yearofplenty

Congress Rejects Healthier School Lunches - Insists Pizza is a Vegetable

This from the Associated Press:

Congress wants to keep pizza and french fries on school lunch lines, fighting back against an Obama administration proposal to make school lunches healthier.

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains....

Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn't be telling children what to eat.

I guess the problem with that logic is that the government currently is telling children what to eat based on what they subsidize in the school lunch program. The most jaw-dropping portion of the food bill is that it maintains the current categorization of pizza as a vegetable because of the thin smear of tomato sauce that covers the doughy concoction.

While Congress does the bidding of the tater-tot lobby a new study out of Harvard indicates that potatoes are the biggest culprit in weight gain:

On the basis of increased daily servings of individual dietary components, 4-year weight change was most strongly associated with the intake of potato chips (1.69 lb), potatoes (1.28 lb), sugar-sweetened beverages (1.00 lb), unprocessed red meats (0.95 lb), and processed meats (0.93 lb) and was inversely associated with the intake of vegetables (−0.22 lb), whole grains (−0.37 lb), fruits (−0.49 lb), nuts (−0.57 lb), and yogurt (−0.82 lb).

Maybe it's going to be up to innovative school districts like the one in Chicago to change the direction of school lunch programs. They just instituted an antibiotic-free chicken policy:

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) today began serving local chicken raised without antibiotics to students in 473 schools. This development comes on the heels of a fresh chicken purchase direct from the USDA earlier this fall. The district's new scratch-cooked chicken program includes about 1.2 million pounds from Amish farms that do not use antibiotics, for a total of about two million pounds of fresh chicken in the 2011-12 school year. Students will be offered bone-in chicken two to three times each month.

CPS' enormous purchase of chicken grown without antibiotics, made through food service provider Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality, is the first of its kind. No other district in the nation is serving this kind of poultry regularly at such a scale.

Go here for previous posts on the ongoing debates around school lunch programs.

Nutritional Tough Love: School Outlaws Lunches From Home

This story is a couple weeks old but I think it's worth highlighting here given past posts on school lunches. In the latest salvo in the school-lunch wars, Little Village Aacademy in Chicago has let parents know they are no longer allowed to pack a homemade lunch for their kids. It's plastic trays of re-heated goodness or nothing at all. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices. "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona said. "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception."

This seems like a misguided approach at best, and at worst a sneaky way to increase funds coming into the school.

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

If the picture (Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune) of the school lunch being offered up by the school is any indication, it's hard to believe the quality of the offerings at school are remarkable enough to warrant taking away a parent's perogative to best judge how to best feed their child. That sure looks like chocolate milk on the blue tray. 

According to sugar stacks, a 12 ounce can of regular coke has 39 grams of sugar and an 8 ounce container of chocolate milk contains 29 grams. That means that 8 ounces of chocolate milk contains more sugar than 8 ounces of coke. If Coke supplemented their product with calcium would that make it acceptable to the principal?

While I've been a little hard on Jaime Oliver in the past, his approach of educating parents and kids is the best way forward in the problematic world of school lunches.

The concusion of the Tribune article sums up the problems with the new approach:

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

USDA New Dietary Guidelines - Eat More Plants, Can't Bring Themselves to Say Eat Less Meat

The USDA has issued new dietary guidelines. According to the executive summary there are four goals that shape the report that are based on their scientific review. 

Reduce the incidence and prevalence of overweight and obesity of the US population by reducing overall calorie intake and increasing physical activity. 

Shift food intake patterns to a more plant-based diet that emphasizes vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. In addition, increase the intake of seafood and fat-free and low-fat milk and milk products and consume only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry, and eggs.

Significantly reduce intake of foods containing added sugars and solid fats because these dietary components contribute excess calories and few, if any, nutrients. In addition, reduce sodium intake and lower intake of refined grains, especially refined grains that are coupled with added sugar, solid fat, and sodium.

Meet the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.  

In summary: Eat Less, Eat More Plants, Exercise More.

I was glad to see that the summary included a reference to increasing the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables through "greater access to farmers' markets." 

Marion Nestle, for the most part, applauds the new guidelines but offer this interesting observation:

They say, for example: "limit the consumption of foods that contain refined grains, especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars, and sodium." This requires translation: eat less meat, cake, cookies, sodas, juice drinks, and salty snacks. That's politics, for you. 

This reluctance to just come out and marginalize "bad" foods can also be seen in the new food labeling system proposed by the Grocery Manufacturers' Association.

That looks pretty transparent until you compare it to the labeling system in the UK where they put red warning signs on the particular nutrition content of food items that are unhealthy. 

The Potato is Becoming the Unlikely Hero and Villain of Current Food Debates

The public debate about food has run into a surprising crossroads, with some heralding the potato as the hero of the local food movement and others villifying it as a scourge on poor families. I took the above picture at Spokane's recently opened Five Guys burger sensation. When you walk into the fast food parlor the first thing you see are the bags of stacked potato bags next to the line of people standing in front of the cash register. When you look up from the retaining wall of potato bags you see the sign pictured above proclaiming, "Today's potatoes are from Warden, WA, Hatch Farms." It's one of the most simple and compelling local food messaging strategies I've seen in a restaurant.

The potato is quickly becoming the food of choice in marketing the local food message. They store for a long time. Most regions have local sources to tap into. They are cheap compared to other locally sourced foods like beef. And people are always looking for another good reason why they should eat a huge cup full of french fries. McDonald's has even gotten on the locally sourced potato bandwagon.

Like I've said before, I think this kind of development is generally great news. The more the local food ethic is mainstreamed into our everyday food lives the better. It's always good for people to be more connected to where their food comes from. I think this should be considered a victory for the local food movement.

But on another front-line of recent food system debates the potato is being singled out as enemy number one. Under pressure from health advocacy groups, the USDA recently pulled potatoes off the approved list of foods that can be purchased through the WIC (Women Infant Children) program for low-income families, and is considering pulling potatoes from school lunches as well. The potato industry is responding as reported by Northwest Food News;

The executive director of the Washington Potato Commission is on an unusual campaign to protest a decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Chris Voigt is on day 22 of a diet that even he admits is a little crazy. He’s eating 20 potatoes a day for 60 days. Chris Voigt is eating nothing but potatoes to get the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s attention and the public’s too. Voigt says recently the USDA excluded potatoes from its list of subsidized foods in low-income programs. And now the agency is deciding whether potatoes should be allowed in school lunches.

I guess that amounts to 20 potatoes a day.

The USDA is basing its actions on a report from the Institure of Medicince.The basic argument is that schools need to offer non-starchy vegetables. Potatoes are cheap and therefore schools rely on them to meet their vegetable requirements. 

So which is it? Hero or villain?

Berkeley Study Shows School Gardening Curriculum Makes Kids Healthier

A new study out of UC Berkeley examined the benefits of the Edible Schoolyard program in the Berkeley Unified School District and the results are in. The program formally known as the School Lunch Initiative (SLI) led to substantial health and lifestyle benefits to children, but did not necessarily improve academic performance.

The study compared two categories of school lunch programs. According to the executive summary;

Schools with highly developed School Lunch Initiative components offered cooking and garden classes integrated with selected classroom lessons along with improvements in school food and the dining environment.

Schools with lesser-developed School Lunch Initiative components primarily focused on launching the district-wide improvement in school food, but did not offer regular cooking and garden classes integrated with selected classroom lessons.

Sarah Henry at the Atlantic has the run down of the benefits for students in the highly developed SLI.

• Increased nutritional knowledge among 4th and 7th graders who were fed a steady stream of gardening and cooking curriculum.

    • Higher fruit and vegetable consumption among elementary-age students in schools with more SLI components than in students at schools with less-developed SLI offerings, including a preference for leafy greens like kale, spinach, and chard.

    • Vegetable intake was almost one serving per day greater in the schools with a beefed-up food curriculum, and combined fruit and vegetable consumption increased by 1.5 servings. About 80 percent of this increase came from in-season produce. In comparison, researchers found a nearly quarter-serving drop in produce intake among other students.

    • More positive attitudes about the taste and health value of school lunch in students in more highly developed SLI programs than those in lesser-developed SLI schools.

    • Small increases in produce consumption occurred among middle-schoolers with higher exposure to nutrition education as opposed to a drop in fruit and vegetable intake by about one serving a day among students in the other group.

    • There were no detectable differences in academic test scores or body mass index based on differences in SLI exposure.

This study comes out at the same time the Center of Disease Control and Prevention reports that Americans are no eating enought veggies.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Fail

I have been enjoying Jamie Oliver's kinetic whirlwind act on his Food Revolution show. The first two episodes have chronicled his efforts to transform the lunch foods on offer at an elementary school in Huntington, West Virginia, the supposed unhealthiest city in America. It is quite entertaining and it is raising awareness of the issue of unhealthy school lunches in our collective conscience, but according to an article at Alternet it may be a failure at its grand goal of revolutionizing the school lunches at the school.

Spoiler Alert: If you're a fan of the show and want to see things unfold over the next couple of weeks you may want to skip the rest of this post. It reports on the progress 2 months into the process in real time whereas the show is only two weeks in.

Arun Gupta reports;

The reality behind "Food Revolution" is that after the first two months of the new meals, children were overwhelmingly unhappy with the food, milk consumption plummeted and many students dropped out of the school lunch program, which one school official called "staggering." On top of that food costs were way over budget, the school district was saddled with other unmanageable expenses, and Jamie's failure to meet nutritional guidelines had school officials worried they would lose federal funding and the state department of education would intervene.

In short, the "Food Revolution" has flunked out. At Central City Elementary, where Jamie burst in with loads of fanfare, expense and energy, the school has reintroduced the regular school menu and flavored milk because the "Food Revolution" meals were so unpopular. In what looks like a face-saving gesture, Jamie's menu remains as a lunchtime option, but given the negative student response, don't be surprised if it's quietly phased out by next school year. (You can see both menus here.)

Ultimately, Jamie picked the wrong target. Dr. Carole Harris, who along with Dr. Drew Bradlyn evaluated student responses at Central City Elementary to the "Food Revolution" program, says factors such as sedentary lifestyles, fast-food consumption, family meal patterns and junk-food advertising aimed at children are "a much bigger problem than food served in schools."

Even if Oliver's efforts don't ultimately revolutionize the lunch menus at Central elementary I wouldn't call the show a failure. It is raising awareness, taking the niche conversation about food lunches and making it mainstream. Feel good entertainment and fly by celebrities will never revolutionize a communities food systems - that takes local folks embedded in the community to network and sort through it. It's the old time mantra of community organizing - Don't do for people what they can and should do for themselves. Empower them to speak for themselves.

The real issue in Huntington is poverty - with almost 25% of the population living below the poverty line. When the cameras leave town and ABC stops supplementing the school districts food budget they will be left to deal with that.

School Lunches in the Spotlight on Good Morning America

Mrs. Q, the school teacher who is eating school lunches for a year and chronicling the experience is becoming quite a phenomenon.

Study Claims Jamie Oliver's School Lunches Improve Test Scores

The Times Online in England has an article up reporting on a 2 year study on the impact of Jamie OIiver's efforts to improve school lunches on test scores.

Eating Jamie Oliver’s school dinners improves children’s performance in tests, according to researchers who claim that the celebrity chef’s campaign to improve school food has had more impact than government literacy programmes.

The findings of the two-year study indicate that scores in national curriculum tests at 11 rose in English and science at schools where Oliver’s menus were introduced.

Control schools, where junk food was still available, showed smaller or negligible improvements, researchers said.

Here's an interesting tidbit;

The academics failed to find evidence that the campaign specifically helped children on free school meals — a measure of social deprivation.

“On the contrary the campaign seemed to have affected most the children from richer socio-economic backgrounds,” the study said.

Oliver is trying to innovate some of the same changes he helped start in England in the U.S. with his TV show Food Revolution. Check out the video clip above for a scene from one of the first episodes. If you're interested in the future of school lunches in the U.S. you'll be interested to read up on some legislation working it's way through congress called The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

Michael Pollan, Betty Crocker and the Food Kids Like to Eat

We've got a b-day in the Goodwin house today and while shopping for the occasion Noel thought Lily would really like a Lunchable to celebrate the occasion. Sure enough, when Lily opened her backpack today to discover a Lunchable she leaped for joy and (I'm not kidding) hugged her mom with a long embrace like she had just been gifted a pink pony. I wouldn't be surprised if that is her favorite birthday present.

Hmmm. It's got me wondering about our food journey (Michael Pollan, etc.) and the ways our kids experience it. For the most part they go along with our emphasis on local seasonal food. They've drawn the line at tofu, and the fact that I don't eat chicken anymore has changed things up but it's not like we're eating mustard greens and kale every night. But based on Lily's rejoicing at a Lunchable you'd think she had been eating a regular diet of gruel.

Unrelated to the Lunchable, Nancy broke out her old Betty Crocker's Boys and Girls Cookbook last night and it's quite a sight; hotdogs, SPAM and American Cheese are the staples of the Betty Crocker kids food pyramid, the precursor to the Lunchable. I guess kids have been pining after heavily processed foods for a long time.

I'm wondering about how other families are doing with trying to get kids to eat healthy sustainable foods. We've talked a lot on this blog about getting healthier meals at school but I suspect that getting kids to eat healthier food at home may be the greater challenge. How do you make it work at home?

Click through for more pics from the cookbook.

Jamie Oliver's Wish: Educate Every Child About Food

Below is Oliver's TED Prize speech punctuated by his wish;

"I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."

The most interesting bit of the video is at the 11:15 minute mark where kids are asked to identify vegetables. They couldn't even ID a potato. My kids watched with me and knew every veggie. Growing your own food is the best way to teach your kids about food.