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.

This iteration of the child nutrition bill has received the greatest amount of support and publicity in its history. The good food movement has gathered more and more advocates, both citizens and professionals, and the public has become more aware of the importance of nutrition programs for children. The bill even enjoys rare bipartisan support. Yet conflict over compromises has been simmering under the radar, splitting would-be allies on the path to reform.

The bill currently on the table, sponsored by outgoing Senator Blanche Lincoln, funds its new, groundbreaking nutrition and hunger programs partly by cutting $2.2 billion in future SNAP (food stamp) funding. It was passed unanimously. The bill authored by the House did not cut SNAP funding; but neither did it find adequate funding. Instead the bill stalled, the August recess came and went, and only half of the $2 billion increase was funded.

Up until this point, a highly organized network of national hunger and nutrition advocacy organizations had been in alignment in accepting the passage of a child nutrition bill only if it left SNAP funding intact. But with the House bill crashing, the path to restoring SNAP cuts obstructed, and the expiration of the Child Nutrition Act looming, these groups began to split over the issue of the SNAP cuts.

Groups focused more on access and the needs of low-income individuals opposed the bill because of the negative impact SNAP cuts would have on poor children. SNAP had just been raided in order to pass teachers’ salaries, and hunger organizations were outraged to see those funds raided again. Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) has lamented the use of “the most important anti-hunger program in America as a piggy bank for other purposes.” According to Kristen Mancinelli, Senior Manager, Policy and Government Relations for City Harvest, an organization that collects food for the hungry, “for every dollar spent by the federal government in SNAP the public sees $1.83 spent in economic activity.”

“Half of SNAP funding goes to children, and the other half goes to adults and seniors in need,” explained Joel Berg, Executive Director at New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “At a time when we are lavishing billionaires with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of extra tax cuts, the idea of paying for modest improvements with school lunches with SNAP cuts–paying for kids’ lunches by taking away dinners from them, their parents, and their grandparents–is both immoral and counter-productive. If such cuts are enacted, they will boost both hunger and obesity.”

Organizations more focused on nutrition, on the other hand, worry that opposing the bill until SNAP cuts are restored jeopardizes the entire bill–and its many valuable initiatives, like giving the USDA authority over competitive foods sold in schools (foods not part of the school food program, e.g. those sold on the premises in vending machines), updating nutritional standards, and expansion of after-school supper programs.

Sophie Milam, Senior Policy Counsel at Feeding America, emphasized that her organization does not like the SNAP cuts, either. But they are concerned that if the current bill is not passed, the next Congress will delay work on a new bill, and that bill will likely not make the same investments and improvements as the current one does.

The White House has stated its commitment to restore SNAP funding, a promise that motivated two former opponents to the bill, Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Jim McGovern, to support it. Hunger organizations Bread for the World and Share Our Strength have also dropped their opposition, according to the Washington Post. This is a measure of how much the White House wants this bill passed–and it begs the question of how much support food groups could have gotten if they had all dug in their heels and remained united in their opposition to a bill that cuts SNAP funding.

“It’s a very tough decision. These are things that many, many people here are struggling with, people who have been working on this bill for the past couple of years. You have to make a decision about what’s going to be a long-term investment,” continues Milam. “You have to live to fight another day, try to secure the best you can for these programs. At what point do you say ‘this is the best we can get right now?’”

While hunger and nutrition groups have split on the national levels, a smaller coalition, NYC Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR), has remained united. Through City Harvest, Kristen Mancinelli has led this group (full disclosure, I work for Brooklyn Food Coalition, which has signed on to the Alliance), which maintains its opposition to the bill until SNAP funds are restored. Even groups tied to national organizations that have chosen different sides have remained in alignment with NYC for CNR’s position, something that has surprised even Mancinelli. This is partly because New Yorkers have more to lose with the SNAP cuts: 1.7 million people in the city are on food stamps.

In practice, the organizing around CNR could be seen as a warm up for the even more massive organizing food groups will be doing to advocate for real change in the Farm Bill. A more conservative House promises a different and more challenging climate for that work.

As told by the documentary Lunch Line, the story of school food is one of compromise and unlikely alliances. Looking ahead to the Farm Bill, I see urban sustainable food advocates joining forces with Christian fundamentalist libertarian renegade farmers like Joel Salatin. Can we look ahead and predict where the fault lines will lie? Is there groundwork we can build? How do we balance idealism and bold thinking with pragmatism? After the child nutrition debate has finished, work on the Farm Bill will no doubt accelerate locally and nationally. I’m hoping we will ask ourselves some of these questions and be open to productive alliances with each other. I’m hoping we will have the wisdom to know when to be flexible and when to be ambitious.

In the meantime, if you care about school food and child nutrition there is still time to lend your support for the bill. See the below links to read more about these organizations’ respective positions and to send a message to our legislators about the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

• Letter drafted by Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) opposing the bill unless SNAP cuts are restored, and their Legislative Action Center.
• Feeding America’s social media campaign and letter in support of the bill.
• Community Food Security Coalition’s action alert.
• New York City Alliance for CNR campaign.

In a surprise move yesterday before heading out for five weeks of recess, the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act with unanimous consent, which means all 100 senators agreed to pass the bill without an individual vote. The bill allots an additional $4.5 billion dollars over ten years to fund federal child nutrition programs including school lunch.

First Lady Michelle Obama supported the bill as part of her Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity, writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post last week,”This groundbreaking legislation will bring fundamental change to schools and improve the food options available to our children.”

Though providing less than the requested $10 billion suggested by Let’s Move, this marks the first major step towards the most significant increase in funding on the child nutrition programs in 30 years. In a statement yesterday, the First Lady said, “While childhood obesity cannot be solved overnight, with everyone working together, there’s no question that it can be solved. And today’s vote moves us one step closer to reaching that goal.”

According to Jane Black at The Washington Post, the bill includes money for the establishment of school gardens and for sourcing local foods. In addition, the bill “would mandate that the Department of Agriculture develop nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, not just what is served in the lunch line,” which could mean eliminating “competitive foods” like soda and candy bars in vending machines and a la carte lines. This won’t be so easy for schools to swallow, as the money from these purchases is often used to fund sports and art programs.

The pressure to pass the bill is now on the House, which is officially on August recess, but will be reconvening next week to work on a jobs bill. However, according to Black, the chamber is not expected to take up the bill until after the August recess. In order for the new funding to become law, the House will need to pass its version of the bill, which currently calls for nearly double the funding (and reconcile it with the Senate’s version), in time for President Obama to sign the bill into law before September 30th, when the original funding is set to expire.

The Senate has promised to pay for their version of the bill with monies from other programs at the USDA. On the chopping block, for example, are food stamp benefits, or SNAP. $12 billion in additional SNAP benefits were set to come online in 2013, and have been mentioned as a potential source of funding for the jobs bill, among others. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) claimed that since these funds were already being co-opted, they might as well be used to pay for child nutrition. “I think it’s appropriate if these tax dollars are going to be spent that they’re spent on healthy food for kids,” she said.

Advocates have for the most part thrown their support behind the bill, even though what it offers equals around 6 cents per school meal, which wouldn’t even cover the cost of an apple per child per day. However, the added absurdity of taking food from the mouths of hungry families to give to hungry kids has gotten some groups riled up. The Community Food Security Coalition, made up of around 300 organizations, argues that “programs should not be paid for by cutting food benefits for low-income and disadvantaged Americans, regardless of the merits of those programs. Congress should not be voting to increase hunger.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) agreed more or less with the sentiment in a statement released yesterday:

The legislation rids schools of junk food, issues proper alerts to schools when contaminations occur, guarantees all foster children access to school meals, connects farms to schools to supply them with fresh, local produce, and strengthens nutrition resources for children and young mothers. But if our children are ever going to truly succeed in the classroom and beyond, they need better access to healthy meals in the lunchroom, and this legislation falls short of that goal. Further, I’m disappointed that the bill is paid for in part with future funds from the critically important SNAP program. I will continue to fight for more common sense changes to the program and secure the investments we need to make sure every child can achieve their full potential.

Photo: a la corey

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 in America we have steadily rising rates of childhood obesity, and if you were born after 2000, you have a startling one-in-three chance of developing early-onset diabetes. Meanwhile America now has more prisoners than farmers, and among those few remaining farmers the average age is 57.1 and rising. The equation becomes quite simple to understand: No farmers equals no food.

In an effort to raise awareness and rally support behind changes to the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, Slow Food USA has created the Time for Lunch campaign. This campaign is calling on Congress to provide the resources schools need to serve real food for lunch. Those involved in making the day-to-day dietary decisions for our children do not have the adequate resources to provide healthy, nutritious, and yes, tasty food for our kids. This must change. It’s time to invest in children’s health, protect against food that puts children at risk and teach children healthy habits that will last through life.

All the talk in Washington right now is on health care reform, and that’s a good thing. But no matter what solutions they craft to meet America’s health care needs, their system will be bankrupted by skyrocketing rates of preventable illnesses that began when we started using our schools as a dumping ground for agribusiness surplus and as a proving ground for corporate marketing to our children. With the red herring of providing the “freedom to choose,” the conglomerates who peddle edible food-like substances have weaseled their way into what is, for many children, the most important (indeed sometimes only) meal of the day: lunch. They tell us the kids should be allowed to choose between a salad and a Twinkie, milk and Coke. And schools fall for this because their resources are constantly being cut, and the junk food pushers offer a cheap and easy way out.

Under the National School Lunch Program, the USDA reimburses schools for every meal served: $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. Since these reimbursements must also pay for labor, equipment and overhead costs, schools are left with only $1.00 to spend on food. How can schools be expected to feed our children and protect their health with only a dollar a day? It’s time to build a strong foundation for our children’s health by raising the reimbursement rate to $3.57.

That amounts to an increase of $5.4 billion over an academic year. Serious money to be sure, but when obesity-related healthcare costs are $147 billion annually, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with an extra buck a day for our children.

Senator Harkin and Congresswoman Woolsey are to be commended for their efforts in this area. Their Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009 will put a stop to food companies profiting from selling obesity to our kids. We need more though. We must fund grants for Farm to School programs and school gardens, simultaneously improving local economies, supporting local farms, and raising our children’s awareness of where food comes from and why it’s important.

We can even create jobs by training unemployed and underemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks and administrators that our school cafeterias need. President Obama has called for an end to childhood hunger by 2015; let’s answer that call by putting Americans to work building and working in school kitchens nationwide.

This Labor Day you can help by joining or organizing an Eat-In, a National Day of Action being coordinated in communities all over the US. Details are at www.SlowFoodUSA.org/timeforlunch.

I request that you make the health of our nation’s children your platform priority. Especially with two growing girls to nurture and nourish, you must understand that we will only be successful as a nation when all children in our country are healthy and well-fed.

You have the support of the 44th President. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was quoted yesterday in the Washington Post explaining President Obama’s goals for the USDA, “The vision is, he wants more nutritious food in schools.” Vilsack went on to depict the role of local foods in that mission: “In a perfect world, everything that was sold, everything that was purchased and consumed would be local, so the economy would receive the benefit of that.”

You have a ripe opportunity to make great strides toward that vision with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which is the federal legislation that establishes the guidelines for our nation’s school meal programs and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. Every four or five years, there’s an opening for all of those concerned with the health of our nation’s children to evaluate, defend, and improve the federal Child Nutrition Programs. That time is now as the current Child Nutrition Act expires in September 2009.

With at least 35 to 40 percent of children’s daily eating occurring during the school day, a reformed cafeteria could improve the health and increase the capacity to learn for the 30 million children that eat at school 180 days per year.

When you invited Chef Sam Kass into the White House Kitchen, your spokeswoman said “he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food.”  Mr. Kass has spoken out previously on the need to change the school lunch menu by decreasing the high levels of sugar and fat. He’s right.

Earlier this month the results of the latest school nutrition dietary assessment study by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association exposed that in the 2004-2005 school year, only 6% to 7% of schools met all nutrition standards. This is unacceptable.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of children between the ages of 6 and 11 were overweight in 2007. In the late 1970s, that number was only 6.5%. The oft-quoted statistic that one in three children born in 2000 will be diabetic in their lifetime (make that one in two if the child is black or Hispanic) demonstrates we can’t wait a moment longer to act.

If you make the health of our nation’s children your priority, you could save countless lives and potentially save us billions of dollars.

Consider the economic stress of diet-induced diseases such as Type II Diabetes, now inflicting youth. The insulin, needles, test strips, blood sugar monitors, doctor’s appointments, etc. take a considerable chunk of change. The average annual expense for a person diagnosed with diabetes is $11,744, of which $6,649 is directly attributed to the disease. Those with diabetes have medical expenses that are 2.3 times higher than those with working pancreases.

Sasha and Malia are fortunate to be eating nutritious local, organic lunches at Sidwells Friends School. This is what your girls ate at lunch on Tuesday, February 10th:

Organic Vegetarian Chili, Carrot Apple Soup, Roasted Local Beet Salad, Salad du Jour, All Natural Beef Chili, Brown Rice, Steamed Zucchini and Grapefruit Slices

The above shows the solution can be delicious. How wonderful that you and the President can provide local, fresh and healthy foods for the First Daughters, but what about kids in the rest of the country? From your previous neighborhood on the south side of Chicago to your new community in Washington, D.C. with the highest childhood obesity rates in the country, the nutritional divide that stymies the development and potential of youth is an open wound.

The average school cafeteria unfortunately operates on the lowest common denominator of cost, not quality. The USDA currently reimburses schools $2.57 for every free lunch it serves and lower amounts for reduced cost and full price meals. This leaves about one dollar to cover actual food costs, once labor and overhead costs are factored in. What do you expect food service directors to feed our kids with on a $1.00?

Thankfully, kids, parents, food service staff, teachers, farmers, school administration, and other community members have a taste for change and have been working to incorporate fresh, local product—no matter the perceived barriers—through what is called “farm to school” programs.

The farm to school movement has not waited for the federal government to make children a priority. There are over 2,000 known programs in 39 states as reported by the National Farm to School Network, a joint project of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College and the Community Food Security Coalition.

Even though I promote from scratch cooking, you don’t have to start from scratch in your platform.

The Child Nutrition Forum, a collaboration of many groups, including, National Farm to School Network, School Nutrition Association, Food Research and Action Center and School Food FOCUS, has a statement of principles that outlines key issues to champion immediately.

From there you can delve into an extensive menu of ideas such as establishing a national farm to school grant program or strengthening nutrition standards for school meal programs.

On February 26, I invite you to attend one of two Congressional briefings on farm to school and hear directly from those working every day for a healthy America.

Fulfill your wish to be America’s Mom-in-Chief by making sure that every child has the nutrients necessary to carry our country forward—now that is a stimulus plan I can believe in.

Sincerely,

Debra Eschmeyer