New Proposed School Nutrition Standards – Great Idea, But Will Anyone Want To Pay for it?

http://www.lockergnome.com/greaterworld/2011/01/17/new-proposed-school-nutrition-standards-great-idea-but-will-anyone-want-to-pay-for-it/

The idea of nutrition from a school lunch counter is one of those things so mired in controversy that I’m certain there will be a huge debate on this proposal for changes in school lunches, which will take it into the next election cycle.

It is the problem that has not been addressed in my lifetime, and from speaking to my elders, must have been a problem for decades before that.

The problems are manifold, beginning with the children who are being served – many are not going to eat what is put before them, so what will be gained? The idea of a well-balanced, nutritionally dense, but calorically light meal served in a school cafeteria is one that could fuel jokes from a passel of comedians, who could run with it for months.

As a child that attended many schools because of being part of an Army family, I can say that the (unwritten) book on school lunches was certainly not anything that anyone from Fairbanks, Alaska to Grafton, Illinois, to Fletcher, Oklahoma, to Riverside, California put much thought into.

I can remember those divided trays in the lunch room, largely bereft of anything looking appetizing, and certainly not in any way nutritionally balanced. In most of those trays sat, on a daily basis, a single stalk of celery, a single carrot piece, which was a quarter piece cut lengthwise, and a single similar sized piece of cheese (In some places, I was lucky, and it was real cheese; in others, it was Velveeta, the cheese product that will not spoil, due to so much non-food substance being part of its makeup.)  In the other two cubbies on the tray, were things so disparate in origin that I could swear we were part of some torture test as we were served them. Things like spaghetti with out meat, in a sauce only approximating Marinara in a film by Stanley Kubrick, and green beans. Other days it was those same things at the top of the tray, with a small hamburger (They call them sliders these days, and they are generally served in multiples.) and some carrots which had been cooked for so long that they were mushy and gone from bright orange to dingy yellow-brown. This apparently made sense to someone, because raw and cooked carrots on the same tray happened often…

This happened to me in many of the schools I went to, and I always preferred to bag-it from home. When I got a lunch either made by my mother or sometimes aunt, I would get a sandwich, some potato or corn chips, some kind of fruit (banana, apple, grapes, strawberries, etc.), possibly a few sticks of carrot, and a bag of three or four cookies. To that I would add milk, which rounded out the meal nicely.

The people who got the cafeteria food were usually getting milk as well, and those people in the pseudo-nutrition department must have been counting on the goodness of whole milk to round out the nutritional and culinary black hole that was our school lunch. Good thing too, because most did not eat much of it, preferring to savor their ability to remain ready for a snack when they got home.

As a matter of fact, it is probably the poor quality and taste of school lunches that became the initiator for the after-school snack. In those days, there was no fear of obesity in children, because most walked to school, played over an hour on the playground during the course of the day, and walked home. There was plenty of caloric burning going on, unlike the children of today.

When my children went to school, things had improved only marginally, and one thing that was added, much to my chagrin, was the Friday ritual of ordering pizza from a local pizza joint, where a couple of slices of poorly made pizza were sold at a tidy profit for both purveyors of it, the parlor and the school, and to that, a soft drink was added.

Not too bad it might seem, but after looking at the pizza, I could say with authority that my children were getting their weekly recommended intake of grease on those Fridays.

So how will the new standards work to help combat obesity, or at least get some quality calories into the students?

[CNN]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a new proposed rule Thursday designed to strengthen school breakfast and lunch nutrition standards — part of the Obama administration’s attempt to crack down on an epidemic of childhood obesity.

The rule would increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk while cutting the amount of sodium and saturated fat. It would reduce the availability of traditional school lunch staples such as pizza and French fries.

Under the rule, federal minimum and maximum calorie intake guidelines would be established for the first time. Younger children would be offered 550 to 650 calories for lunch, while most high school students would be offered 750 to 850 calories.

Saturated fat would constitute less than 10 percent of the total calories in school meals for children at all age levels. Trans fat would be banned.

This is something that will affect millions of school lunches, and in some cases, breakfast meals. 

The idea is a solid one, and I would love to see it implemented, but in order to do so, it will take more money. It takes more money to buy lean meat and vegetables than it does to buy the close-to-junk food that is served in lunchrooms at public schools.

But if only the people who will vote on these things will take the long view – they will see the overall health benefits, the lowering of diseases caused by poor diet, and reduced medical costs over a lifetime.

Will there be enough people who will vote with their mind, having thought about their, or other people’s, children, instead of being miserly with the vote, and thinking only about the near term loss to their wallets?

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