School Lunch Program Aims for Healthy Eating Habits

COURT HOUSE – Children who love chicken nuggets, pizza, or breakfast for lunch aren’t alone. 
Those are among the favorite lunch foods served at area schools, where efforts to ensure children eat “healthy” get similar reactions to any parent who’s tried to get their children to eat more fruits, vegetables and grains, and less sodium and trans fats. 
“It seems we have less participation (in lunch) the healthier it is,” said Marianne Linnington, food service director, Cape May City Elementary School. The school has about 150 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grades. About one-third, or 36%, receives free or reduced-price lunches. 
“Monthly, we have special tastings of food to try and get the students to try different foods, like butternut squash,” she added, noting children tend to like what they get at home. “We also have a vegetable section every day, where there’s no limit. We hope they’ll try some and like it.”
NSLP Calls Shots
Cape May City Elementary School, like most schools in the county, participates in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), a federally assisted meal program operating in public and non-profit private schools and residential childcare institutions.
It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or no-cost lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1946. 
Participating school districts and independent schools receive cash subsidies and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) foods for each reimbursable meal they serve. In exchange, participating institutions must serve lunches that meet federal meal pattern requirements and offer the lunches at a free or reduced-price to eligible children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children who participate in an approved after-school program, including an educational or enrichment activity. 
While the nutritional guidelines have been updated since those early days, current meal standards ensure students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week, substantially increased offerings of whole grain-rich foods and low-fat milk or fat-free milk varieties, limited calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size, and reduced amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium, according to a fact sheet by USDA, who administers the program at the federal level. 
These improvements to the school meal programs, largely based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, are expected to enhance the diet and health of school children and help mitigate the childhood obesity trend.
Students Have Options
However, students still have the option of not having lunch, bringing their lunch from home, or choosing other items that aren’t part of the program meal. At Middle Township schools, Diane Fox, business administrator, said their food staff works with a nutritionist weekly to follow the government’s standards.  
At the high school, for example, students have the option of choosing from hot meals, a taco bar, sandwich deli counter where the sandwiches are made to order, salad bar, and a fruit and vegetable bar. Like the younger students, favorites still range from chicken nuggets to pizza. 
“As part of the national program, we are allocated certain foods, but how we prepare them is up to us,” Fox said. “We bake the chicken nuggets on-site; they aren’t fried. We get pizza shells, but we make them up with the toppings here. We prepare the food at our schools.”
USDA Sets Standards
School meals are designed to meet a portion of a child’s nutritional and energy needs over the day, according to the USDA. School meal standards are in line with dietary recommendations for protein intake. The USDA recommends that children, depending on age and sex, should get about four to six ounces of protein foods, e.g., lean meat, poultry, nuts, seeds, beans, and seafood, over an entire day, which provides protein and other beneficial nutrients.  
School lunch guidelines, which are intended to ensure that almost all children receive at least one-third of their daily nutritional and energy needs, require a minimum of one to two ounces of protein foods per meal. Further, other types of food contribute substantial protein to school meals, including fluid milk, which is part of every school meal, according to the USDA. 
“We are always trying to get nutrients in our foods,” Linnington said. “For example, we’ll make a spinach soufflé that includes vegetables, eggs, and cheese, but if the students don’t like it, they won’t eat it, so it doesn’t stay on the menu for long, but we’re always trying.” 
To supplement the effort to have kids eat better is education provided in the classroom. Fox and Linnington said nutrition is part of the health curriculum and information is taught according to age level. The program provides posters and other educational materials to the schools. 
While nationwide “organic” food has become popular, Linnington noted, “It’s expensive, so it’s not always possible to buy.”  
It is also difficult for kitchen staff to have the time to bake fresh items, she said, because the program has to be self-supporting, according to the program guidelines, and baking takes more time that doesn’t get spent on the daily preparation needs.
Lunch Shaming Not Allowed
“Lunch shaming,” which is a way of embarrassing a student and parent(s) so that a school lunch debt is paid quickly, in turn reducing a school’s financial burden, has no place in the local districts. Linnington and Fox said their districts have policies on how lunch debts are handled.  
“We contact the family multiple times about their debt, but no student is denied a meal nor are they forced to have an alternate meal,” Linnington noted.  
“About five or six years ago, we did have a student spending his lunch money on something else, but we only have a handful of students with a lunch debt now,” Linnington added.  
At Middle Township schools, Fox said about half (49%) of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches. They also have a “large outstanding balance” from school lunch debts; however, the policy is that no child is refused a meal, and they can have the same food as everyone else. 
Currently, lunch at the elementary school costs $2.90 and $3 at the middle and high school, Fox said. The reduced cost is 40 cents, a state-regulated amount for the state-administered program. 
Rollbacks Could Weaken Nutrition Rules
According to Jennifer Gaddis, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, and author of a new book that lays out how transforming the food culture in schools can significantly improve students’ lives, said the Trump administration has rolled back parts of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (Michelle Obama as part of a broader initiative to end childhood obesity within a generation. HHFKA), which was championed by
“The HHFKA was the most sweeping change to child nutrition policy in at least a generation,” she noted. “It set new limits on the amount of sodium in school lunches, required schools to shift to whole-grain bread products, and mandated that students take either a fruit or a vegetable as part of their government-subsidized school lunch.  
“The first rollbacks occurred under the Obama administration,” she pointed out. “Big food companies and their lobbyists succeeded in weakening the restrictions on starchy foods, like potatoes and pizza. The Trump administration further weakened nutrition standards, giving schools more ‘flexibility’ to serve refined-grains and salty foods.  
“This policy reversal makes it easier for big food companies to profit from selling highly processed foods to schools, while families and taxpayers are stuck picking up the tab for the long-term health costs associated with the ‘standard American diet,'” she stressed. “The other concern relates to a proposed change to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance that would cause an estimated 500,000 children to lose automatic free lunch eligibility. This change hasn’t gone into effect yet, and can still be prevented if enough people get mobilized to provide public comment and contact their elected officials.” 
To contact Karen Knight, email kknight@cmcherald.com.