Every year, thousands of school food professionals from around the country convene at the School Nutrition Association’s Annual National Conference. The ANC offers educational sessions, cooking demonstrations, round tables and discussion panels, all designed to help school food professionals “improve menus while maintaining student participation and financially sustainable programs.”
But a visit to the exhibit hall floor reveals that one factor remains missing from the ANC’s goal: connecting schools to food that will help students develop healthy eating habits, reduce childhood obesity and support physical and cognitive development.
This year, I was happy to see great educational opportunities in the program, such as “Harvesting Best Practices from the School Garden” and “Experiential Nutrition Education: Promoting Healthy Habits.” Then I walked into the exhibit hall, where hundreds of school food vendors were promoting their new, exciting products for school lunch and breakfast, and my heart sank.
The vast majority of the food was highly processed, and much of it was junk. I saw rows and rows filled with:
— fruit snacks now with more fruit juice
— whole-grain honey graham crackers
— reduced-fat chocolate chip cookies
— whole-grain pink-frosted cookies with sprinkles
— individually-packaged whole-wheat glazed, powdered and frosted doughnuts
— popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and strawberry sundae crunch bars
— fat-free chocolate milk
— 100 percent juice slushies (red, white and blue)
It doesn’t take a detective to see what’s going on here. Food companies are changing the formulas of their junk food so they meet U.S. Department of Agriculture standards for school meals and snacks, but junk is still junk. It also doesn’t take a detective to realize that many of the exhibiting food vendors are also industry members of the SNA, such as PepsiCo and Domino’s Pizza. These industry members profit by selling their processed food products to school food service professionals, who make up the other 55,000 SNA members.
Many journalists and school food advocates have written about the ANC and how it reflects on the health of both school food programs and the students they serve. Instead of adding my voice to the strong chorus, I’d like to present a round up of articles and blog posts that have appeared over the last week addressing the ANC and how it represents SNA’s current school food advocacy policies:
— Lindsey Haynes-Maslow and Karen Stillerman at The Union of Concerned Scientists have written a six-part blog series examining and refuting SNA’s reasons for lobbying for a rollback on some of the USDA’s school food standards.
— Dana Woldow at BeyondChron explains “How Lunch Ladies Get Schooled by Big Food.”
— In her article “When Schools Serve Pizza and Corn Dogs for Lunch, These Companies Make Bank,” Julia Lurie at Mother Jones calls out the profit-driven side of school food business.
Despite the clear connection between SNA’s stance and corporate profit, SNA’s lobbying efforts has been making some headway. On July 15, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $20.5 billion draft measure that would allow states to waive some nutrition rules on whole grains for districts that say complying would cost too much. The measure also would block full implementation of a low-sodium standard until more study is conducted.
This draft measure, adopted without any debate, is an end-run around the Child Nutrition Act, which is scheduled for reauthorization this fall but will most likely be postponed. The measure is part of the Senate’s full FY 2016 agriculture appropriations bill, and there is still time to contact your senator before it is submitted for Senate approval. Tell your senator that they should not roll back USDA standards for school food.
Thousands of school food professionals across the country are committed to healthy school food, regardless of SNA’s ties to processed-food manufacturers and the rise of the whole-grain donut. Let’s make sure Congress supports them and their commitment to our nation’s children.
More from U.S. News
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School Nutrition Annual Round Up originally appeared on usnews.com
