For millions of young Americans the end of summer means
that it's time to go back to school. September brings the
familiar ringing of bells, freshly sharpened pencils on crisp
sheets of paper and the smell of …..
…..microwaved meat and
cafeterias chock-full of candy?
 Are
America 's children being forced to choose between low-grade
processed food or sugar-laden junk food at school? Is the
onslaught of preservatives, sweeteners and processed food in
schools the reason why American children are fatter than ever?
In this month's Back-to-School Feature Article, we're
looking at School Lunch – what the National School Lunch
Program offers, what Junk Food Manufacturers now have the
privilege of offering, and how some communities are taking
school lunch into their own hands. Read on to find out more
about the state of school lunches today and how the new
sustainable food trend is sweeping the country.
What exactly is School
Lunch?
Children who buy lunch at school are most likely participating
in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), a federally
assisted meal program that began in 1946, and is now operating
in more than 99,800 schools (out of 119,235 elementary and
secondary schools, public and private) and residential child
care institutions.i Close to 29
million students a day are provided for by the NSLP, whether
it's a full-price, low cost or free meal at lunchii.
With just over 54 million students enrolled in both public and
private schools, that means over half of America's children
count on the NSLP to provide up to three meals a day (breakfast,
lunch, snack), to the tune of over $9 billion annually.iii
So what are half of America's children being served each
day? Is it healthy? Where does it come from? More and more
parents are starting to ask these questions, and the answers
don't paint a pretty picture. Although NSLP standards require
that 1/3 of Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) of vitamins and
nutrients are met at each meal, this alone cannot ensure healthy
eating habits. iv With copious amounts of processed
food and junk food available – in both vending machines
and the cafeteria - and a significant lack of fresh fruits and
vegetables, nutrition in America 's schools is becoming a recipe
for disaster.
Where did the Lunch Lady
Go?
Perhaps school lunches were never the culinary highlight of a
child's day, but back in the day, at least the meals were cooked
in the school's kitchen, not just delivered in pre-packaged
containers to be re-heated before serving. Today, some schools
have fast-food delivered to their cafeterias on certain days of
the week, or have even created fast food franchises right on
campus, eliminating the Lunch Lady altogether. v
With the demise of fresh, balanced meals prepared on
campus has come the rise of junk food as a main course. In order
to compensate for a lack of government funding, school systems
around the country have turned to junk food and junk food
advertising – mainly for sodas and fast food chains. An
area that was once reserved for learning has opened up as a
market for large junk food manufacturers to peddle their
products in vending machines and in the form of school
sponsorships. As Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) put it, in his
opening remarks to a convention of government health officials
and big food industry representatives, "corporate America
spends $12 billion a year on food ads to kids because it
works."vi
Although corporate food giants partner with health
organizations and host conferences on self-regulation in order
to show that they are “part of the solution,” their
lobby groups tell a different story, opposing almost all school
nutrition bills around the country.
Coca-Cola's lobbyists have attempted to block state bills
in as many as seven states that would prevent their product from
being sold in schools.vii Soda giants have already
garnered much of the school vending market, making deals with
short term monetary benefits to schools and long-term health
risks to the students. Many of the contracts between schools and
junk food vendors force the school to break a law which requires
them to turn off junk food vending machines during lunch. In
these cases, a school that abides by the law will have their
contract terminated.
The Effects of Junk Food
When you think about the problems associated with drinking sodas
or colas, rotting teeth and root canals are the health issues
that probably come to mind. What you may not know is that an
ingredient in almost all sodas and many fruit juice drinks is
making America fat. It's called High Fructose Corn Syrup, and
it's not only in beverages, but is hiding out in many of the
snack foods and even “health foods” on the market
today.
Where did this substance come from? In the late sixties
and early seventies, beverage manufacturers discovered a much
cheaper way to make beverages sweeter. Through a complex
refining process, the starch from corn is converted to glucose
and then to fructose. This highly concentrated form of fructose
delivers a sweetness beyond what is possible through natural
means, and perhaps it was precisely this extra-sweet flavor that
has created a rise in soda consumption and decline in milk
consumption over the last few decades.viii
- Soda consumption among teenage girls has doubled and
among teenage boys has tripled since 1978.
- One fifth of all infants ages one and two are now soda
drinkers.ix
According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
the consumption of HFCS increased 1000% between 1970 and 1990,
far exceeding the changes in intake of any other food or food
group. HFCS now represents 40% of caloric sweeteners added to
foods and beverages and is the sole caloric sweetener in soft
drinks in the United States . Likewise, there has been a
concurrent rise in obesity during this time, leading scientists
and nutritionists to see a connection between HFCS and weight
gain.x
How can a beverage make you fat? Studies on the effects
of HFCS on the body have shown that digestion, absorption, and
metabolism of fructose differ from that of glucose, a simple
sugar that is a major energy source for all cellular and bodily
functions . Because fructose does not stimulate insulin
secretion, which is a key component for the body's regulation of
food intake, scientists think that very concentrated forms of
fructose (HFCS) ingested in great quantities (super size sodas)
contribute to weight gain. For more information about how HFCS
may play a role in the epidemic of obesity, visit the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition .
For some tasty alternatives to soda and HFCS-sweetened
beverages, see our Picnic
Beverages page.xi
Childhood Obesity
The results of a study of weight in the United States conducted
by Cynthia Ogden, PhD and a CDC epidemiologist, determined that
currently 31% of adults are obese and 15% of children and
teenagers age 6-19 are overweight.xii
Results from the National Center for Health Statistics
corroborate these findings, showing an increase in childhood
obesity from 5% in 1963 to 15% in 2002. According to these
results, obesity in children age 6-11 grew steadily through the
seventies, eighties and nineties, while obesity in children
12-19 dropped slightly in the late seventies, then joined the
younger group at similar rates through the eighties and
nineties.xiii
James O. Hill, PhD, director of the Center for Human
Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center,
claims that obesity-related diabetes alone "will break the bank
of our healthcare system” if we do nothing to improve our
children's eating and exercise habits.xiv Besides
diabetes, obesity can lead to impaired lung function, sleep
disorders, heart disease, and other health conditions.xv
With obesity climbing at an alarming rate, doctors and parents
have started looking for a good place to start fighting this
epidemic, and many have focused on our nation's schools.
Food Safety
Besides options that are simply unhealthy, schools have also
been the recipients of food that is downright dangerous.
According to Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation ,
some of the “most questionable ground beef in the United
States was purchased by the USDA and then distributed to
cafeterias throughout the country” throughout the 80's and
90's. Even after outbreaks of E.coli in multiple states could be
linked to meat suppliers with hundreds of critical food safety
violations on their record, the USDA continued to buy millions
of pounds of meat from them, bound for America 's school
cafeterias.xvi
While many children rely on schools for breakfast, lunch
and after school snack, for some less fortunate kids, the food
supplied by the NSLP is the only food they eat at all. Making
sure America's kids are fed safe, nutritious and fresh food, for
their sake (and that of our healthcare system), is slowly
becoming a priority.
Sustainable Schools
As sustainability catches on around the country, more and more
teachers, students and parents are getting involved and
demanding a better quality lunch than the “empty
calorie” choices that children have gotten used to today.
It usually begins with one concerned parent who, appalled at the
lack of nutrition and excess of fat and sugar their child
receives every day at school, rallies other parents to change
the way their schools think about food.
Berkeley, California, has become a model for how to make
schools more sustainable. Thanks to Alice Waters' Edible
Schoolyard Project at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School ,
the idea that food can go from farm to table and never leave
campus is becoming reality. Sixth through eighth grade students
use their school's organic garden as a centerpiece for learning
not only about planting and harvesting, cooking and eating, but
also biology, ecology, nutrition and sustainability.
Students plant, grow, tend, cook and eat food that they
grow in their school garden. Children are introduced to new
varieties of vegetables, and though some might be hesitant at
trying something new, the program has shown that children are
much more likely to eat food that they have helped grow. This
program has become so successful that many schools around the
country now have their own gardens. The National Gardening Association has a
list of thousands of school gardens nationwide.
But Berkeley isn't the only organic oasis in our nation's
school system. A recent state law required Washington Schools to
provide healthier lunches by 2005, and the Seattle Public School
District has a new set of comprehensive and far-reaching
nutrition-related policies designed to provide students with
healthy food and beverage choices. This includes a ban on the
sale of foods containing high levels of sugar and fat and
prohibits exclusive contracts with beverage vendors. The
policies are among the strongest in the country, and were hard
won by the Citizens Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools
(CCCFS), a group of parents, teachers, a school board member and
others. xvii
Washington State is also home to healthy cafeteria
projects, like the one found on Vashon Island which features
delectable menus of Thai chicken lettuce wraps or fresh garden
pizza with their regular organic fruit and vegetable salad bar.
Though extra costs are often cited for reasons why organic food
isn't feasible for public schools, Lincoln Elementary in Olympia
, Washington , has managed to cut its lunch costs by 2 cents a
meal while offering a full organic menu. Eliminating dessert,
though initially unpopular with students, covered most of the
added cost of organic meals, and was eventually embraced by both
students and parents.xviii
School districts in California , such as Compton, Santa
Monica-Malibu School Districts of Southern California, and Palo
Alto are getting on the farm-to-school bandwagon as well, and
are now supplied with fresh produce from regional farms. ixx
Some Midwestern school districts are right up there with
the best of them, having changed menus to feature whole-wheat
pizza, organic milk, salad bars, whole grains, legumes and fresh
fruits. Hopkins School District in Minnesota has become a model
in the area, attracting food service directors from around the
state requesting tours.
High schools in Appleton, Wisconsin, which are about 30
minutes outside of Green Bay, began the process of converting to
healthy menus about seven years ago, thanks to the involvement
of Natural Ovens who underwrote the first 5 years of the study.xx
Their program has received nationwide attention for the dramatic
drop in violent behavior and a rise in academic performance, and
was featured in the documentary “Super Size Me.”
Another solution to the overabundance of junk food in
schools is sustainable vending machines. In order to combat
obesity and the prevalence of unhealthy food in schools,
Stonyfield Farm is installing vending machines that have granola
bars, soy nuts, drinkable yogurt and other healthier snacks.
Prices are kept low to compete with junk food, and the machines
are so popular that 900 schools are currently applying for them.
So although our schools today are facing an onslaught of
junk, over-processed and unhealthy food, many districts are
finding creative ways to combat this problem and are feeding
healthier, sustainable food to their children.
What Can You Do?
There are many things parents and students can do to change the
food choices at school, including:
• Bring local, sustainable food to your school
or campus. Read Sustainable Table's Cafeterias
and Dining Halls section for links to guides and organizations
that can help you do a healthy overhaul of your cafeteria.
• Don't go it alone! See the legislation that
other school districts have made concerning healthy food. See
Stonyfield Farms' Resources and Research page for ideas on
how to bring about change in your area.
• If your child doesn't buy food at school,
make sure they're getting the healthiest food possible. These
are companies that have recognized this need and are trying to
make healthy lunches easier on parents:
Laptop Lunches sells a carrying case
– lunchbox combo with internal compartments designed to
cut down on waste.
 Brown Bag Naturals
has just arrived for the fall '05 school year, delivering
healthy lunches directly to schools in the Los Angeles area, and
provide other nationwide lunch services.
The Organic Lunchbox from Applegate Farms
has the convenience of lunchables, only made with organic
ingredients.
Take Action! Use the Community Action to Change School Food
Policy organizing kit provided by the Massachusetts
Public Health Association.
Resources
So how does a healthy school campaign start? Take a look at some
of these organizations of parents, teachers, communities and
foundations to learn about how others have started a fresh food
revolution in their school cafeterias.
Programs
Appetite for a Change: Organic Consumers
Association's nationwide campaign working to make school food
programs healthy and sustainable, to integrate organic foods and
non-toxic products into our schools, creating a safer and
healthier environment for our children to learn and grow.
Commercial Alert's Childhood Obesity
Prevention Agenda: This focuses on calling on legislators to ban
marketing and unhealthy or junk food in school and provides an
online form to fill out and send to the proper parties.
GM Free Schools Campaign: A campaign of The
Institute for Responsible Technology, IRT, supports efforts to
create GM-free schools by providing written and audio-visual
materials, web support, and guidance to local campaigns.
Farm to School Program of the Community
Food Security Coalition:
Farm to School programs work to counteract negative health
trends by incorporating healthy, nutritious, produce into school
lunches, snacks and salad bars. They combine nutrition
education, farm visits, school gardens and education in the
classroom, so that children can develop healthy eating habits
that will last a lifetime.
Healthy Schools Campaign: A small
organization in Chicago that conducts educational research and
promotes healthy eating to school administrators, students, and
parents. They are actively against the sale and distribution of
junk food and soft drinks in schools.
Kerr Center Essay Contest: Essays written
by high school students about the need for Farm-to-School
programs in America .
Menu for Change: Getting Healthy Foods into
Schools: Stonyfield Farm has launched this grassroots program in
response to the current obesity crisis facing youth in the U.S.
The company provides vending machines to schools that include
healthier snacks such as drinkable yogurt, soy nuts, granola
bars and 100% juice. Also includes a parent action kit so
parents can get involved in bringing healthier food to their
children's schools.
Parents Action for Children – Organic
Lunchbox Challenge: A resource and guide for parents who want to
add organic food to children's diets.
School
Foods Tool Kit: A comprehensive guide for organizing and
promoting campaigns within schools, covering everything from
backgrounders on basic nutrition needs to how to generate media
coverage to sample testimonies to present to a school board.
From the Center for Science in the Pubic Interest.
Groups and Organizations
Center
for Informed Food Choices: Educates the public about how our
industrial food system, along with corporate-influenced
government policies, is the root cause of a host of preventable
public health, environmental, and social justice problems.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC): A government resource for finding current, changed, or
abandoned state legislative bills regarding nutrition in
schools.
CHOICE: Was launched in 1994 by a group of
concerned parents to promote a choice of wholesome plant-based
meals and nutrition education in our nation's schools.
Citizens
Campaign for Commercial-Free Schools (CCCFS): A Washington State
grassroots, nonprofit organization based in Seattle whose
mission is to protect the right of Washington children and youth
to a commercial-free education.
Natural Ovens Bakery: The company that
helped launched Appleton Schools' Organic Lunch Program provides
information on how to do the same in your school district.
(Cost: $25)
New
York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches: A grassroots group of
concerned parents, students, educators, food service
professionals, medical professionals, religious leaders and
environmentalists working to bring healthy plant-based nutrition
to our schools in response to the health crisis occurring among
children.
The Food Trust works to improve the health
of children and adults, promote good nutrition, increase access
to nutritious foods, and advocate for better public policy.
For more information, please visit Sustainable Table's Sustainable
Food in Schools section. ST_ARTICLES
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