Currently browsing posts about: School-food

Mission: Readiness, the organization of former high-ranking military officials concerned about obesity and other health problems in military recruits and personnel, has just released “Retreat Is Not An Option: Healthier School Meals Protect our Children and our Country.”

• Currently, 12 percent of active duty service members are obese based on height and weight—an increase of 61 percent since 2002—which is resulting in serious problems with injuries and dismissals.
• The obese service members in the brigade in Afghanistan were 40 percent more likely to experience an injury than those with a healthy weight, and slower runners were 49 percent more likely to be injured.
• The military spends more than $1.5 billion annually treating obesity-related health conditions and replacing those discharged because they are unfit.
• 70% of young Americans are ineligible for military service because of overweight, lack of education, or criminal records.  The ineligibility percentages range from a low of 62% in Hawaii to 78% in Mississippi.

The report concludes:

We understand that some schools need additional support to help meet the updated standards, such as better equipment and more staff training, and that support should be provided. At the same time, moving forward with implementation of the standards for all schools is paramount. Students depend on schools to reinforce efforts by parents and communities to put them on track for healthy and productive lives. Healthy school meals and snacks are a vital part of that effort. When it comes to children’s health and our national security, retreat is not an option.

This is a direct criticism of the School Nutrition Association (SNA), which has called for such a retreat.  In response, SNA said:

Recent reports by Mission: Readiness and other organizations have mischaracterized both the impact of the new standards on school meal programs and the scope of the regulatory relief requested by School Nutrition Association and other groups. SNA’s Myth vs Fact sheet on the new standards addresses how the new rules have contributed to a decline in student lunch participation, increases in food waste and financial instability in many school meal programs.

USDA’s data, however, argue otherwise.

The SNA, which receives nearly half its income from companies that sell food products to schools, now finds itself in opposition to the military as well as to USDA and consumer school food advocates.

If anything needs to retreat, it’s SNA.

As for why the military is concerned, take a look at this photo taken at the Las Vegas airport, sent to me yesterday by Andy Bellatti.

Living in New York as I do, I miss the fun in Washington, DC, of which there was much yesterday related to the First Lady’s “Drink Up” campaign with the Partnership for a Healthier America.   Here’s one of ObamaFoodorama’s tweets on the event.

Listen to what the First Lady is saying in these selected quotes, some of which deal with the current furor over school meals:

• When the Drink Up campaign was launched last year, it had one simple goal – to get kids and families excited about drinking water.
• As Drink Up encourages more people to drink more water, we also want to help make choosing water an easier choice…water for more people wherever they are, whenever they want it, however they want it – be it tap, filtered or bottled.
• In a number of school districts, participation in the lunch program has actually risen. And there’s a simple reason for that: It’s because those districts actually put some effort into marketing the new meals to the kids. They didn’t just sit back and say, well, the kids like junk food so let’s just give them junk food.
• Instead, they embraced higher standards and more nutritious options, and they worked hard to get the kids excited about them. They did taste tests. They came up with new recipes. They did everything they could to make healthy eating fun.
• Today, we’re seeing the results, especially among younger kids…They’re getting used to healthier food, and they’re developing healthy habits early on that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. And that’s our job as adults… And no matter what, we don’t give up on our kids. And we don’t give up on their health and their futures.
• We need to keep pushing to market healthy products to children and families. We need to keep working together within industries and across industries to help our kids lead healthier lives.

Even better, The California Endowment announced that it will increase community access to water in South Kern County and the Eastern Coachella Valley by installing hundreds of taps and dispensers to fill reusable water bottles in schools and public places.

Let’s have more tap-water initiatives, please.

The more people drink tap water, the greater will be public support for maintaining the quality of municipal water supplies.

Addition, July 24:  The School Nutrition Association wrote the First Lady to complain that it found her remarks offensive.

Politico ProAg’s Helena Bottemiller Evich has been reporting on the School Nutrition Association (SNA) meeting in Boston this week (and see the video conversation with her editor, Jason Huffman, about the meeting).

One of her points: from the kinds of junk-food products exhibited, you would never know that the SNA was at war with the White House over USDA’s nutrition standards for school meals (see my previous posts).

As she explains, food companies have had no problem coming up with look-alike products that meet USDA standards:

More than 400 exhibitors showed off their innovations designed to meet the Department of Agriculture’s new regulations…PepsiCo, which owns Tropicana, Quaker and Lays, has a long list of products that meet the new rules, including Reduced Fat Doritos and Cheetos, Stacy’s Pita Chips and Munchies. Windsor Foods, which specializes in food service, has come up with whole grain-rich egg rolls that the company says kids love.

General Mills displayed a modified version of Chex Mix, a whole grain Betty Crocker cookie and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal bar: “Snacks so good, kids won’t know they’re nutritious,” according to the marketing flyers.

…while the changes to lunch standards may be giving many school nutrition professionals fits, the food manufacturing industry is drooling over the opportunity to gain more sales inside what has been described as the nation’s largest restaurant: The school lunch program serves 30 million kids each day and represents a $30 billion per year market for the food industry, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

…SNA benefits from the food industry’s enthusiasm in school lunches. The largest chunk of the group’s revenue is generated at its annual conference, which brought in $4.7 million in 2012. The association charges $15,000 to sponsor an education session track featuring a company representative and $20,000 to put company logos on hotel key cards.

Evich quotes Michele Simon, who also attended the meeting.

Walking through that hall, it’s very hard to see where the changes are,” she said. “It’s still pretty appalling to see the types of junk food that can pass as acceptable food for school meals. It seems like there’s a disconnect between the uproar over the improved guidelines and all these vendors who seem to have no problem meeting them.”

Michele sent me a photo of one such product.

For photos of other such items, see Michele Simon’s other images on Time Magazine’s site, and Nancy Huehnergarth’s collection of what she calls “The Good, the Bad and The Ugly Food Exhibits.”

To understand what this is about, take a look at the Public Health Advocacy Institute’s report on Copycat Snacks in Schools.  The “better for you” versions are sold in schools, but you can hardly tell the difference between those and the “not so good for you” commercial versions from the nearly identical packages.

How can food and beverage companies get away with this?  This is the result of USDA’s setting nutrient-based, rather than food-based standards for school meals.  Setting nutrient standards allows food companies to tweak the formulas to give the USDA what it requires.

Is a slightly “better for you” option necessarily a good choice?  Surely, schools can do better.

Thanks to Tracy Fox for sending the latest salvos in the absurd political fight over nutrition standards for school meals.

The first comes from the School Nutrition Association (scroll down to find the image).  This is the organization increasingly discredited for its close ties to food companies that supply products for school meals, as well as its lobbying of Congress on behalf of those companies .

The second comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major funder of anti-obesity initiatives.

This particular political fight isn’t over yet.  The School Nutrition Association is on the wrong side of this issue, as shown by the divisions in its ranks—the 19 former presidents who wrote Congress to oppose weakening the standards, for example.

Who loses in this one?  Kids’ health, alas.

Understanding why school nutritionists want to scrap the USDA’s nutrition standards takes some effort.

The question: Why is the School Nutrition Association (SNA)—the organization that represents the interests of “lunch ladies”—supporting Republican attempts to derail the nutrition standards?

The SNA has a long and honorable history of fighting for better nutrition for children, and it supported the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act—the one that gave USDA the authority to mandate healthier meals.

Jerry Hagstrom, who writes the daily Hagstrom Report, took a stab at explaining why SNA shifted position:

When the school-lunch program started, most schools cooked their own food. As the number of children participating in the school-lunch program grew, the need to provide more food led the schools to buy prepackaged, processed food, which led to the companies making those foods becoming big players within SNA.

Helena Bottemiller Evich of Politico adds to the explanation:

The story behind the school lunch flip-flop is a complicated web of lobbying change-ups, industry influence and partisan posturing inside the Beltway…Interviews with more than a dozen former and current SNA officials reveal a dramatic shift in SNA’s policy platform, and even more so, its approach: choosing to wage war on Capitol Hill — pitting the association against [Michelle] Obama and her team — instead of trying to win more concessions directly from the Department of Agriculture…[This] has sparked a civil war within the nutrition community and the association itself. Nineteen former SNA presidents wrote to appropriators last week urging them to reject calls for a waiver — a break in ranks that was painful but necessary, signers said.

She adds this critical piece of information:

Several former presidents of the organization said they are worried that food companies have influenced the group’s agenda over concerns that the nutrition standards for the $11 billion program will take a big bite out of sales of popular items like pizza and salty snacks…About half of the group’s $10 million operating budget comes from food industry members.

Kevin Concannon, USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, told Jerry Hagstrom that the SNA’s current leadership is making a “serious mistake” is supporting members of Congress who want to block USDA’s standards.  If the SNA lobbies for permanent blockage of the standards, he thinks they will be “playing with fire.”  SNA, he said, is isolated on the issue.   “The stakes are really high for the future of the country,” he said. “It is a battle worth waging.”

Is SNA isolated?  Indeed it is.  Here’s the list of organizations that support the new standards, compiled by the American Public Health Association.

The Associated Press reported that First Lady Michelle Obama rallied supporters of the USDA’s nutrition standards for school meals in an off-the-record telephone call “with advocacy groups to discuss ongoing efforts around school nutrition and the significant advancements we have made to make it easier for families to raise healthy kids.”

Today the House Committee on Appropriations is doing its markup on the agricultural appropriations bill.  This is likely to overturn nutrition standards established by scientific experts in order to:

• Reverse USDA’s nutrition standards for school meals.
• Reverse the exclusion of white potatoes from the WIC package.

As Politico puts it,

In the case of WIC and white potatoes, the provision follows on strong lobbying by the industry which is hoping to win similar language Thursday when the full Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to consider its own version of the same agriculture bill.

…For the industry, concerned that younger women have moved away from potatoes, gaining access to WIC is an important marketing tool.

Just as strongly, critics worry that the end result will be to open the door to other special interests and wreck a long-standing commitment by Congress to let independent scientists decide what foods are most needed.

As I see it, the food industry couldn’t get its way through the usual rulemaking processes, so it did an end run and got Congress to overturn the work of no less than three committees of the Institute of Medicine.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack explains what’s at stake:

The House bill would undermine the effort to provide kids with more nutritious food and would be a major step backwards for the health of American children, just at the time childhood obesity rates are finally starting to level off. School nutrition standards are developed by independent experts, over 90% of schools report that they are successfully implementing them, and studies show they are working to help kids be healthier. USDA has continued to show flexibility in implementing these new standards, and Congress should focus on partnering with USDA, states, schools, and parents to help our kids have access to more healthy food, not less.

In an e-mail, the Pew Charitable Trusts wrote:

We are disappointed that the House agriculture appropriations bill includes a provision that would weaken national nutrition standards for foods served in schools…it is unfortunate that the House would consider letting schools opt out of efforts to improve the health of children served through these program…Ninety percent of schools already report that they are meeting USDA’s updated nutrition standards for school lunches. Turning back now would be a costly mistake.”

The School Nutrition Association disagrees.  In its version of reality, “since these standards took effect, more than one million fewer students choose school lunch each day, reducing revenue for school meal programs already struggling to manage the increased cost of preparing meals under the new standards.”

To this, Claire Benjamin of Food Policy Action, asks:

Why are Members fighting to roll back school nutrition standards? Our nation is facing a health and obesity crisis, and rather than think about the future of our children the members pushing for these rollbacks are only thinking about future campaign contributions,” said Claire Benjamin, managing director of Food Policy Action (FPA). “Schools have already made real progress implementing the reforms, and it is extremely disappointing that some members of Congress are advocating for business as usual.”

Other responses:

• The National WIC Association says “Don’t let Congress pick WIC foods.”
• United Fresh asks Congress to make no changes to the fruit and vegetable provisions.
• The National Potato Council says “we want in.”

Write your Congressional representatives and ask them to leave nutrition standards to scientists, not food companies with vested interests in selling their products to government food assistance programs.

Additions, May 20:

• American Public Health Association letter to Congress signed by numerous state and national organizations
•  Washington Post story (I’m quoted)
• The Hill story: “GOP Takes on Michelle Obama“
• Alliance for a Healthier Generation statement in support of school nutrition standards
• USDA says it will allow more flexibility in the controversial whole grain requirement
• USDA’s new factsheet

Addition, May 21:

• Mark Bittman’s excellent comments
• Mission Readiness says the military needs healthy kids

Addition, May 24:

• Major General says school nutrition standards are a matter of national security

Congressional interference with school nutrition standards is looming large on the horizon.

Margo Wootan of CSPI is collecting signatures on a petition to stop this.  She writes:

Some members of Congress are playing politics with our children’s health. We expect they will act on Tuesday May 20 to gut nutrition standards through the appropriations process.

They might say they just want to provide schools with a little more “flexibility,” but their changes would roll back standards on salt, whole grains, fruits/vegetables, and snacks.

These are the same people who legislated that pizza is a vegetable (because it contains a little tomato sauce)!

…Thankfully, ninety percent of schools now meet the updated nutrition standards for school lunch, helping millions of students get more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. 

In summary:

• Congress is trying to micromanage  school nutrition standards to win political points.
• Schools need support and technical assistance, not a free pass to serve junk to kids.
• And kids need nutrition standards based on science, not politics.SIg

SIgn the petition.  Better yet, write you own letter.

USDA deserves a thank-you note: the agency announced it is awarding $25 million in grants to help schools buy kitchen equipment.  Yes!

The grants are a response to a report by the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project – a collaboration with The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  The report found that 88% of school districts nationwide need at least one piece of equipment, and 55% need infrastructure upgrades.

You can send a quick note of thanks to the USDA Office of Communications at oc.news@usda.gov.

Thanks are needed because nutrition standards for school meals are under intense pressure from:

• Lobbyists for foods that will be excluded under the new standards
• The School Nutrition Association which is heavily supported by companies sellling foods to school meals programs
• A Congress that loves to micromanage federal food programs (see yesterday’s post).

School meals need help, but not that kind.