On August 25 the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act; the House will take up the bill after summer recess, and is under pressure to pass the measure before the current Child Nutrition Act expires September 30. Although the proposed legislation does not do everything advocates – including Michelle Obama – had desired, it does provide permanent funding for public school breakfast and lunch. It also makes the first non-inflationary increase in the reimbursement rate, at six cents per student per day (although as critics point out that won’t even pay for an apple per child); creates tighter restrictions on junk food sold in school vending machines; and expands the number of eligible low-income children. Find more information and links at the Slow Food USA blog, Civil Eats, and Culinate, among others.
Write your representative (via Slow Food’s Time for Lunch campaign) to encourage him or her to pass the bill, in the House called the “Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act.” Alternatively, see my list of contact information here.
The latest LocalHarvest newsletter had a piece about improving kids’ diets at home and at school, as well as a list of suggestions for parents wanting to make changes. Laptop Lunchboxes also has some great resources for lunch ideas and nutrition guidelines, as well as a menu library. A lot of the LocalHarvest suggestions feel like common sense to me, but I have to admit that, lofty goals though I may have I still keep a box or two of Annie’s Mac & Cheese on hand for those times when the cupboard is bare and I need to give my kid a quick meal. I also worry about backlash for the lack of junk and convenience food, that it will become more attractive because it’s something my daughter is discouraged from eating. Just the other day she told me she had a dream that I had sent cheese balls (she means those neon orange cheese puffs) as a snack in her lunch.
We’re three weeks into kindergarten at this point, and though I have encouraged her to try school lunch I’m not exactly thrilled about it (and neither is she). I understand that the school is trying to provide a nutritionally balanced lunch with a good amount of protein for kids who might have poor access to those foods at home, but all the same I blanched at seeing the menu filled with processed meat: hamburgers, corn dogs, tacos, pepperoni pizza, sausage, chicken patties. Doesn’t anyone consider the possibility of providing protein in meatless form? How about beans and rice, or bean tacos, or hummus, etc? I actually asked if there was a vegetarian menu and I felt embarrassed about it afterward, like I was lucky I didn’t get laughed at. I was told that any “dietary exceptions” had to be cleared with a note from the doctor. How about an exception to unhealthy food?
If you missed it when I posted about it previously, check out the blog of an Illinois schoolteacher who is eating school lunch every day during the academic year, Fed Up With Lunch.
What are your thoughts on child nutrition or school lunch?
2 Comments
Our daughter is in pre-k, but she goes 5 days a week until 1pm, which means I pack her lunch. I completely agree that the lunch system needs to be reformed, but my biggest hurdle is what other kids bring to school too. First of all, I’ll readily admit that we aren’t perfect, but we really do try to eat right. I sat with my daughter’s 3 yr old class a couple of times last year during lunch. Her teacher commented that she “eats the strangest things” because her standard lunch consist of either whole wheat crackers & cheese or whole wheat pasta as a entree, with fruit, yogurt, etc. (she doesn’t like sandwiches or peanut butter). For her snack or for a dessert, often I’ll send some Annie’s cheese or graham cracker bunnies (again, not perfect, but a better alternative than Teddy Grahams). However, a standard lunch for the other kids in her class was PB&J or ham & cheese sandwich (which aren’t awful, IMO), processed chicken nuggets, and/or Lunchables. Most of the other parts of their lunch were pre-packaged chips & cookies. One child even had a small can of Sprite! (Okay, so my child does order Sprite often when we are dining out as a treat, but it is not something we typically have in our home.) Granted, some of the parents both work, so they are looking for items of convenience, but my child became envious of their lunches. She asked several times for Lunchables last year, and really, I think it was more about it being in the little container than anything. So I bought some nitrate-free deli meat, cut it into shapes, added slices of cheese, and some crackers in a little container and she was happy with her homemade ‘lunchable’. I try to explain that those foods aren’t very good and healthy, but I feel like I’m walking a fine line. I don’t want her going back to tell her 4 yr old classmates that their lunch is bad for them, starting a war of words. Since school has started back, I struggle with what to send her that is healthy and something she’d like to eat since she seems to have become pretty picky as of late. I actually went to Barnes & Noble yesterday too see if I could find a cookbook on healthy kid lunch ideas, but couldn’t find anything geared towards packable lunch ideas (thinking with a cookbook that she & I could look through the pictures and she could pick out something we can make for her lunch). So thanks for the websites, I look forward to reading them to see if I can find some new ideas besides cheese & crackers, pasta, and sandwiches!
Thanks for your comments, Cindy. It is a tricky problem. Our preschool had a nutrition policy, but oddly enough (I thought) it didn’t ban junk food, only foods with added sugar. So you could bring Doritos to school, but not a blueberry muffin (and of course Doritos have sugar in them too!). The school now has only a skeletal nutrition policy – you can’t bring fast food or soft drinks. My daughter was scandalized during the first week when she saw another child with cookies in his lunch. What really bothers me though is that the school sells snacks to the children as fundraisers, and while there are apparently some “healthy” things like granola bars they are also selling chips and Oreos! And of course my kid sees her classmates buying them so she has asked to be allowed to do so as well. I felt like an ogre but I explained to her that those were not healthy snacks, and therefore she couldn’t have them. It’s not as if an Oreo has never passed her lips, but it’s definitely in the category of “sometimes” (or “not very often”) food rather than an everyday snack. I hope I can get involved with the PTA and figure out how to tactfully suggest that they change their snack offerings. You’re right, it’s so difficult to figure out the right language to use. I didn’t really anticipate that teaching my child to be discriminating in her food choices would be such a big part of being a parent, but processed food has so permeated U.S. food culture that you just can’t escape it. Hang in there, I hope your daughter gets through her picky phase soon. Five has been better for us; I think four saw a contraction of the range of foods she would eat, and at five she has really expanded her taste – a pleasant surprise. I think you will find the LL resources useful; I do!