School Lunch Reform

Actually, this post should not be called "School Lunch Reform" because that's not what's happening. This actually has to do with foods served at school other than the federally provided school lunch.

The days when children consume two orders of French fries in the school cafeteria and call it lunch may be numbered. A bipartisan group in Congress plans to introduce legislation today that would prohibit the sale in school not only of French fries but also of other fatty or sugary foods, including soft drinks.

This is a nice summation of the problem:

Currently, sale of the other foods is permitted in school if they contain at least 5 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein and certain vitamins and minerals. This standard applies regardless of the product's level of calories, fat, added sugars or sodium.

You know what this means: kids eat junk food. The vending machines are filled with food full of sugar or salt, and sodas are available as well (which have an incredible amount of sugar in them).

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has watched what goes on in the school her two teenage sons attend.

"We talk a lot about healthy nutrition, we teach the kids about the food pyramid, and then they go down the hallway and get the high fat, high sodium and high junk available in the vending machines," Ms. Murkowski said. "We need to be consistent. People are beginning to connect the dots between rising health care costs and obesity."

That's quite true. I remember doing that myself a few times in high school, and when I got a job, I started drinking cokes every day with lunch, something I'd never done until then (at home it was either tap water, tea or Kool-Aid). I even saw kids who ate breakfast out of those things, which would consist of Snickers and a Coke.

The new list of foods would take into account whether a product promoted obesity or chronic illnesses. The choices would come from recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, which expects to have a report ready this fall.

The Institute of Medicine is a part of the National Academies, a federally organized council of non-partisan advisers to the government on issues of science, engineering and technology. I was reading some of their rules earlier and I'm pretty sure their recommendations are going to be fair and useful.

Of course there is a concern for school revenues based on vending machine sales. In case you didn't know, companies like Coca-Cola give schools big endorsements for letting them sell their products in the schools. You may have seen this parodied on The Simpsons. Eric Schlosser and Morgan Spurlock both talk about this in their books (Fast Food Nation and Don't Eat This Book, respectively). If you've read either of these books, you know how bad this is for the kids. Still, the proponents of this bill are arguing that on their plan schools do not lose revenues.

A survey by the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that of 17 schools that began offering healthful options, 12 actually increased revenue while only one lost, marginally; the four others reported no change.

And a response:

The American Beverage Association, a trade group, said the legislation was unnecessary because since last August members of the association have limited sales of full-calorie soft drinks to 50 percent of offerings in high schools. They are not available in lower grades.

This is misleading, because the limitation of "sales of full-calorie soft drinks to 50 percent of offerings", only means that while there may be one diet soda option, the rest are full-calorie "juice" drinks. Besides which, they're not saying that cokes aren't 80% of sales, they're just saying they're only 50% of offerings. It's ridiculous. The last thing kids stuck in school need is a shot of sugar and caffeine. Actually that's the last thing anybody needs.

And of course you know this is true:

Despite the strong support for the bill among lawmakers, Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, was skeptical.

"My fear," Dr. Brownell said, "is that the food industry, with the soft drink industry taking the lead, will work its hardest to weaken or kill this act."

I have two problems with this bill. One is that the USDA is going to be enforcing it. What? Me, a liberal expressing a problem with government oversight? Well, yes, but not because it's the government, but because in reality the USDA is overrun with people who used to work for food industries, like the National Cattleman's association, which just happens to oppose any reform to labor laws for meatpackers and cleanliness at meatpacking plants. If we got rid of those guys and put some teeth back onto the agency to enforce regulations, it wouldn't be such a problem. The other problem is that the USDA currently runs the national school lunch program, a program which in general does not offer good or healthy food to kids (those of us without pocket money remember getting school lunches, and they sucked). This bill does not attempt to address the problems with that school lunch. I won't say too much about that, because you really need to read Morgan Spurlock and Eric Schlosser to find out more about that.

The last thing I want to say is that schools have all too often become the last bastion of good nutrition in American kids' lives. Too many of them are getting nothing but fast food or processed food at home. It ruins their health and contributes to a lot of future health problems for them. We need to reverse this trend. To that end, this legislation is a good start, but we really need to go further in order to do right by the children. Let's not put it off until it's a crisis.