EAT YOUR SPINACH: New school meal standards hope to sway U.S. children away from unhealthy foods, which have led to 32 percent being overweight and 17 percent obese.
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Dear EarthTalk: What are the new nutrition standards for school lunches that have some students boycotting their cafeterias and discarding the food?—Melissa Makowsky, Trenton, N.J.
Indeed, some 31 million American kids participating in the federally supported National School Lunch Program have been getting more whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables in their diets—whether they like it or not. The change is due to new school meal standards unveiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last January, per the order of 2010’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The new standards are based on the Institute of Medicine’s science-based recommendations, and are the first upgrade to nutritional standards for school meals since 1995 when low- and no-fat foods were all the rage.
The non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) believes the new standards represent an important milestone in efforts to improve the dietary habits and health of increasingly obese American kids. “Schools’ misguided reliance on processed foods for speedy, low-labor cost production, industry’s $1.6 billion in child-targeted advertising and a lack of faith in our children’s dietary curiosity [have] created a generation of ‘picky eaters’ with dull palates,” reports the group. “With nearly 17 percent of America’s children now clinically obese and a staggering 32 percent overweight, the time is long past to address the unhealthy food environments our children live in.”
The new standards limit calories per meal to 850 for high school meals, 700 for middle school and 650 for elementary and more than double the mandated minimum servings of fruits and vegetables while reducing the sodium, saturated fats and trans fats in school kids’ diets. Whole-grain foods, beans and dark green and orange vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, carrots and sweet potatoes have replaced things like pizza and French fries as staple items in schools that follow the program.
Of course, not everybody likes the changes. Lunch strikes, Facebook protest pages, Twitter campaigns, YouTube parody videos and other means have been utilized coast-to-coast to voice opposition to the healthier meals. Some affected cafeterias blame the new smaller portions and healthier fare for causing as much as a 70 percent drop-off in school lunch program participation since the new standards took effect.
Psychologists understand that kids may not come around to new foods right away but will eventually eat them—so the federal government and most participating schools are sticking to their guns. And the USDA says that if a school “encounters significant hardships employing the new calorie requirements, we stand ready to work with them quickly and effectively to remedy the situation with additional flexibilities.”
The benefits of the new standards far outweigh the costs. “School meals can help children develop healthy eating habits—or they can prime them for a life of poor health and unnecessary suffering,” says EWG.
EWG lauds the new standards for significantly expanding access to and appreciation of nourishing food. Whether they can help shift eating norms across the country remains to be seen, but regardless millions of American kids will likely now get their healthiest meals of the day on a tray in their school cafeterias.
CONTACTS: EWG, www.ewg.org; National School Lunch Program, www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/; Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/cnr_2010.htm.
EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
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32 Comments
Add Comment"And the USDA says that if a school “encounters significant hardships employing the new calorie requirements, we stand ready to work with them quickly and effectively to remedy the situation with additional flexibilities.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the heck? Cripes, stop the excuses and pandering. Education departments and schools are not dumb. Provide healthy choices. If the kids don't eat, then too friggin bad. They could stand to lose weight.
This is championed & organized by anti-regulation Conservatives, not the students.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this:(
Dr. Mikkel Hindhede , due to food blockades during the first world war , the amount of protein required by a full grown man was one gram of protein for every ten pounds of body weight but the RDA , accepted by medicine , is 3.5 grams of protein for every ten pounds , almost three times more than Dr. Hindhede found.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a very large 'window' and could be making obesity much harder to address due to the fact the government is FORCIING the consumption of 'high protein' foods such as dairy or meat ?
CHOICE , MORE food WHEN eating healthily , LESS food when eating unheathily. Overeating fruits and vegetables will not make you fat , so rather than restricting fruits and vegetables , they should be given 'free range' TO fruits and vegetables and less food when choosing meat and dairy the higher more 'dangerous' foods.
Look at the school lunches in any developed country in the world, replace them with what's served to kids in the US and they'll be very happy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps this stems from lack of good nutritional standards at home. In my home we have a fifteen year old boy and if I were to go much more than a day or two w/out putting vegetables, beans, and whole grains on the table he would revolt. When he has friends over the majority of them seem baffled by the lack of processed food that’s loaded with empty calories and salt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly very proactive nutritional education will overcome this problem, both for the students and their parents. Of course it wouldn’t hurt to rein in the large corporate interests along the way.
cjoyce: "Only very proactive nutritional education will overcome this problem, both for the students and their parents"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere has been nutritional education 'forever'. Many the who got it in the 60's and 70's are obese or fat. People know what they shhould be eating and feeding their children. People are not stupid. they know a banana is better nutrition than a Twinkie. Many people choose to eat the Twinkie.
I often hear young parents complain that their child only eats hot dogs, sugary cereals and deep fat fried chicken fingers. What I want to know is, how on earth did they get their preschool and grade-schoolers to spring for the groceries. Gee, I wish my kid had bought all our groceries, I'd have saved a bundle. Maybe she was a little slow, she never even picked up the tab at a restaurant until she was 12.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it possible that our making lunches more healthy is pushing kids away from eating these healthy options and thus taking lunches to school which are less healthy. In other words, the school lunches used to suck just enough to keep our kids eating them, while not forcing them to take more unhealthy foods to school. Its become over-regulation, and as we make the lunches worse our children will only get fatter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet them eat what they want...but eliminate all their health care benefits!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrlcbird, take your political BS elsewhere. The article is about school meal nutrition, not the Affordable Care Act.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey everyone, check out weird Madeleine at post # 8. Don't go there, that same post is all over the SciAm boards. It is probably a virus or at least a scam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAhhh! Its that bitch Madeleine again, at #8. Look out, that post is all over the comment boards and its either a virus or a scam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remember when I was in school the food pyramid was arranged such that you were supposed to eat a shit-ton of bread and/or pasta first and foremost, never eat any fat or sugar, except in fruit, vegetables, etc, eat less fruit and vegetables combined than bread and pasta... It was all rather insane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscookchh: Are you serious? You're arguing that the meals are worse because they're better, because the kids might not eat them because they're not unhealthy enough and therefore aren't getting enough food, and therefore the government should stop "regulating" school lunches and allow schools to serve unhealthy ones so that kids actually eat something? ... I don't even.
If kids won't eat healthy food because they're too used to unhealthy food, that isn't just a problem with the school food, it's quite possibly also a problem with their home environment and how their parents have raised them (letting them eat sugary cereals, unhealthy food in general, etc).
MiddleAmericaMS
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood, the gov needs to quit trying to control everything we do. They have even made students throw away lunches that they bring from home and force their lunch on them just because they don't like what they brought. Enough is enough
That IS kind of bad isn't it. Gone are the days of a sugary juice box , granola bar , cheese sandwich and chips. When did lunch become such a big deal ? I can remember tomato soup and cold toast and it didn't bother me in the least , at the time , but we didn't KNOW we would die if we didn't eat the amounts people eat nowadays.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving any government agency dictate a school lunch program is not representative of the American freedoms which we were once guaranteed and another step closer to a socialist-dictatorship form of government favored by freeloading liberals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForce-feed the little bastards!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"In other words, the school lunches used to suck just enough to keep our kids eating them, while not forcing them to take more unhealthy foods to school'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this???????
Who 'forces' kids to take unhealthy foods to school?
Hans " Force-feed the little bastards"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd agree if the little piglets then didn't eat crap food in addition to what we'd force feed them.
kids have always complained about school lunches. This will even out and they will eat the lunches just as before. But they'll be just a tad healthier. We are the adults, we do not let the kids choose to do things we know are dangerous and unhealthy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce again, big and intrusive government at its best. Get rid of the lunches including all the bureaucrats involved in these decisions. I know, I know, the farm lobby wants lunches, big time corporate welfare. Well, get rid of it too!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is wrong with the idea of leaving parents take care of their children's meals?
I usta do this to my husband, and it works. Put all the fresh healthy ingredients into flavorful sauces and kids will not be aware that they are eating any differently.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes anybody care about the science of obesity anymore?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and discover that high carb meals, including "wholesome grains" are the major cause of obesity, because carbohydrates do not produce satiety in the way fats and proteins do. There is no health disadvantage to fats, saturated or otherwise, none!, and eating fat and protein causes individuals to stop eating because they become sated (full). Who hasn't experienced the feeling, typically around Thanksgiving meals, of being absolutely stuffed, but "oh, sure, I can have that apple pie now!"? (Personally, I can eat carbs almost forever, but, much as I love cheese and meat, there is a real limit to what I could ever eat).
All the studies that limit caloric intake are completely useless. Decades of experience shows calorie restriction (semi-starvation) never works to lose weight. The only real way to lose weight is to create satiety so the individual wants to stop eating.
I would agree, except that there are a lot of kids coming to school hungry and going home to no dinner. Some kids get up for school in the back of a car. We can't stop feeding them as long as people are having them who can't provide for them, or worse, just don't care about them. Surely, you or one of your kids had a friend who couldn't get enough to eat, never wanted to go home, didn't have shoes that fit or a decent coat. I made sure that kid got at least one good meal a day, just like my mother did, and my tax dollars made sure they got one at school. I would just as soon the other meal was healthy, cause those kids won't turn up their noses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, and they will also grow up to be obese, and drive their countries health care programs into bankruptcy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHard to do with children. When children are in school we are taking responsibility for their mind and body. It is our responsibility to see that food we provide is healthy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they are bringing less healthy foods to school it is their parents responsibility. Parents should be given information on how to pack healthy foods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur school hot lunch program has done an excellent job since it began over 50 yrs ago. The lady in charge told me they have been trying very hard to meet the new standards and find them very difficult to satisfy the kid's needs. Less meat & dairy in ranch country doesn't make it! Many of the kids probably don't eat right or enough at home and school is their primary source of nutrition. Mondays are most difficult to meet their appetites' needs which tells me they aren't getting enough or wholesome foods at home. If they don't get real food at school they'll fill up on junk food after school. Hungary kids isn't the answer to obesity; life style and physical activity are probably factors. Let's stop busing them to a school 2 blocks away (it required 3 miles when I went to school) and we would see more kids walking in their neighborhoods. Take their electronic Wi devices away and let them actually run & play outside for real. Everybody in our city limits walked home from school years ago, now almost none do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince school lunches are generally cheaper than bring your own lunches, this gives the low income kids a much higher incentive to eat healthy. It would only have the negative impact you describe among higher income students. Historically, the higher income have always eaten and otherwise consumed unhealthy substances in sufficient amounts as to lead to a wide variety of diseases and reduced fertility rates. The free market economy cannot exist with a non-pyramidal shape so the well off need to live shorter lives and have fewer offspring. Thus the new lunches are having the desired impact on America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have any actual proof of your interesting claims? I've never heard of a school forcing a child to throw away a bagged lunch and buy a school meal. Unless you are talking about private schools which the feds have no real control over.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we did leave it to the parents then nearly half of American students wouldn't eat lunch every day and a fairly large number wouldn't eat at all. If you suggest that we should let children starve, I have a nice funeral pyre for you. You don't even need to start out dead to use it. If you suggest that the parents loose custody then how many are you willing to adopt?
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