If you’ve been paying attention to the school food debate this past year, you’ve noticed the consistent barrage of negative claims: “Kids hate healthier school meals.” “Cafeteria trash cans overflow with wasted food.” “Kids aren’t eating school lunch!” Journalist Kate Murphy tossed the latest stone with her recent — and misrepresentative — New York Times piece, ” Why Students Hate School Lunches.”
She did a bang-up job propagating popular misconceptions, while barely providing lip service to solutions that have resulted in healthier meals, happier kids and successful school food programs. As I was quoted in the article — staunchly in defense of current U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and the changes they’ve brought about — I want to set the record straight.
Murphy thinks school food is pretty unappealing, and she blames that on the healthier school food guidelines that were put in place with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. She implies that if the guidelines are rolled back — or, as she says, relaxed — children will have tastier meals and that they will not throw out so much food.
Two things are wrong with this logic. One, the foundational claim that students hate school lunch is factually wrong. Two, rolling back the guidelines won’t guarantee tastier meals or less waste. It will only guarantee the possibility that children could eat school lunch every day and never consume a fruit, vegetable or whole grain.
School Lunch Is Not Scary
The myth that school food is scary is just that: a myth. We need to stop repeating it and making children afraid of healthy food. Today’s school food is often innovative, exciting and tasty. And yes, healthy. And yes, different. School food service directors are getting creative to meet the guidelines, introducing different spices instead of salt and experimenting with different flours and grains to introduce whole-grain-rich foods.
Murphy spoke of a 100 percent whole-grain requirement, which is misleading. All grains at school need to be whole-grain-rich, which means they must consist of 50 percent whole grains. The other 50 percent can consist of refined grains, and with increasing prevalence of products like “white whole wheat,” children are happily eating whole-grain-rich foods and hardly noticing they are different, let alone healthier.
And yes, children need some time to get used to flavors other than salt, grease and ubiquitous processed “cheese” sauce.
But the research is in, and 70 percent of food service staff surveyed say that their students like the new lunches. Kids are eating more fruits and vegetables under the new guidelines, not less. According to a Harvard study published last year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, under the updated standards for school meals, significantly more students selected fruit, up 23 percent, and vegetable consumption increased by 16 percent. Also, reports show that food waste at school is the same before and after the new guidelines, and another Harvard study published online last month in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics attributes uneaten fruits and vegetables to short lunch periods, not children’s aversions. Children simply don’t have enough time to eat all the food on their tray.
More than 30 million children eat school lunch every day, and in a nation where over a third of the children are overweight or obese, a healthy school lunch is a powerful tool to help change eating habits that are literally making our children very sick. According to USDA, nearly a third of U.S. kids are on track to develop Type 2 diabetes.
We should be applauding healthy school food, not reinforcing the message that parents and children should be frightened of it. Thousands of schools across the country are serving up delicious school food made from real, fresh ingredients. We should be celebrating these accomplishments and helping, not martyring, the few school districts still struggling.
What ‘Kids Hate School Lunch’ Really Means
Saying that, “Kids hate school lunch,” is code for, “Roll back healthy food standards.”
Murphy proposes that school food guidelines under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act are so restrictive that schools can’t serve tasty food. The HHFKA is on the hot seat because it’s up for reauthorization in Congress. The Senate Agriculture Committee was slated to reauthorize the HHFKA, also known as the Child Nutrition Act, by Sept. 30, but the deadline has passed and the Senate is delaying.
This means that the current standards governing school food remain in place, which is good, but the rollbacks are still on the table. If adopted, the rollbacks would mean that schools would no longer be required to serve a fruit or vegetable with every school meal. All grains served could be refined and processed, bereft of the nutritional benefits found in whole grains, and any additional progress to reduce sodium levels would be halted.
Murphy, a proponent of relaxing the guidelines, thinks that rollbacks would offer schools flexibility to serve meals like those in France, food like “salmon lasagna with spinach” and “fondue with baguette for dipping.” If Murphy thinks that is what schools were serving prior to the healthier guidelines, then she did very little research regarding school meals — and school meal budgets — before the HHFKA was enacted. School food programs — stymied with bare-bones budgets, outdated facilities and limited support — were often stuck with highly-processed options and nary a fresh apple slice or lettuce leaf in sight.
By offering struggling schools the “flexibility” to return to optional fruits and vegetables and 100 percent refined grains, we stop the progress that not only schools are making, but that their vendors and suppliers are making, too. While I’m not a fan of the whole-wheat doughnut as a way to get around USDA standards, many school food vendors are adhering to the new guidelines in practice and spirit, creating products that feature tasty whole grains, more fruits and vegetables and less processing.
I encourage Kate Murphy to revisit the topic of school lunch through a different lens, one that sees the other side of school lunch, the side that is desperately trying to help kids develop eating habits that support a lifetime of good health.
This month, through the Chef Ann Foundation, I have been highlighting healthy delicious school meals through the #RealSchoolFood campaign. I encourage you to join us on social media to show your support for real school food.
More from U.S. News
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Boo! School Food Is Not Scary originally appeared on usnews.com
