Time to Save School Lunch from Government Standards

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The biggest news about the Child Nutrition Act pending in Congress isn't increased funding or more vegetables and whole grains in school meals. The reason we need this bill passed now is to save children from government standards that are destroying kids' health.

Every day I visit the cafeteria in my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia and watch a quiet struggle unfold. It's the same battle schools fight all over the country: trying to provide kids the calories the U.S. Department of Agriculture says they must have on a budget that won't cover the cost of healthy food. The result: meals loaded with sugar, enemy No. 1 in our current epidemic of childhood obesity.

Sugar, and especially the high-fructose corn syrup that proliferates in cheap processed food, has emerged as the leading culprit behind a host of modern ills. It packs fat onto waistlines, raises blood pressure, creates bad cholestorol and unhealthy arteries, primes bodies for diabetes and heart failure, and now is suspected in an outbreak of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.

Right behind smoking, sugar has become the health scourge of our time, contributing greatly to this country's estimated $147 billion annual tab for weight-related illnesses. Yet in the world of federally-subsidized school meals, sugar not only goes virtually unregulated, but has emerged as the go-to ingredient to boost calories in perpetually under-funded cafeterias.

Take breakfast, for instance. The USDA says that a school breakfast must provide 554 calories for children in elementary school. Where do those calories come from? Well, if you have less than $1 to spend, your breakfast might very well look like the ones that used to be served every day in D.C.: Sugary Apple Jacks cereal topped with strawberry-flavored milk, accompanied by a Pop-Tart, a pack of Giant Goldfish Grahams and a carton of orange juice. Altogether, children as young as five routinely were consuming the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started.

This year, D.C. school officials have taken the extraordinary step of eliminating not just flavored milk and sugary cereals, but also those other processed "treats" that were standard fare in the breakfast line. Now we see low-sugar Kashi cereal and organic yogurt and sunflower butter and cottage cheese on the menu. But how do you make a small blueberry muffin, a scoop of cottage cheese, a carton of low-fat milk and four ounces of orange juice add up to 554 calories?

We're lucky here in the nation's capitol. As the result of a "Healthy Schools Act" passed by the D.C. Council earlier this year, we now have 10 cents extra to spend on breakfast and another 10 cents for lunch. Few local jurisdictions have been so generous. That's why you see cookies and brownies in subsidized school lunches all over the country. The sugar provides a cheap boost in calories. In the Chicago area, parents continue to complain about "brunch for lunch," meaning pancakes, phony syrup and cookies posing as the midday meal. Other healthy food advocates despair of getting sugary flavored milk off the menu: Their schools would then fall short of the USDA's calorie requirements.

The measly six additional cents the U.S. Senate recently approved for school meals as part of its version of the Child Nutrition Act re-authorization won't solve the problem. But its call for new meal standards might. Under the Senate bill, the USDA would be required to "update meal patterns and nutrition standards" within the next three years. Proposed new standards have already been developed by the Institute of Medicine at the USDA's behest.

Don't look for any regulations aimed specifically at sugar. The sugar lobby is too strong for that. Instead, the IOM attempts an end run around sugar's tyranny over school meals, lowering calorie requirements while boosting the amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains schools must serve. Sugar essentially would be squeezed off the menu.

In fact, the current calorie minimums enforced by the USDA exceed the IOM's proposed maximums. The calorie requirement for an elementary school breakfast, for instance, would change from that flat 554 calories to a range of 350 minimum calories and a maximum of 500. That means 204 calories cash-strapped school wouldn't have to pay for, calories kids might not be exposed to in the form of sugar.

For lunch, the IOM recommends a range of 550 to 650 calories for kids five to 10 years of age, compared to the USDA's current fixed amount of 664. The Institute of Medicine also proposes to raise the percentage of calories that can derive from calorie-dense fat in school meals from 30 percent to 35 percent, a move that would further reduce schools' reliance on sugar and bring the meals program more in line with the federal government's dietary guidelines.

In addition, this year's version of the Child Nutrition Act for the first time would give the USDA authority to regulate all foods sold in school, not just in the subsidized meal line. If the agriculture secretary is in a mood to take on the processed food industry, that could mean no more sugary drinks and snacks in vending machines, no more ice cream bars or fruit roll-ups in a la carte lines.

For healthy school food advocates, the Senate's trifling six cents is hard to swallow. But we need to get over it for now and make sure the House moves quickly on its version of the Child Nutrition Act. As we've seen here in D.C., a lot can be accomplished just by ridding school meals of unhealthy foods, especially sugar. That's reason enough to make passage of this bill now an urgent priority.

Does This Look Like 554 Calories?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The federal government says that school breakfasts served to elementary school students must contain 554 calories to qualify as a reimbursable meal. The "cold" breakfast option in D.C. schools on Friday was a muffin and string cheese. My daughter, who is lactose intolerant, declined to take milk. But in terms of total calories, that would make 110 for low-fat milk, 60 for the string cheese, 55 for the orange juice for a total of 225 calories. There's no nutritional information with the muffin, but I'm guessing it does not contain 329 calories.

There's a wrinkle to the federal rules, however. The daily calorie requirement is supposed to reflect an average for the week, meaning some meals might contain more than 554 calories, others less.

The only cold breakfast option I saw listed for the first two weeks of school that came even close to that was the one with a processed breakfast bar called BeneFIT that packed a whopping 48 grams of carbohydrates (starch) and 23 grams of sugar (more than in a Pop-Tart, and almost as much as in an 8-ounce carton of chocolate milk), for a total of 290 calories. Or maybe it was Wednesday's whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and "all natural yogurt" containing four teaspoons of sugar in a quarter-cup portion.

Those are the prevailing federal standards, as administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the school meal standards contained in the District's "Healthy Schools Act" set a minimum calorie requirement for breakfast of 350 in pre-kindergarten through grade eight, and a maximum of 500. But the current food services director for D.C. Public Schools says he's adopted even better standards--those proposed by the Institute of Medicine, which call for 350 to 500 calories at breakfast for kindergarten through grade five.

The IOM standards were requested by the USDA, but it may be years before the USDA actually adopts them.

Confused yet?

You needn't be. The common denominator running through this rat's nest of government standards is that when schools are unable to offer kids enough calorie-dense real foods to comply with regulations they serve up sugar instead. To add a further complication, the federal rules state that schools can include in their calculations all of the foods offered on any given morning--the milk, the muffin, the string cheese, the orange juice--even though the kids can decline one of those items and still qualify for a federal reimbursement under the government's nutrient-based menu system, or they must take three items under the food-based menu system. (Could it be any more complicated?).

That helps explain why juice, with its extra dose of sugar, is being offered every day for breakfast in D.C. schools alongside milk.

Take your pick: On any given morning, kids aren't getting as many calories as the government calls for, or they may be getting them in the form of sugar. Does that mean schools are lax for not offering better options, or are the federal standards crazy and the amount of financial support provided by the federal government simply inadequate to offer the kinds of healthy foods kids should be eating?

The irony, of course, is that we pleaded with D.C. schools to get rid of sugar and they responded: They dumped flavored milk and sugary cereals. They've also gone to some pains to introduce things like cottage cheese and string cheese and local fruit. What else can they add in the way of real food that will satisfy the government's calorie requirements without dosing kids with more sugar?

D.C. Public Schools have an advantage as a result of the extra funding provided by the "Healthy Schools" act: 10 cents more for breakfast, 10 cents more for lunch and five cents for each meal that contains a locally grown component. Imagine the predicament of other school districts where the local government has not stepped forward with extra cash. The extra six cents per meal recently embraced by the U.S. Senate as part of the Child Nutrition re-authorization looks punier and punier all the time.

Beware Great Expectations for School Food

Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

If improving school food were as easy as writing more creative contract proposals for food vendors, everybody would be doing it, right?

That would seem to be one of the lessons to draw from two pilot meal projects set to begin here in the District of Columbia when school resumes later in August. Each project--one designed around catered meals, the other meals from scratch--would replace the industrially processed convenience foods now provided by the school systems hired food service provider--Chartwells--with meals constructed around hormone- and additive free milk, less fruit juice and more whole fruit, more whole grains, local produce, no high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats.

The outlines of the contract proposals make the meals sound revolutionary. The only drawback is, the vendors are being asked to provide these souped-up meals on the same, miserly budget that's being used to pay Chartwells, and that most schools struggle with to serve decent food to kids.

These days, there is a clamor rising for more stringent standards that would raise the quality of school food. But what most of the public does not understand is that school food service directors are struggling to make ends meet. The average school loses 35 cents on every lunch it serves. Food service directors live in mortal fear of more standards calling for things like more vegetables and whole grains that don't come with additional funding.

The school meal re-authorization legislation currently making its way through Congress, for instance, would provide a six-cent increase to the federal subsidy for lunch--currently $2.68--hardly enough to make any real dent in the problem.

The District of Columbia is one of those rare local jurisdictions that has stepped forward with more funding--more, even, than what federal law makers are offering. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" passed earlier this year by the D.C. Council, the city will provide 10 cents more for school breakfasts, 10 cents more for lunch, and a five-cent bonus for meals that contain locally-produced ingredients.

That could help boost the quality of food in D.C. Schools. But let's not forget that D.C. Public Schools have been running a deficit in food services of some $5 million dollars every year, or around 20 percent of the total food budget. There's nothing in the law that says the schools cannot simply use that extra cash from the city's treasury to pay down their ongoing debt.

There's no way to tell from contract proposals what the food served to kids will really be like. A good illustration of that is to simply peruse the daily school menus that Chartwells publishes online. The meals sounds great. It's only when you visit the cafeteria and see what's actually on kids' trays that you realize they are eating cheap convenience foods mostly reheated from pre-cooked, frozen components made in food factories hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

The only way to tell if there's a food revolution happening in D.C. schools is to show up in the cafeteria and see what kids are eating. And that's where parents can make a huge contribution. In Rome, for instance, parents play an integral role in the school food solution, making regular visits to school kitchens to inspect. Here, parents can insist on accompany their kids in the cafeteria. Take photos. Judge for yourself. Share what you learn.

That will be our objective when school resumes. Go here if you'd like to see a listing of the schools where the two pilot projects will be implemented.

New School Food: Would You Buy a Used Car from this Man?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Two new pilot meals programs in D.C. schools purport to vastly upgrade meals served in the cafeteria, but at the same price schools are paying for the industrially processed convenience foods currently being served by the system's hired food service contractor, Chartwells.

It sounds a bit like taking your beat up old Chevy to a car dealer and asking to trade it in for a Rolls Royce. Wouldn't that be a great deal if you could get it? But how many car dealers like that do you know?

The two pilot programs, scheduled to begin when school resumes next month, each would serve seven schools, one delivering "portable" meals to be reheated on site, the other making food from scratch. The requests for proposals [RFPs] circulated earlier this year by D.C. Public Schools called for the price to be "revenue neutral" and as close as possible to current federal reimbursement rates, or $2.70 for lunch. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" recently passed by the D.C. Council, schools would receive an additional 10 cents support for lunch, plus five cents for meals that contain local produce.

Besides delivering foods free of hormones and antibiotics, free of artificial colorings and preservatives, free of high-fructose corn syrup and trans fats, and loaded with local produce and whole grains, the contracts call for the vendors to comply with a series of standards, including those contained in "Healthy Schools," Institute of Medicine standards circulated in 2007, and the "gold level" standards in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's "HealthierUS Challenge."

Today we're going to look at those various standards to see what D.C. is asking these vendors to do for $2.70 (or $2.85).

"Healthy Schools," for instance, sets minimum and maximum calorie levels for meals at breakfast and lunch, and according to two different age groupings. Likewise, sodium is restricted at different levels for breakfast and lunch, and according to age. Vendors are required to provide the ingredients and nutritional content of each menu item, and list where their fruits and vegetables come from and whether the growers are engaged in sustainable agriculture practices.

The 2007 Institute of Medicine standards would apply to what it refers to as "Tier 1" foods in school meals. These are "food and fruits, vegetables, whole grains and related combination products and non-fat and low-fat dairy that are limited to 200 calories or less per portion as packaged and:

* No more than 35 percent of calories from fat

* Less than 10 percent of total calories from saturated fats

* Zero trans fats (less than or equal to 0.5 grams per serving)

* 35 percent or less from total sugars, except for yogurt with no more than 30 grams of total sugars, per 8-oz. portion as packaged

* Sodium content of 200 mg or less per potion as packaged."

The "gold" standard for "HealthierUS Challenge" requires the following:

* Students have at least one quarter-cup serving of vegetables to choose from every day of the week. Dark green or orange vegetables must be offered three or more times per week, and of the three at least two must be different. Cooked dry beans or peas (legumes) must be offered each week.

* A different fruit must be served every day. Under the "gold standard," the fruit must be fresh at least two days. Otherwise it can be frozen, canned or dried, or served as juice.

* Fruit juice (100 percent) can be counted as the "fruit" offering only once per week.

* At least one serving of "whole grain" food must be offered each day.

* Only low-fat and fat-free milk can be served.

After accounting for labor and overhead, most schools have less than $1 to spend on the ingredients for their meals. Do you think you could do all this on that kind of budget? Ever wonder why anyone would want to get into the business of catering school food?

Will the Real Food Pyramid Please Step Forward

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This news is not exactly new but deserves a wider audience: The woman who originally developed the federal "food pyramid" says her team at the U.S. Department of Agriculture never intended for grains and starches to be at the bottom, meaning the foundation. That distinction was originally reserved for fruits and vegetables.

But somehow as the pyramid worked its way up the political chain of command, and became subject to corporate food lobbying, fruits and vegetables got replaced with cereals and other refined grains.

Originally, the pyramid recommended Americans consume a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, with five to nine servings daily, wrote Luise Light, the nutrition team leader and former director of Dietary Guidance and Nutrition Education at the USDA. Cereals and grains were only supposed to be eaten as two to four servings per day.

But all that got switched around. When the final pyramid came out, the federal government was recommending that Americans eat up to 11 servings daily. Cereals and grains are starches, which turn into sugar (glucose) when eaten. Sugar is identified as a prime mover in the nation's epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

Remember that point in Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" when he can't believe he's supposed to serve grains on top of grains? This is where that crazy USDA concept comes from.

Bottom line: don't trust the government standards. They were written by corporations trying to sell processed foods.