Since 2012, we have been reporting about new guidelines from the US Department of Agriculture that spell out healthier choices for students in school cafeterias:
Strict calorie and sodium limits are in effect, schools have to offer dark green, orange, or red vegetables and legumes at least once a week, and students have to pick at least one vegetable or fruit per meal. In addition, any flavored milk products must be non-fat. The new guidelines also limit the trans fat levels in meals.
Now the Wall Street Journal reports that students are warming up to the healthier lunches, despite initial pushback from students and school officials and more recent efforts to exempt poorer schools from participating in the program, led mostly by Congressional Republicans, including Rep Robert Aderholt of Alabama, and the School Nutrition Association, which was an initial supporter of the new guidelines.
“Under the new mandates, more than one million fewer students choose school lunch each day,” the SNA writes, “thwarting the goal of promoting healthier diets for all students. Declining participation also reduces revenue for school meal programs already struggling with the higher cost of meeting the new standards.”
But leave it to kids. They don’t have any problem with the new guidelines. A new survey of school administrators finds that
- 56% of school administrators say students complained at first
- 64% think “few” students are complaining now
- 70% agree that “students generally like the new lunch”
Research was conducted at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and used a survey of school administrators at more than 500 primary schools during the 2012-2013 school year.
“We feel like these data support the new meals and show that although change can be slow, there have not been as many student complaints as thought to be,” the Journal quoted Lindsey Turner, the lead author of the study, to be published in Childhood Obesity, as saying. The research was supported by a national group called Bridging the Gap that seeks to improve health and was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Journal added.
The SNA’s official position on the new research is that the findings don’t reflect reality. “While many changes have been welcomed by students, there is no denying that some of the new requirements have driven students away from the National School Lunch Program (NSLP),” wrote the association’s president, Julia Bauscher. “US Department of Agriculture data show that since schools began implementing the new requirements, 1.4 million fewer students choose school lunch, even though 1.77 million more students have access to school meals through NSLP, due to increasing enrollment at NSLP schools.
“This decline in participation, experienced across 49 states, has severely impacted school meal program budgets at a time when programs are struggling with the increased cost of preparing meals that meet the new requirements, as well as substantial inflationary increases in the price of the fruits, vegetables, and milk required on student lunch trays.”
Of course, in the first few years of a program, participation will decline. However, participation in school meal programs continues to decline. Maybe it’s more a marketing issue, though: Maybe schools just don’t know how to sell students on the idea of healthy eating and Ms Bauscher is correct, but let’s not conflate bad marketing on the part of our schools with bad nutrition for our nation’s students.
Kids love fruits and veggies. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. How can we sell them on the idea if they’ve grown up eating empty calories in their homes? That’s the question we need to ask and answer.
If we can find an answer to the marketing side of this debate, everybody wins and kids will devour the healthier meals. Mother Jones reported last week about Jessica Shelly, food director of Cincinnati’s diverse public schools, who makes kids’ lunches healthier and then, not so miraculously, gets them to love eating those healthier lunches.
“While the rest of the nation’s lunchrooms have seen historic declines in attendance, cafeterias in Shelly’s program turned a $2.7 million profit,” wrote Kiera Butler for Mother Jones. And for Ms Shelly herself, it’s all in kids’ perception. “They think we’re feeding them carnival food,” she was quoted as saying. “They think I’m making mystery meat in the back kitchen with road kill.”