Congress looking at school food standards
Students at Topeka High School walk through the school's lunch line.
TOPEKA — Legislation being considered by Congress could lead to changes in what children in Kansas and elsewhere around the nation eat at school.
The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee has approved the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, which funds school and day care nutrition programs, adding $4.5 billion in new funding over 10 years to expand access to nutrition programs while setting new standards for the meals served in schools and daycares.
New guidelines coming?
The bulk of the new funding in the Senate bill - $3.2 billion – would be set aside to improve children’s health and reduce childhood obesity.
The legislation would update school nutrition standards “for the first time in a very long time,” said Marlene Schwartz, deputy director for the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.
It would authorize the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to establish standardized nutrition guidelines to be used across the nation. The guidelines would apply to all food sold in schools, including snack foods and beverages offered in vending machines.
Schwartz said states have started enacting their own nutrition standards and the food industry sees an advantage to having uniform standards instead of a patchwork.
“Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, for instance, have three different sets of guidelines” she said. “This has made the food industry realize that they better get something done at the federal level. What is happening is that there are now different rules in different states. Particularly with snack food, that can get very complicated.”
The full Senate is expected to vote on the bill after it returns from recess next week, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, though a formal vote has not been scheduled.
The House still must take up the legislation.
“Our understanding is that the House is waiting for the Senate to finish their work, and use that bill as the basis for the House bill,” she said.
It’s not clear, Schwartz said, what the USDA guidelines will be. But one source the department could use, she said, is an April 2007 report from the Institute of Medicine which recommended that schools only allow meals and snacks that contain fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and that those foods should be low in fat, sodium and sugar.
A Kansas Senate committee heard a bill earlier this year that would extend the Kansas State Department of Education’s “exemplary” wellness standards for schools to all districts. All schools must have a wellness plan but the components are mostly up to local districts to agree upon. The state education department’s exemplary standards for nutrition are similar to those recommended by the 2007 IOM report.
Senate Bill 499 was heard by the Senate Education Committee last month but no action has been taken on it.
More federal reimbursement
The federal nutrition bill also would increase the reimbursement rate by 6 cents for every school meal that meets the new nutrition requirements.
Many schools have turned to selling a la carte and snack items to help finance their lunch programs, Schwartz said, and the additional reimbursement is meant to help offset revenue that might be lost by schools that stop selling unhealthy but popular foods.
Some states already contribute money to school lunch programs that have banned high-sugar beverages and junk food.
“The money from the state serves as more psychological comfort rather than value,” Schwartz said. “Everyone is so anxious and stressed out and scared about not selling snacks anymore that knowing they’ll get some money from the state helps.”
But Jodi Mackey, director of Child Nutrition and Wellness for the Kansas State Department of Education, questioned whether the extra 6 cents per meal would be enough to make a difference.
“If we can’t produce a meal that meets the current standards, how can we produce a meal that meets the new standards for only 6 cents more?” she asked.
Impact on Kansas schools
Mackey said it was too soon to know what the federal legislation would mean in Kansas schools.
“We have a long ways to go before we know what the end result will be,” she said.
Schools since 2006 have been developing their own wellness policies as required by federal law. The new nutrition standards likely would extend that work, Mackey said.
“There’s room for improvement” for many local wellness policies, she said.
The education department has attempted to work with Kansas farmers to start “farm-to-school” programs in which children can eat fresh fruit and vegetables grown on local farms.
But those efforts have stalled, Mackey said. For one thing, it’s been hard to find farmers able to produce enough food that meets federal standards and school timelines.
In one case, a school district tried to buy apples from a local farmer but the apples didn’t look or taste “store-bought,” Mackey said, so the children didn’t like them much.
“There has to be an education component with locally grown foods to build anticipation,” she said.
The education department has instead turned its attention to school gardening programs, Mackey said,
“School gardening is a way to connect kids with nature and help them understand where their food comes from,” she said. “We want to build their enthusiasm for food and increase the likelihood that they’ll eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and hopefully carry that home to their parents to encourage them to buy more fresh fruit and vegetables.”
Evelyn Neier, a 4-H specialist for K-State Research and Extension in Wichita, said she encourages schools to grow spring and fall crops to take advantage of growing seasons that occur during the school year.
“Salad gardens” with lettuce, spinach, radishes and others are good candidates because they can be started early enough in the spring that they may be harvested before children leave for the summer.
“Depending on the age of the child, you also really want things to move along quickly to keep their attention,” she said. “For younger kids, if you plant salad crops, they can see them progress quickly and see the end result, as opposed to planting pumpkins in May that you may not see until September or October.”
A pilot project was started in Salina to explore the feasibility of rolling out school gardens across the state. Federal funding from the child nutrition legislation targeted toward increasing fresh produce for children could help that effort, too, Mackey said.
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