State should mandate heart-healthy food for school-aged children

There are many problems with the whole school food environment: vending machines, fund raising with candy sales, bake sales, food used as rewards, school stores and class parties. This undermines parents’ attempts to feed their children healthfully, and for those who are not eating healthfully at home, all the more reason that schools should practice what they teach and serve as a role model for healthy eating.

Regarding school meals, food service directors are being asked to do the impossible: provide a healthy meal containing five components (entree, grain, vegetable, fruit, milk) for a food cost of approximately 90 cents (the cost of the food itself, not labor or overhead, nor the amount charged to students). Can anyone reasonably prepare a five-component meal for that amount?

The Aug. 8 article, “School lunch programs pinched,” explains that there are reimbursements for meals. Yet the funds intended for students receiving free and reduced price meals end up subsidizing the meals for students paying full price, since it costs on average $2.90 to actually produce a meal for the food costs, labor and overhead, and the amount students pay plus the reimbursements for fully paid meals and reduced and free meals still do not cover the costs.

New York state reimbursements have not increased for 30 years now, and in fact legislators most recently voted to reduce New York state reimbursements by 2 percent. This is why schools sell cookies, ice cream, chips and sports drinks (containing almost as much sugar as soda) in the cafeteria snack line. Ultimately, aside from meals, most food available in schools, with the exception of class parties and food used as a reward, is there to raise money — and this is done at the expense of our children’s health.

We must find a way to eliminate processed foods and reduce the amount of cholesterol and saturated fat (meat and cheese) available to children in schools, and we can only do this with additional funding. There are many possible solutions, but all will require an investment in our children’s health and well being in order to make it happen.

A few goals to work toward: a salad bar in every school that contains fresh vegetables and fruits; grain/bean/vegetable based salads and bean/lentil/vegetable based soups, using as much local produce as possible; a plant-based entree (based on beans and lentils which contain no cholesterol, are low in fat, and high in fiber) on the menu each day as a healthy option, to help schools better meet the requirement for meals to be consistent with the dietary guidelines for Americans; and the elimination of junk foods.

We buckle our children up for safety, we require that they wear helmets when biking, and we make sure they look both ways before they cross the street. Yet 35 percent of cancer deaths are caused by diet, 33 percent of all children born in 2000 are expected to get Type 2 diabetes (and 40 percent to 53 percent of African-Americans and Latinos), and 50 percent of 2- to 15-year-olds already have fatty streaks in their arteries, literally the beginning stages of heart disease. Everyone knows that childhood obesity is a serious problem, and that it leads to the 66 percent of adults who are either overweight or obese.

To supply a truly healthy meal to our children in school, we should expect to pay about $4 in food costs, and we need creative solutions and a public and political will to make it happen. No matter what anyone says, chicken nuggets coated in whole wheat flour, baked potato chips, cheeseburgers, deep-fried mozzarella sticks and whole wheat pizza are not healthy choices.

Support your local food service director by contacting them and asking how you can get involved. One way to do that is to apply for grants to supplement the school food service budget until our children’s health becomes important enough to put the resources into it that they deserve.

Amie Hamlin

Ithaca

The writer is executive director for the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, a statewide non-profit.