There were significant and frustrating compromises made along the way: most recently, the funding of the bill with SNAP money—an aggressive move made initially in the Senate version, but then eventually also adopted by the House—that was likely intended to split the school food advocacy community and thus kill the bill. The school food advocacy community were rightfully outraged at the notion of taking money from hungry kids to….feed hungry kids. We described our somewhat reluctant shift of tactic in an earlier blog post—you can click here to read it.

Ultimately 1,350 organizations ranging from Feeding America to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to Slow Food USA joined together in a letter to the House of Representatives urging them to pass the bill before the end of the year. Today, it seems, that pressure finally worked.

It’s an imperfect bill, one that fell short of our hopes, however, it has several important gains within. What’s good about this bill:

More money! While 6 cents doesn’t sound like very much—and is far short of the dollar we campaigned for early on—it represents the first non-inflationary increase ever made. School nutrition directors struggle to get food on trays at the current rate. More money, no matter how little, is essential.

Better nutrition standards. In the past there has been all kinds of food sold on school campuses that is exempt from meeting nutrition guidelines. This bill sets out a plan for improved standards overall as well as requirements for all food—not just food in the lunch line—to meet those standards.

Money for local sourcing. This bill makes mandatory $50 million in funding for a competitive grant program supporting Farm to School programs at USDA. Farm to school programs work to get local food into cafeterias as well as to educate students about how food gets from the farm to their plates, cultivating long-term healthy eating habits.

Access. Includes changes that will make it less bureaucratic and complicated for low-income students to qualify and get registered for free and reduced lunch.

So while it isn’t perfect, we applaud the House for passing a greatly improved child nutrition bill.

Originally posted on The Slow Food USA Blog.

We are preparing for the most thoroughly planned meal in America, and it’s not Thanksgiving dinner. It’s school lunch.

Once every five years school meals are put on the Congressional kitchen’s front burner through reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. In the process of cooking up this legislation, school meals have been researched, reviewed, rallied for and railed against. And while the resulting stuffed turkey that is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids’ Act, is not perfect, it’s pretty darn good.

Congress must stick a fork in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session, get it done and finally serve the kids.

For the last two years, advocates, lobbyists, politicians, and celebrities from Rachael Ray to Michelle Obama have worked to craft a bill that will daily affect the lives of the 31 million children who clamor to the nation’s school cafeterias to quell their grumbling bellies. For this bill to pass, over the next few days we the people must prove to our elected officials that the Child Nutrition Act is a national priority.

This past September marked our country’s first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Yet while one in three U.S. children are obese or overweight, one in four struggle with hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) reported last week that more than 50 million Americans, including more than 17 million children, are food insecure–meaning they lack consistent access to a nutritious, well-balanced diet.

Simultaneous hunger and obesity may seem like a paradox, but the root cause is the same: lack of access to healthy food. Give children nourishing food in the cafeteria, nutrition education in the classroom, and hands-on learning through school gardens, and a lifetime of healthy eating can take root.

We need to show our support for House passage of the $4.5 billion child nutrition bill that passed the Senate earlier this year. If the bill isn’t on the president’s desk soon, supporters will have to start over in the new Congress. It’s like dropping the turkey in front of all the seated family and friends.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act offers a real chance to improve nutrition for all children. By improving opportunities for healthy meals in and out of school, the bill would take an important step towards addressing both child hunger and obesity.

Unanimously passed by the Senate and supported by more than 1,300 national, state and local organizations, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307) will:

• Improve school meals;
• Support farmers through Farm to School programs;
• Address skyrocketing obesity rates; and
• Feed more hungry children.

The bill would help reduce hunger and increase children’s access to healthy meals by expanding the after-school supper program nationwide, better connecting eligible children with free school meals, and streamlining the certification process for the Women, Infants, Children (WIC) program.

The bill would strengthen nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, provide schools with increased resources and training to improve meal quality, and support Farm to School programs and school gardens.

Last week, the House designated October as National Farm to School Month. Now they have a chance to walk the walk, in addition to talking the talk, by passing a bill that will increase access to quality food for school children, foster local farm job growth and generate local economic development. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act establishes a competitive grant and technical assistance program in the Department of Agriculture to increase the use of local foods from small- and medium-sized farms in schools, with $40 million in mandatory funding.

The competitive grant program would help create more Farm to School programs benefiting kids and communities alike. A recent study from the University of Minnesota found the potential economic benefit of Farm to School to the region ranged from about $20,000 if each school served one locally grown meal a month to up to $430,000 if they bought large amounts from farmers.

Now consider that the fast-food industry spent more than $4.2 billion on marketing & advertising in 2009 alone, according to the Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. And our elected officials can’t pass child nutrition legislation that provides almost an equivalent amount in $4.5 billion over 10 years to reduce hunger and provide access to healthy food.

What have you done to help reach the goals of ending child hunger by 2015 and solving childhood obesity in a generation?

Before you pass the turkey, consider helping to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session. You and your family can deliver a strong message to Congress to vote yes on this urgently needed legislation, by sending your photo as part of a nationwide photo petition. Go here for details.

A healthy school lunch for our children is something to be truly thankful for this holiday season.

Originally published on Huffington Post

When President Obama addresses the nation in his State of the Union, he will outline his priorities for 2010: jobs, the deficit, and health care reform. The President will then call for a three-year freeze on domestic programs. Will a program created to “promote the health and well-being of the nation’s children” survive the freeze?

Probably not, unless we, the voting public, find our voice and let our elected officials know that child nutrition in general — and the National School Lunch Program in particular — is a priority.

Now is absolutely NOT the time to cut support for the next generation’s health. The most vulnerable of U.S. citizens, our children, face the strange paradox of being both overfed and malnourished. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 1 in 4 children suffered hunger in the U.S. in 2008. At the same time, the CDC reports that 1 in 3 children will develop Type II Diabetes in their lifetime, make that 1 in 2 if the child is black or Hispanic. Resident Mom-in-Chief Michelle Obama recently highlighted these sickening statistics in her speech to the Council of Mayors last week as she launched her campaign against obesity.

The Child Nutrition Act is being debated in Congress right now, which means we have a rare opportunity to actually improve how food for our youngest citizens is funded, sourced, defined, and prioritized. This window for change only arises once every five years.
Off to a good start in 2009, the Obama Administration included an additional $1 billion for child nutrition programs. Put into lunch money terms, that’s pocket change, but it’s a welcome jingle in the ridiculously low budgets faced by school cafeterias.

Food service directors face a monumental daily battle to create school lunch menus, given an average of just $1 to spend on the food portion of lunch (once labor and other overhead costs are deducted) while being expected to incorporate minimum nutritional standards and operate in the black. The federal government provides the lunch money, on average, $2.68 for the kids that qualify for a free lunch, $2.28 for a reduced price lunch, and $0.25 cents for all. And those amounts include the overhead and facility costs associated with serving a meal such as the fluorescent lights in the cafeteria.

An oft-quoted statistic for the price tag of one soldier in Afghanistan is $1 million, for a total of $65 billion. How about we secure another line of defense that addresses both health care and national security–the lunch line? Do tater tots, pizza, and soda rise to the level of calling in Janet Napolitano or David Petraeus? Oddly, yes, because the National School Lunch Program was originally created to promote “nutrition in the national defense,” as a solution to young men who were unfit for service in WWI and WWII. The lunch line was actually designed to prepare soldiers for the front lines. (And sadly, 27 percent of the population for military service today are too obese/overweight to serve).

I think that stoves for school kitchens are just as important for our nation’s children as mine-resistant armor is for the vehicles of our brave servicemen and women. Here at home, on the front lines of nutrition as national defense, food service staff are being asked to fight obesity by creating healthful meals without proper equipment, such as knives, ovens, and cold storage space.

Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the National School Lunch Program, recently said, “The first item that the President discussed with me when I was first selected for this job was for USDA to provide our children with healthier, more nutritious meals.” And kudos to the USDA for recently announcing 25 million for food service equipment funds to improve the quality of school meals. The Obama Administration gets it, and they must continue to make good on this commitment, even with a tight budget.

In addition to healthier children, it could pay other dividends to a struggling sector of our economy: farmers. When signing the National School Lunch Act into law in1946, Harry Truman famously said, “In the long view, no nation is healthier than its children, or more prosperous than its farmers.”

Better school food brigades have fashioned themselves in several forms to protect our kids and preserve our farms, such as the One Tray campaign and the Farm to School Collaborative, which includes groups such as the National Farm to School Network, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and Community Food Security Coalition. Three Fellows of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (of which I am one) developed two videos –”Lunch Encounters,” a spoof of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and “Priceless,” a MasterCard parody–to increase public awareness about improving child nutrition by encouraging a more direct connection between local farms and federal nutrition.

If President Obama can heed Truman’s advice, he’ll support increased funding for child nutrition and win-win solutions like Farm to School, which cost-effectively brings healthy local food to school children nationwide while boosting the local economy. A reformed school lunch, with improved nutrition standards, increased reimbursement rates, and access to local healthy food, has the potential to nourish more than 31 million children daily in our education system; that is, 5 days a week, 180 days a year of our collective future.

The nation’s fiscal health is dependent upon the health of the next generation. When we consider the cost of inaction in a matter of national security, lives are at stake; so it is the case with the Child Nutrition Act. Let’s take this opportunity to nourish the nation, one tray at a time.

Originally published on Huffington Post

Today’s National School Lunch Program, which is a major part of the five-year spending bill called the Child Nutrition Act, provides meals to 30 million children. Many young Americans depend on school meal and snack programs for a great majority of their daily caloric intake.

Back in 1946, when the National School Lunch Program began, the idea was to support excess commodity agriculture that could then be used to feed children. But in the years since the mid-1940s, American agriculture has undergone a radical transformation. Family farms gave way to a massive food industry that has flooded the market and our school lunch programs with intensively subsidized commodities and processed foods that are high in sugars, starches, and unhealthy fats and oils.

This cheap calorie delivery system—funded for the past few decades through both the Farm Bill and the Child Nutrition Act—has become a key player in a growing crisis: the Supersizing of our kids. One in four children are now overweight and obese. The projections for not addressing this situation—learning to eat better and adopt healthy lifestyles—are frightening. Future health care costs related to this nutritional epidemic could literally swamp local, state and federal government coffers in coming years. And that is just the financial perspective.

It’s often easy to get lost in the billions and trillions, in the alphabet soup and acronyms of government legislation. Bills can seem so complex and tedious it is sometimes hard to understand how they affect us personally. One of the beauties of the National School Lunch Program is that we can look around in every community and see our kids who depend on these programs.

This year the US arm of the international movement known as Slow Food is circulating a petition asking for some very reasonable changes to the Child Nutrition Act:

• $1 increase in the reimbursement per meal;
• grants for Farm-to-School and school garden projects to educate every single child in the country on where food comes from, and get the culture back in agriculture;
• financial incentives for schools to purchase as many fruits and vegetables as possible from local farmers to keep that money in the community, and to shorten the distance our food has to travel before it reaches our children’s cafeteria tables.

All this makes sense and deserves our support if only for one single reason. Children need proper nutrition to be good students. They can’t make it through an afternoon of focused attention without healthy food. This is actually a national security concern. We can’t afford to be a nation of under-achievers.

The concept of feeding all of our children well, of teaching them about the beauty and complexity of food production through school gardens and local Farm-to-School programs which actually put fruits and vegetables on their tables, should be a community as well as a national priority. But in order for that to happen, Congress needs to authorize more funding for the program.  We should see this long overdue increase to the Child Nutrition Act as a down payment on a new generation that will have a lifetime of good eating habits engrained in them. The idea of healthy foods as preventive health care—perhaps even as medicine—is a concept that can and should change the world.

For information on a HR 1324, a bill introduced by Lynn Woolsey relating to the Child Nutrition Act, click here.

The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization this fall, which means Congress will be debating whether it can afford to provide kids with food that benefits their health. This is a worthwhile time to examine the lunch that Congress eats everyday.

In March 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began a “Green the Capitol” initiative, aiming not only to transform the nation’s legislative buildings into more environmentally friendly landmarks but also to overhaul the House of Representatives’ cafeterias. Her efforts have led to the House cafeterias making the switch to more organic, local, and healthy offerings at lunch time. Typical fare on offer includes salad bars, stir fry, taqueria, paninis, sushi, and in the restaurants, more gourmet items, such as roast beef with mushrooms and glazed rockfish. These dishes have not replaced old favorites like pizza, fries, or chicken fingers, but even the classics have been revamped so as not to include trans fats, and the entire menu is geared towards being fresh, local, and sustainable.

Similar efforts were made in the Senate in 2008 by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was in charge of the committee that oversaw the funds that paid for the Senate cafeterias. Unlike the Senate eateries, which were, until recently, government-run, the House cafeterias have been privatized since the 1980s. Restaurant Associates of New York is the current House contractor and has been so efficient in catering to hungry House staffers that it has been able to turn an annual profit since 2003, with the most recent figure cited being $1.2 million. These profits are directed as commission to the House. For those who worry that taxpayers are footing the bill for these “elite foods,” Perry Plumart, deputy director of the House’s environmental effort, has been quoted as saying, “The cafeterias are not subsidized…In fact, we make money and Restaurant Associates makes money.”

This stands in stark contrast to the Senate cafeterias, which until recently ran with an annual deficit and were indeed subsidized by taxpayers. From 1993 to 2008, the Senate cafeterias received more than $18 million dollars in subsidies. Many blamed the poor revenue figures on bad food and on competition with special events that served food from outside caterers. Senator Feinstein herself noted that the food and service were “noticeably subpar.” Even though Senate staffers had to walk for twenty minutes to reach the House cafeterias, many were happy to make the trek for substantially better food. One article stated, “House staffers almost never cross the Capitol to eat in the Senate cafeterias,” showcasing the divide between the lunchrooms.

Last year, however, the Senate decided to pass somewhat contentious legislation that would privatize the Senate lunchrooms. It was slightly controversial because a few Senators opposed the changes based on the argument that privatization would squeeze the cafeteria’s labor force, stripping them of their government benefits and subjecting them to lower pay. Fortunately, the legislation that passed in June 2008 stipulates guarantees that Senate cafeteria workers be paid the same salary and retain their benefits. Restaurant Associates of New York – the contractor that caters to the House cafeteria – now caters to the Senate as well.

Still, the House cafeteria is ahead in the game. Admirable though it was to provide healthier alternatives to what was traditionally served in the cafeterias, many House eaters complained about the rising prices that followed the initial switch. As a result, the House cafeteria announced in June that it would offer a permanent House Value Meal for just $5. A typical meal is Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup with a 16oz fountain drink or 8oz milk.

In addition, the House cafeteria features another innovation: farmers markets’ on Wednesdays. Restaurant Associates began the program in May, which brings a few local farmers and their produce to the Longworth Cafeteria for staffers to buy. Since the program is pretty new, only a few farmers make the trek to Washington DC to sell their produce. But Restaurant Associates is working on attracting more farmers: the cafeteria offers to buy whatever the farmers don’t sell so that the trip is worth it for them and so that food doesn’t go to waste. It’s a really great initiative that customers of the cafeteria enjoy directly or indirectly and is in keeping with the spirit of the cafeterias to provide healthy and fresh food.

A few other recent changes of note are that the House and Senate cafeterias have banned the use of Styrofoam and plastic in all food service disposable items, and that all new disposables are compostable. Restaurant Associates has also begun initiatives to purchase more food from local farmers, to buy sustainable seafood, to eliminate trans-fats, to provide fair trade coffee and rBGH-free milk and generally to promote healthy food choices.

All of this means that thanks to the work of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Boxer, the food on Capitol Hill is precisely the kind of food that our kids should be eating at school everyday. Sadly, it’s not: right now, school cafeterias are so underfunded that they can’t afford to serve anything but the fast food and junk food that puts our kids at risk for obesity and diabetes. There’s no excuse for federal policy that hurts our kids. This fall, let’s tell our representatives to put their money where their mouths are.

Originally posted on Slow Food blog

School lunch isn’t unchanging and it isn’t unchangeable. It is changing: it is largely getting worse – looking more and more like fast food, with fewer and fewer nutrients for the kids, and more and more fat and calories. This information alone – that kids were eating pizza and chicken nuggets and baloney and cheese sandwiches – was surprising to me, making my Wonder Years visions look like home-cooked meals.

But what was truly shocking to me was just how possible it is to change school lunch for the better, just how changeable school lunch (and breakfast) is. For years now, since I realized just how bad school lunch really is, I have been wondering about legislation. There must be some way to change things, I thought, if only there was some way…But I figured that was just the way it is; that’s just what school lunch had to be, that it was a meal put in place by a government action a billion years ago that would take an act of divine intervention to ever get back on the Hill.

And then, this year, I discovered the Child Nutrition Act. For one thing, I had no idea there was one all-encompassing bill that covered not only school lunch, but also school breakfast. And for two, and perhaps more importantly, I had no idea that this all-encompassing wonder bill came up for reauthorization in Congress every five years.

I think a lot of people out there are like me: we know that school lunch is abominable and shameful, but it seems like such a large, vague problem that it just isn’t even approachable. Starting from scratch to fix a problem as widespread and systemic as school lunch is intimidating, but that’s the thing – we don’t have to start from scratch. A discussion of school lunch is actually built in to legislation every five years, and the next reauthorization coming up this September. And that means that we actually have a chance to make a change this year – or if you really think about it, to make a change this year, and then five years from now, and then five years from then.

I care about school lunch because five years from now (or five years from then), I may be sending my kids to school, and I want to be confident they’re getting a lunch that is both tasty and nutritious. I care because my taxes will be paying for the health care costs of diabetes (which one in three children born after the year 2000 will have). I care because better school lunch can help stimulate local economies, by giving workers skills and investing in local farms. I care because school lunch is a holistic problem, with wide-ranging implications; and I care because school lunch is also a specific issue, and because on that most specific level it the food we are feeding children is shameful.

Want to be part of a country that feeds its children right? Sign the Time for Lunch petition, organize an Eat-In, and be aware that school lunch affects everyone in America, whether or not you or your child is eating it.

The fourth-graders are members of a student-run group called “Boycott School Lunch (BCSL)” that they founded last fall after conducting some “gross experiments” in the school cafeteria, like measuring how much grease they could squeeze out of a hamburger. At the time, the students happened to have been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in history class. When teacher Joshua Forehand showed them a movie about the Children’s Crusade that took place in Birmingham, AL in 1963, the students were inspired to organize a peaceful protest in support of bringing healthier food into the school.

Fourth-grader Sierra Mueller-Owens told The Capital Times that “We had planned really good meals [for the protest], and I was hoping a lot of people would enjoy it.” She also had hoped that the school district’s food service program would feel the impact of fewer lunches sold that day. Instead of organizing a protest potluck, the students involved in Boycott School Lunch are now planning a letter-writing and petition campaign. Their parents have requested a meeting with the school district to discuss supporting the students’ efforts and ensuring that the lunch program provides the real, nourishing food they want to eat.

According to the The Capital Times, student boycotts of school lunch have been cropping up all over the country. In the Westby school district near Lacrosse, WI, middle-schoolers staged a three-week school lunch boycott last year. The students’ bold action exasperated school administrators and led to a district-wide meeting that brought 250 parents together and resulted in positive changes to the district’s lunch program.

That fourth-graders and middle-schoolers are now organizing for change is a sign of how urgently they want to eat real food instead of the overly processed junk food that’s endangering their health. There’s never been a better time to take action: this fall, the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that funds and sets standards for the National School Lunch Program, is up for reauthorization. All parents, teachers and responsible citizens who want to see America enjoy a healthy, prosperous future should take note: we have an opportunity to push Congress and the Obama Administration to take the first step towards a future where no child is denied his or her right to good health and where every child is able to enjoy real food. Let’s pass a Child Nutrition Act with more funding and healthier standards for all the food served at school. The health, the education and the future of the 30 million children who eat school lunch everyday depend on us raising our voices.

This post originally appeared on The Slow Food USA Blog.

With the Child Nutrition Act (CNA) set for renewal this year, Food & Water Watch (F&WW) last month launched a School Milk Campaign asking Congress to give schools nationwide the opportunity to buy milk that is free of artificial growth hormones. Their online petition has already generated 8,000 signatures.

CNA authorizes the National School Lunch Program, providing schools with reimbursements for food purchases like fluid milk and supplying schools with surplus foods, like butter, cheese, ground beef and grains. According to the National Milk Producers Federation, nearly 430 million gallons of milk were distributed to schools during the 2005-2006 school year.

Roughly 15 percent of U.S. dairies inject cows with the synthetic growth hormone called rbGH (or recombinant bovine growth hormone) that increases milk production. According to F&WW, it’s possible that at least 84 million gallons of milk from rbGH-treated cows were distributed through the school nutrition program during 2005-2006—or about 1 in 5 pints of milk offered in school cafeterias nationwide.

rbGH has been linked to increased rates of infections in dairy cows, elevated antibiotic use, and unresolved questions about its links to serious human health risks, including cancer. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all 25 members of the European Union have banned the use of rbGH, and the Codex Alimentarius, the United Nations’ main food safety body, twice decided that it could not endorse the safety of rbGH for human health.

Growing consumer concern has brought changes in the marketplace as major dairies and milk producers and retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Kroger, have made a commitment to go rbGH-free. Universities, institutions and hospitals are making the change as well, and schools are the next logical step.

F&WW is working on legislation that will make it easier for schools to purchase milk produced without rBGH. Right now, schools are required to accept the lowest bid on a milk contract that meets the school’s specs and food service buyers often don’t realize that they can specifically request rBGH-free milk in the bid. This legislation will clarify that they have this option. Often times the current choices are not always the most nutritious, as public schools receive just $1.13 per child per lunch in federal funding; some states contribute additional funds, but many do not, leaving school food service directors to “squeeze water from a stone.”

“This is not promoting luxury milk,” said Noelle Ferdon, Senior Organizer for the Food Program at F&WW, which recognizes that many school districts are already cash-strapped. “This is a no-cost administrative change in the CNA that would help schools make choices that respond to the needs of students, parents and communities. rBGH-free milk is now cost competitive in the marketplace in large part because of consumer and retailer preference for this milk.”

Many school districts have been able to procure rbGH-free milk—in fact several school districts have built rbGH-free milk into their nutrition or wellness policies—but many districts don’t know they have the option to specify the type of milk they want to buy. As long as standard competitiveness procedures are followed, F&WW wants school food services to have the option to procure milk from cows not treated with this controversial artificial growth hormone.

“Our children’s health should not be put at risk by their being made to consume rbGH milk at school,” said Ann Cooper, a chef and school food advocate with Lunch Lessons LLC Food Family Farming Foundation.  “Legislation must be put into effect that eliminates artificial hormones and antibiotics from all milk served in school cafeterias all across the country – our chidren’s health depends upon this.”

As for nay-sayers that think there might not be a rbGH-free milk supplier in the district, Ferdon says this hasn’t been an issue as all of the areas have suppliers of rbGH-free milk.

The group has rallied leaders in the environmental, health and food and education movements to write a national coalition letter, which will be presented to Congress on Wednesday, March 11, “National Know Your Milk Day.” That day, supporters can also call their representatives and ask them to include language in the Child Nutrition Act clarifying that schools can purchase rbGH-free milk. In addition, you can also host your own local Day of Action on March 11th to support this effort.