record levels of obesity. Just as the National School Lunch Program was established to deliver more calories to malnourished children, it must now be adapted to provide the kind of healthy meals that can help this generation of children develop healthy eating habits for a lifetime.

We have a real opportunity to make this change with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act next year. Perhaps the armed forces will join the parents, teachers, students and advocates across the country calling for healthy reform in our school food system.

Senate Holds First Hearing on Child Nutrition Reauthorization as USDA Releases New Report Showing Dramatic Increase in Food Insecurity

By Amanda Chablani, HSC Policy Specialist

Recently, I was shocked to learn that almost 17 million children in the US are food insecure – meaning that essentially, they don’t know where their next meal will come from.

This startling information was in the recently released USDA report on food security which painted a bleak picture: more than one in every seven US households is struggling to put food on the table. Even more disturbing: the report reflects last year’s data, and many are speculating that, given the growth in unemployment (and underemployment), these numbers may have increased over the past 11 months.

At the same time, the Senate Committee has begun discussing the Child Nutrition Programs (currently set to be reauthorized in Sept. 2010) and held the first hearing this week. These programs provide a vital opportunity to make healthy, nutritious meals available to millions of children in schools across the country.

I found it gratifying to see that several committee members made a point of recognizing the importance of both increasing accessibility to school food (so that more children can receive these meals) while also supplying children with more nutritious food.

As we’ve discussed again and again on this blog, hunger and poor nutrition walk hand in hand and typically impact the same vulnerable populations. The reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act provides a chance to address these interrelated issues.

And, just as importantly, kids who receive healthy meals learn more. President Obama recognized this when commenting on the USDA report. He said:

"Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals."

To learn more about Child Nutrition Reauthorization, click here.

Healthy School Meals: Behind the Headlines

By Rochelle Davis, Founding Executive Director

Recently The Chicago Tribune ran a front page story on the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) breakfast program.  While I greatly appreciate the attention that the Tribune and the reporter Monica Eng have given to the issue of school food, I do have some concerns about the Nov. 5 story and the previous story that appeared on June 11.

The stories highlight many of the shortcomings of the CPS food program, shortcomings that HSC is very concerned about, and we look forward to working with CPS to make these much needed improvements.  However, I feel that the coverage neither told the whole story nor provided a meaningful context for public dialogue. Public dialogue is especially critical this year, as Congress begins to consider the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the federal legislation that essentially determines school food policy and resources. 

1) The coverage fails to highlight the many changes that CPS has made to its food program over the last two years, including but not limited to:  removing deep fryers from all schools, implementing a farm-to-school program, eliminating trans fats from all food, and serving only low fat milk.  Each of these achievements alone is significant in a district which last year served more than 60 million meals. Additionally, the article portrays Louise Esaian as a defender of the status quo. However, in our experience, she has taken on the serious challenges of making change in a large district, but a district that has not been able to effectively communicate their accomplishments.  

2) The coverage fails to adequately address the financial constraints that CPS faces.  Any discussion of improving school food that does not include information about the cost is ignoring the single largest barrier to school food reform. According to the School Nutrition Association, school districts spend about 35 cents more than they receive from the federal government for each reimbursable meal. For CPS and most large urban school districts, the shortfall is closer to 70 cents per meal.   

3) The reporter seems to dismiss efforts to improve the nutritional quality of “kid-marketed” food.  There is a vigorous debate around the best strategy for encouraging children to eat healthful food:   should we feed children the same foods that adults eat (or the food adults should eat) or should we make “kid-friendly” food  (the child-specific items marketed to children in grocery stores and on restaurant menus, which parents often serve at home) as healthful as possible?  There is no clear answer, but from our perspective, it’s a fair debate, a debate that should be included in articles on this topic.

4) The comparison of the CPS food program to the Institute of Medicine standards, which were publicly released two weeks prior to the article, seems unfair.  In fact, anticipating the release of these standards, CPS has already convened a working group to map out a strategy for moving the program toward compliance with these standards.  

5) The reporter seems to overlook the important role that nutrition education plays in students’ decisions to eat healthful and often unfamiliar foods.  She cites one expert who states that children will choose the healthier options if only healthy options are offered. While we do agree that kids will often eat healthier options if offered, significant research establishes the importance of nutrition education to support students’ ability to make healthful food choices. The full picture is that if you only change the food without also offering nutrition education, plate waste will increase and meal participation will decrease, thereby countering the goals of the program. And there is universal agreement that getting more kids to eat breakfast is an important strategy for improving children’s health.

Again, we thank the Tribune for  recognizing the importance of  school food to student health and achievement and hope that future coverage will provide a more complete context  to enhance public understanding of this important issue.  

Improving School Food with the Institute of Medicine's New Recommendations: It Still Comes Down To Money

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Just the other day the Institute of Medicine published their new recommendations for school food. It's a comprehensive report and full of excellent practical policy recommendations. And as School Lunch Talk says, "The current nutrition standards for school meals are in sore need of an overhaul." In short:

...the committee recommends that the USDA adopt standards for menu planning, including:

• Increasing the amount and variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
• Setting a minimum and maximum level of calories
• Focusing more on reducing saturated fat and sodium

Healthy Schools Campaign fully supports these recommendations. From what we're hearing, it will take years to get these recommendations through a rule-making process, but we want to help see it through to implementation.I found three issues in the recommendations particularly interesting:

1. Maximum vs. minimum calories
2. Food-based vs. nutrient-standard-based menu planning
3. Cost

1. Maximum vs. minimum calories

I find this to be a really interesting issue. When the National School Lunch Program was established, the greatest health concern facing the country was undernourishment rather than obesity. So in the 1940s, setting a minimum calorie content made sense. Today the opposite is true. The ideas is simple but from a practical perspective, this represents a challenging change.

In 2005 HSC participated in a taskforce to review dietary guidelines for Illinois schools. One of the hot discussion items was maximum caloric counts for individual portions of food items. The point that repeatedly came up in these meetings was the idea that decreasing portion sizes to get caloric counts down just leads to students taking more items. To me this illustrates the challenges behind what seems like a logical change. In the end, our taskforce agreed that we should limit the portion sizes to reduce calorie counts, but it was not without much deliberation about the actual implementation challenges. Making this decision and addressing the implementation challenges are an important move forward.

2. Food-based vs. nutrient-standard based menu planning

The committee recommended that schools change their menu planning from an approach that focuses on nutrient standards to an approach based on foods. (Again, something that seems simple and intuitive: planning menus based on food rather than nutrients.)

Essentially they are saying that rather than telling schools to design menus that have X mg of vitamin A, X mg of Calcium and so on, schools should create menus that have at least two servings of dark green vegetables and one serving of whole grains.

The intent of this change is to simplify meal creation and focus on the preparation of healthy meals rather than focus on nutrients. It also shifts the focus to cooking with whole or minimally processed foods rather than reheating highly processed foods that have been fortified with specific nutrients. The benefit here is that it can prevent junk food that's been fortified with vitamins from being included in a menu.

It's a great and logical move that can also make things easier for schools. And it's a move that allows menus to be created in the same way that we think about food. I mean, I think about getting foods into my diet ("I should have spinach and some lean chicken tonight") rather than getting specific vitamins ("I need to make a dinner with lots of vitamin A"). 

3. Cost

The report mentions many times that it needs to look to a cost effective implementation.  And NPR reported:

Better nutrition would cost more, the report acknowledges, because fresh fruit and vegetables can be pricey. A shift to the new standards would probably add 4 percent to lunch costs and about 20 percent to breakfasts. If kids really take to the healthier options, the costs could rise even more.

I don't know if 4 percent is accurate or not. I actually called the press office to ask how they got this number, and was told that they are not trying use any specific dollar amounts. But they did say that there needs to be greater investment both in reimbursements as well as in capital investment. Put another way: we need more money for better food on a daily basis as well as funding for things like school kitchen equipment that can be used for scratch cooking rather than just reheating. As La Vida Localvore writes, "to adopt the IOM's recommendations... they WILL need Congress to raise the reimbursement rate."

I also asked if this additional cost was over and above the 35 cents per meal that most school districts are already losing. There was no clear answer. The reality is too complex - some schools are already doing a great job, large urban schools are loosing closer to 70 cents per meal, and many school food programs are losing money and not serving meals that would measure up to the IOM recommendations. But all in all, implementing improvements in school food will cost more.

In the end, the conclusion is something we've all heard before. To implement the IOM's recommendations in full, we need more money. Yes, we also need structural changes to food distribution, we need changes in the commodity programs at the USDA, we need to connect schools to locally sourced produce, we need improvements in school facilities -- but without more money for better food and better kitchens, it will always be an uphill battle.

And since the Child Nutrition Act's reauthorization has been extended through September 2010, we have until next fall to make sure we can make this type of change a reality.

Food Companies' Principles for Advertising in Schools Fail to Fully Address Childhood Obesity

By Amanda Chablani, HSC Policy Specialist

As we’ve blogged about here and here, many food companies have a lot at stake when it comes to the food kids eat in school. Which is why the new advertising principles created by the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (a self-regulatory industry group) seem to be a fairly weak attempt to address the growing concerns expressed by legislators, parents, and advocacy groups about the marketing of junk food in schools. 

While my understanding of advertising regulation (even industry-spearheaded regulation) is that of responsible community mindedness, it is perhaps not surprising that this organization -- with a membership that includes Burger King, ConAgra, Hershey, and Coca-Cola -- has released a document that dedicates pages and pages to outlining the many ways that school advertising is acceptable: aprons worn by food service staff, appearances by ‘spokes’-characters (think Ronald McDonald), classroom calendars provided to teachers, and many, many others.

Perhaps most disturbing is the promotion of sponsored curricula, teaching materials, and reward programs that can be used in the classroom (for instance, Pizza Hut pizzas provided to students who read a certain number of books).  

As Margo G. Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest summarizes in her piece:  "Programs like Pizza Hut's turn reading into a commercial proposition that, unfortunately, ends up promoting obesity and disease in children." 

While it appears that the forces behind this principles document are not committed to the same kind of change we would like to see, Reps. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Todd Platt (R-PA) have introduced legislation requiring a study of the nutritional quality of foods, the extent and type of marketing, and the current state of regulation of marketing foods in schools. 

We'll keep you posted on this legislation and similar efforts. 

The food that kids eat in school can be healthy and have plenty of kid appeal without branded marketing. At our upcoming Cooking Up Change healthy cooking contest, high school students studying culinary arts will share healthy, tasty school meals they've created to meet nutrition requirements on a tight budget. The winning school meal will be served in high school cafeterias nationwide -- with an honest stamp of student approval. Learn more about Cooking Up Change and what school food can look like when students are in charge.

Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization – Let’s Do it Right!

Over the past several months, we’ve been preparing for Congress to take up reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act this fall.  However, as you may have noticed, the healthcare debate has been all-consuming in Washington, delaying most everything else -- including Child Nutrition Act reauthorization.

Last week, the Agriculture Appropriations bill extended the current school food program through September 30, 2010 – and all it needs is a presidential signature. It makes some important new investments in health, including:

• $85 million to improve children’s access to meals during the summer 
• $25 million to help schools purchase cafeteria equipment to provide healthy school meals 
• $25 million to help states automatically enroll children in the School Lunch Program

However, it does not fundamentally shift the program or fund healthier school food. That battle will be taken up next fall.

This extension is not unexpected and it may not be a bad thing.  Updating the Child Nutrition Act could involve major policy shifts, and it deserves to be in the front and center of policy discussions  when it's taken up. As long as the health care debate continues, the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization and the school food issues it involves may get lost in the shuffle. 

So while we won’t see comprehensive reforms to school food this year, we have seen a great deal of exciting movement from the administration (some of which we’ve blogged about here and here).  All of this movement will affect the debate when Congress takes it up next year.

In the meantime, we will again bring our student chefs -- and the healthy school meals they design -- to Washington, we will continue working with policymakers on school nutrition, and we will work to raise the profile of the issues involved in Child Nutrition Act reauthorization, particularly the issue of making more nutritious school meals available to children throughout the US. 

Stay tuned – we’ll keep you updated.

Lining Up for School Lunch -- Before 9 a.m.

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Sometimes the obstacles to a healthy school lunch have nothing to do with the food served on the plate. Instead it's a number of factors, including the environment in which students eat.  Nutrition advocates have been bringing important attention to the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization, which Congress will consider later next year. However, we don't want to lose sight of the broad challenges that schools face and opportunities that we have to make changes in how students eat and how that supports quality education.

This recent article in The New York Times highlights once such factor -- overcrowding in schools and inadequate cafeteria space:

At Francis Lewis in Fresh Meadows, Queens, which has nearly twice as many students as the 2,400 it was designed for, administrators have been forced to look for every possible nook of space and cranny of time to cram in more bodies. The first lunch period starts at 8:57 a.m.; the last one ends at 2:46 p.m... 

Lunch is served for seven periods, with up to 600 students sitting on the benches at any time. The cafeteria workers put out a few breakfast choices during the first lunch shift, like croissants and bagels, and occasionally bacon and eggs, which disappear fast. Still, on most days, nearly two-thirds of the early eaters opt for the lunch fare...

“If you’re really hungry, you can eat anything at any time,” said Jasmine Cepeda, 15, who is one of the roughly 380 students who eat in the first lunch period, about three hours after she wakes up at home in East New York. “Sometimes you just eat it because it’s there and because you know by eighth period you’ll be starving.”

The early eaters have spent part of the first three weeks of school perfecting their grazing habits. Some have only coffee before they leave home. Several hang out at Arby’s after their 3 p.m. class gets out, snacking on barbecue sandwiches or more fries.

And in our Through Your Lens campaign, we saw this entry that highlighted the same issue. Too many students, too little space, lunch when most people are putting down their coffee. How could any student learn when her stomach is grumbling in the afternoon?

For a school that has double the number of students that it was designed for, there are few good short-term answers. And a properly funded Child Nutrition Act sure won't do much to fix this problem. But this does highlight the complex challenges schools face -- challenges that sit at the intersection of education, nutrition, environmental health and student development.

Of course the long term answer is finding adequate funding for our schools -- including school facilities. 

Check out the Take Action section in our Through Your Lens campaign. Getting more funds to improve school facilities is hugely important, and Congress is debating this issue now. Hearing from all of us about these challenges can ensure that we can better fund our school buildings. 

Obamas and New Farm-to-School Dollars Help Bring Local Produce to Schools

By Amanda Chablani, HSC Policy Specialist

Although the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act has been postponed, we continue to see a good deal of activity in the school foods arena –- with input not only from legislators, but also from the Obama  administration.

Michelle Obama has been receiving the most attention lately with her appearance at a local farmer’s market. Her activities signify the movement of policy in the administration, extending their farming activities from working with students in the White House garden to broad support of local, sustainable agriculture –- and for making healthy, fresh food available to all Americans.

Also exciting is the recent announcement from Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan that, as part of the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, the USDA will form Farm-to-School Tactical Teams to help school administrators buy fresh, local produce. To assist schools in buying local, the USDA will be making $50 million available to support school districts in making major changes in their food procurement processes.

There has been similar legislative action, too. Senator Blanche Lincoln, the new chair of the agriculture committee, has also made some moves in this area by sponsoring the Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act, which requires the Secretary of Agriculture to compile model food specifications and practices for schools and to research the quality of foods that schools receive as part of the commodities program.

All of these activities point to a new direction for school food. While we may have to wait a bit longer for a strong reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, we’re already seeing action in the right direction.

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.

Frozen Fruits & Veggies Provide Healthy Options for School Meals

By Rochelle Davis, HSC Founding Executive Director

New research reported in the International Supermarket News says that frozen food can be nutritionally equal – or even superior – to fresh produce:

The search for new and improved school meals has revealed that a mix of fresh and frozen foods creates the optimum result in terms of healthy eating and production.

Fresh produce can deteriorate along the supply chain, as the journey from the field to the shelf can seriously compromise the nutritional value and quality of fresh produce due to exposure. But frozen food's freshness is maintained by the temperature at which it is kept. There are also benefits in that frozen products are cheaper, create less waste and are more accessible to institutions such as schools.

Our experience in Chicago certainly confirms that. Last year the Chicago Public Schools and its partner Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality launched a frozen local program to take regionally produced fruits and vegetables and, within 24 hours of harvest, flash freeze them for serving all year in CPS school meals.

In an article at FamilyFarmed.org, Chartwells Thompson Regional Vice President Bob Bloomer says: "This is a great way to lock in the nutrients of these fruits and vegetables... We will be purchasing thousands of pounds of these products this school year. The kids love it."

Students Say It Best: "We Need Better School Food"

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

I came across this video via Edible San Francisco, and it's truly great. It's a student-produced piece on the importance and challenges of offering a healthy and tasty school meal.

You gotta take a look. It's well done, entertaining and only will take three minutes of your day. Trust me, it's worth it. These students say it so much better than I could.

In the Quest for Healthy School Food, Is Privatization the Answer?

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Over on Grist, Tom Philpott wrote a great article about school lunches and whether or not the answer to improving school food should be privatization. His conclusion is that the federal government needs to spend more on school food, and schools need to prepare their own meals.

It's a great and thoughtful piece, and I recommend you read it. And while I do agree with many of his specifics, I also think he leaves out a few key issues. And I have a slightly different conclusion.

But first of all, Tom made a great point stating that private companies aren't solving the problem; their meals are still more expensive than the federal reimbursement. So while there are many creative and nimble companies getting involved with school food, the primary message is still: we need more money for better food. 

To illustrate this point, Jane Black wrote a great article about Revolution Foods (free registration may be required) that discusses how private companies, specifically Revolution Foods, can save money by bulk purchasing, in-house cooking and centralized distribution systems - all the while focusing on healthy and fresh foods. No doubt they are doing great work, and anyone trying to invest in this type of improvement deserves accolades. However, when it comes down to providing the meal to students, this stood out to me:

The price (of the Revolution Foods meal), between $2.90 and $3 per lunch, is not much higher than the current $2.68 the government pays (the school).

OK. At face value this is true that $0.32 is not much. However, let's put that in perspective, because $0.32 adds up quickly for a large school. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for example, serves 280,000 lunches each day. So if you lose $0.32 on each meal, that means CPS would loose $89,000 every day that they serve that meal. And if you figure that the average starting teacher salary is around $55,000, losing this kind of money would have a clear impact on the district's ability to put dollars into teaching and education.

But the reality is actually worse.  When you add in facility, administrative and labor costs, large urban school districts are actually losing closer to 70 cents.  This is not sustainable.

So back to Tom's piece and a few of the issues that I had with it. First, Tom makes a blanket assumption that commissary style food service leads to low quality food. He writes:

I have no reason to doubt the quality of what Revolution produces, but that already seems like a major quality concession here. The commissary-to-consumption scheme is essentially the airplane model of food service. 

While I can't justify comparing mom's homemade soup to airplane food, there is a big difference between sitting in coach and first class. Commissary doesn't mean bad food. Low quality ingredients, poor distribution strategies and lack of investment in healthful options mean bad food. I'd prefer cooking from scratch, but let's not eliminate a potentially important strategy immediately. And there are schools employing a cost-effective commissary approach to meal distribution that are actually pretty good.

That brings me to my other point. To move toward schools making their own food, there would be a need for major facility improvements to build and repair school kitchens because, as Tom writes, "kitchen equipment slowly decayed." It is true that as a whole, schools don't have adequate commercial kitchens. So private food providers are still necessary to fill this void of inadequate infrastructure due to historic trends towards privatization in schools. And increasing the reimbursement rates through Child Nutrition reauthorization, while hugely important, won't fix our kitchens. That money will go toward food and operations, not capital expenses. 

So improving school kitchens would require more money on top of the money needed from Child Nutrition reauthorization. And yes, there was stimulus money to do this, but $100 million across the nation doesn't go far at all. The dollar amount would have to be closer to ten billion dollars.

One more point. There are dozens of small companies doing creative work trying to get better food into schools. Good for them. Keep innovating. But let's also not forget that some big guys are doing some creative work too. In Chicago, the food is provided by Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality, and they have created a distribution system where they now serve regionally grown, flash frozen produce in CPS schools five days a week. They've also eliminated trans fats, only serve low fat milk and cheese, are increasing the prevalence of salad bars.  And the list goes on. Yes, the food still needs to get much better. And yes, we need more money in the food programs. But there are many creative programs, even from large companies, that are driving positive change. 

Ideally, I'd love to see scratch cooking in all schools. But until that happens, we need to leverage all the resources at our disposal to improve the food for our kids. What are your thoughts?

Reason #157 to Better Fund School Lunches: We Shouldn't Have to Choose Between Health and Education

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Recently in The New York Times, there was a sobering article about the current state of school funding. It was a story of school cutbacks, increasing classroom sizes, job losses, people being thankful for taking pay cuts. It didn't paint a good picture for the health of our school system, let alone the state of school health. And the punchline was that without the stimulus funding, it would have been significantly worse.

But the line that caught my interest was a small point near the bottom of the article...

About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed [pdf] by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.

My observation -- assuming that this survey is representative of schools in general -- is that it's the non-core staff who often bear the brunt of an economic downturn. While many schools are indeed eliminating teaching jobs, even more schools are eliminating even more jobs in other areas. When schools are losing money, it's health, nutrition and maintenance that lose out the most.

Health and nutrition services (beyond federal reimbursements) are being funded through the same dollars that provide education to our students. So particularly in a large urban district that has higher levels of poverty, a loss of money in a school food program has to be covered from a school's general revenue.

And if health has to compete with education, no one wins.

How can any administrator decide between cutting healthy food for kids and laying off teachers? There is no correct answer. The setup is just not right. It's not a question any school leader should have to ask.

I don't know what the answer is for health services, or bus drivers or facility maintenance, but I do know that properly funding the Child Nutrition Act at a level that enables schools to provide healthy meals will help schools that rely heavily on federal reimbursements avoid asking these impossible questions and watching children suffer no matter which answer they chose.

Imagine a school principal who doesn't have to worry about the school food service program losing money and draining their education dollars. This takes the pressure off of food programs and allows them to innovate and create healthy meals that don't rely on junk food to make up for lost revenue. 

While fully funding the school lunch program won't fix the school funding problem, it will go a long way toward ensuring that our kids have healthy meals -- even in times of financial stress and without draining dollars away from education. So with this year's reauthorization coming up, we have an opportunity to make real, lasting change.

A New Vision for Healthy School Lunches Becomes a Reality in One CPS School

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

We were recently invited to join staff at Von Steuben High School in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for lunch. It was the roll out of a new school lunch concept called Environments, which CPS partner Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality explains "encourages students to make good meal choices and promotes wellness in the cafeteria, in the classroom and at home."  It was a great meal, and it shows what we could have -- if we had the funding. First a little context.

CPS has contracted with Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality for their food service for the past couple of years. Over that time, they have made some significant changes in the lunch program including eliminating trans fats, removing all deep fryers from kitchens, eliminating whole milk (except where medically necessary), piloting cut fruit programs and salad bars, making locally grown flash-frozen veggies and fruit available all year round and more. The CPS lunch program still needs major improvements, but they've come a long way. And all of this is being done in the context of a very limited budget. 

The School Nutrition Association estimates that on average, schools lose about $0.35 per meal, but in large urban districts like Chicago -- where labor and overhead are so much more expensive -- the loss is closer to $0.70 per meal. And in programs such as Environments, it's even more.

The Environments program at Von Steuben High School is essentially a pilot: a vision of what we could have. A vision of healthful, tasty food. The format is similar to a food court where you have choices: salads, Chinese food, deli bar, pizza and more. And when you walk through the line, you get the feeling that it's a quality cafeteria -- I mean to say, I had no hesitation about eating the food at all. The salads were fresh, the veggies were colorful, the prepared foods didn't look greasy or as if they were sitting around for a long time. It didn't fit the stereotype of "school lunch" -- rather, it was a collection of freshly prepared, well-presented, healthful options.

My lunch: I ate a freshly made salad of cut greens, corn, tomatoes, black beans and grilled cut chicken. I tried the pizza -- made with whole wheat crust and low fat cheese -- and a side of locally grown steamed zucchini. I topped this off with a small chocolate chip cookie and a fresh pear. 

The meal was good. Really good. I'd eat there again in a heartbeat.

But this concept is in only one school of the 650 in CPS. And that's just not enough. The problem is that this meal costs too much for CPS to serve anywhere, let alone everywhere.

However, this meal is a real vision of what school lunches could be if we had the funding to support it.

What would it take for large urban districts to be able to offer meals like this to all students? Meals that students and staff would want to eat, meals that would increase lunch participation at schools? Meals that even my mom would even be happy that I ate. 

It would probably take an additional $1 per school meal. Sounds like petty cash, but that's real big money. And that's what we could have if we properly fund the Child Nutrition Act when it comes up for re-authorization.

This year Congress will have an opportunity to move our nation's school meals in this direction with the re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act. To learn more and urge your elected leaders to take advantage of this opportunity to change the future of school meals, click here. 

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Vilsack Connects Healthy Eating and Reduced Health Care Costs

By Rochelle Davis, Founding Executive Director

Good news for fruits and veggies!

The day after President Obama’s message to Congress and the nation, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, in a speech to United Fresh Produce Association, made the connection between health care reform and healthy eating. Vilsack talked about the administration’s recognition that eating more fruits and vegetables will dramatically cut America’s health care costs and that health care reform will include encouraging Americans to eat healthier -- in particular, by eating more fruits and vegetables.

As part of this effort, Vilsack said the USDA is focused on improving USDA-subsidized school meals, which he said, “for far too many of our children,” may provide “the only complete meal that they have during the day.”

We are very excited to see that the Obama administration understands the connection between health and proper eating and is looking at reforming the health care system more broadly than insurance reform alone.  (You might never know that from listening to the public debate about health care reform, but there is a whole section of the bill devoted to health promotion. More here and here.)

But in order to truly improve student access to healthier school meals (and make the ideals that Vilsack describes into a reality) schools need more money for better food. The Child Nutrition Act offers an opportunity to ensure that schools receive the funding they need for this purpose. Take action now by joining us to call for a strong, well-funded Child Nutrition Act. 

The Washington Post Supports Increased Funding for School Food

By Rochelle Davis, Founding Executive Director

I could not agree more with the recent editorial in The Washington Post in which the Post comes out in support of increased funding for our nation’s federal school food program.  The Post’s editorial board correctly links the issue of school food to Michelle Obama’s efforts to highlight the importance of healthy eating, and correctly links the issue of school food to the long term costs of our already strained health care systems.  

And most importantly, they repeat (though do not quite endorse) Ann Cooper’s call for Congress to increase school food funding an additional dollar per day per student. Currently, schools receive around $2.68 for each free lunch they serve.  According to the School Nutrition Association, school districts spend, on average, about 35 cents more than that.  In large urban areas, school districts are subsidizing school meals at a rate of around 70 cents per meal.  These are the communities in which healthy school food is most essential, where healthy food choices are not as readily available.  Research shows that children living in low-income minority communities -- many in large urban school districts -- have much higher rates of obesity.

Of course more money, while essential, is not the complete answer. The Post is also correct in identifying the need for updated nutrition standards and the need to allow the USDA to set standards for other food available in schools.  Other important steps include improvements to the commodity program, helping school districts improve kitchen facilities and supporting training for food service staff.

We applaud The Washington Post for their support of this important issue at such a key moment in the movement for healthy school food.

To take action in support of increased funding for better school food, visit HSC’s Child Nutrition Act action center.

How The White House Garden Grows

By Rochelle Davis, Founding Executive Director

We at HSC have been very excited to have First Lady Michelle Obama make the food we eat, and how it is grown, part of the national dialogue. Much has been said about the new White House garden. Now, the White House has released a video about the garden. 

As Michelle says at the end of the video, “I hope the garden will be an introduction to a new way for our country to think about food.”   We look forward to her leadership as Congress begins to consider the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the bill that determine the funding and other guidelines for the federal school food programs.