It was once a staple of public school cafeterias that blended the indulgent and the nutritious, satisfying parents and children both. But chocolate milk is uncontroversial no more. Dozens of districts have demanded reformulations. Others have banned it outright.

At the center of these battles are complex public health calculations: Is it better to remove sugary chocolate flavorings at the risk that many students will skip milk altogether, missing out on crucial calcium and Vitamin D? Or should schools instead make tweaks — less fat, different sweeteners, fewer calories — that might salvage the benefits while while minimizing the downside?

However schools answer these questions, protest inevitably follows. When Fairfax County and D.C. schools banned chocolate milk last year from elementary lunch lines, officials heard not just from parents and students. They also received letters and petitions from a slew of nutritionists and influential special interest groups.

Most accused the districts of acting rashly, robbing students of a tasty drink and the vitamins and minerals that fuel bone and muscle growth.

“We got 10 to 20 e-mails a day,” said Penny McConnell, director of food and nutrition services for Fairfax. “It was a lot of pressure.”

This month — and partly because of that pressure — Fairfax officials announced that they would reintroduce chocolate milk in school cafeterias. The newer, low-fat version includes sucrose, which is made from sugar cane or beets, instead of high-fructose corn syrup, which some critics say is more heavily processed and, as a result, less healthy.

Such reformulations have satisfied some of chocolate milk’s critics. But most scientists and nutritionists, including those employed by local school districts, say that changing sweeteners makes little dietary difference if the total calorie content stays the same.

This is a view embraced by the Corn Refiners Association, which often finds itself on the losing side of such changes. “Why should school districts pay more for one sweetener when children’s bodies can’t tell the difference?” said Audrae Erickson, the group’s president.

Several other school districts in the Washington area are changing the formulations of their chocolate milk to switch sweeteners and lessen the amount of fat and sugar. But most are continuing to make it available to students. D.C. schools have resisted the push to restore chocolate milk to their cafeterias.

The stakes are high because more than 70 percent of the milk distributed in school cafeterias is flavored, according to the Milk Processor Education Program, an industry group. Fairfax alone serves 62,000 gallons of chocolate milk a year. And the formulations used in many cafeterias across the country have more calories, ounce for ounce, than Coke.

Such statistics have drawn the attention of those lobbying for healthier school lunches at a time of rising obesity among children. Parents in many districts have been vocal.

“If we want to fix childhood obesity, chocolate milk is just one of the things we need to get rid of,” said Jeff Anderson, a parent of three students at Wolftrap Elementary in Vienna and a member of Real Food for Kids, a Fairfax area advocacy group. “It’s a treat, not something you have every day with lunch.”

Nutritionists, meanwhile, have split between those who think chocoloate milk is worth the payoff in nutrients and those who don’t.

“Trying to get students to consume calcium by drinking chocolate milk is like getting them to eat apples by serving them apple pie,” said Ann Cooper, a leading advocate for healthy school lunches.

The catch is that when schools remove flavored milk, students drink less milk. The milk processors’ group puts the number at 37 percent less milk overall.

Based on such statistics, the National Dairy Council has launched its Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk campaign. “Chocolate milk is the most popular milk choice in schools,” according to the campaign’s pitch, “and kids will drink less milk and get fewer nutrients if it’s taken away.”

Sandwiched between concerned parents and vocal industry representatives are school districts such as Fairfax, which must also consider the tastes of their young consumers. In November, when trying to create a chocolate milk formula that satisfied as many parties as possible, the district held a “taste party” at Lane Elementary School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

“Tastes really chocolatey,” one student wrote on the survey distributed to 24 child-testers.

“Really awesome,” wrote another.

Nearly all of the students liked the new milk, but school officials decided it was too much of a good thing. They cut two grams of sugar from the formulation — going from 24 grams per half-pint container to 22 grams — and decided against retesting it.

The new formula, created by Dallas-based Dean Foods, is complete. Fairfax will soon be joined by several other Washington area school districts in introducing the new milk this month.

Dean Foods, one of several chocolate milk suppliers across the country, sells 144 million gallons of chocolate milk in cafeterias across the country. It’s a relatively modest but symbolic part of the company’s sales, said company spokesman Jamaison Schuler. “This is not just a part of our business, it’s a part of our legacy.”

Jostled by the new politics of school lunch, Fairfax officials have vacillated over other staples. This year, for example, they removed salt from pretzels, but weeks later they were coaxed into putting it back.

“All of a sudden, everyone who eats is a nutritionist,” McConnell said. “It makes our job a lot more difficult.”

Source: Washington Post

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: “Do you see the situation?”

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

“Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” Carmona said. “It’s about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception.”

Carmona said she created the policy six years ago after watching students bring “bottles of soda and flaming hot chips” on field trips for their lunch. Although she would not name any other schools that employ such practices, she said it was fairly common.

A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman said she could not say how many schools prohibit packed lunches and that decision is left to the judgment of the principals.

“While there is no formal policy, principals use common sense judgment based on their individual school environments,” Monique Bond wrote in an email. “In this case, this principal is encouraging the healthier choices and attempting to make an impact that extends beyond the classroom.”

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district’s food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

“Some of the kids don’t like the food they give at our school for lunch or breakfast,” said Little Village parent Erica Martinez. “So it would be a good idea if they could bring their lunch so they could at least eat something.”

“(My grandson) is really picky about what he eats,” said Anna Torrez, who was picking up the boy from school. “I think they should be able to bring their lunch. Other schools let them. But at this school, they don’t.”

But parent Miguel Medina said he thinks the “no home lunch policy” is a good one. “The school food is very healthy,” he said, “and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food.”

At Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side, officials allow packed lunches but confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt. (They often are returned after school.) Principal Rebecca Stinson said that though students may not like it, she has yet to hear a parent complain.

“The kids may have money or earn money and (buy junk food) without their parents’ knowledge,” Stinson said, adding that most parents expect that the school will look out for their children.

Such discussions over school lunches and healthy eating echo a larger national debate about the role government should play in individual food choices.

“This is such a fundamental infringement on parental responsibility,” said J. Justin Wilson, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom, which is partially funded by the food industry.

“Would the school balk if the parent wanted to prepare a healthier meal?” Wilson said. “This is the perfect illustration of how the government’s one-size-fits-all mandate on nutrition fails time and time again. Some parents may want to pack a gluten-free meal for a child, and others may have no problem with a child enjoying soda.”

For many CPS parents, the idea of forbidding home-packed lunches would be unthinkable. If their children do not qualify for free or reduced-price meals, such a policy would require them to pay $2.25 a day for food they don’t necessarily like.

“We don’t spend anywhere close to that on my son’s daily intake of a sandwich (lovingly cut into the shape of a Star Wars ship), Goldfish crackers and milk,” education policy professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach wrote in an email. Her son attends Nettelhorst Elementary School in Lakeview. “Not only would mandatory school lunches worsen the dietary quality of most kids’ lunches at Nettelhorst, but it would also cost more out of pocket to most parents! There is no chance the parents would stand for that.”

Many Little Village students claim that, given the opportunity, they would make sound choices.

“They’re afraid that we’ll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won’t be as good as what they give us at school,” said student Yesenia Gutierrez. “It’s really lame. If we could bring in our own lunches, everyone knows what they’d bring. For example, the vegetarians could bring in their own veggie food.”

“I would bring a sandwich or a Subway and maybe a juice,” said seventh-grader Ashley Valdez.

Second-grader Gerardo Ramos said, “I would bring a banana, orange and some grapes.”

“I would bring a juice and like a sandwich,” said fourth-grader Eric Sanchez.

“Sometimes I would bring the healthy stuff,” second-grader Julian Ruiz said, “but sometimes I would bring Lunchables.”

Source: WREG News

Claiming that millions of young Americans age 17 to 24 – prime candidates for military recruitment – are “too fat to fight” and would be rejected for military service due to weight problems, a group of 130 retired generals, admirals, and other senior military leaders has endorsed a sizeable increase in funding for school meal programs to assist in strengthening our military.  “When that many young adults can’t fight because of their weight, it affects our national preparedness and national security,” said retired rear admiral Jamie Barnett, representing the group, titled “Mission:  Readiness, Military Leaders for Kids.”

“Our national security in 2030 is absolutely dependent on reversing the alarming rates of childhood obesity,” claimed Barnett, who called on Congress to pass legislation reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act, including the Obama Administration’s  recommendation to increase funding by $10 billion over ten years.  Mission:  Readiness also endorsed adoption of nutrition standards for food sold in schools as recommended by the Institute of Medicine.

School meal programs owe their existence to defense policy; the National School Lunch Act was passed in 1946 in response to large numbers of draftees failing to qualify for military service in World War II due to diet-related health problems.  Back then, the main concern was not obesity but malnutrition.

The more traditional child nutrition supporters welcomed the show of military muscle. “Schools have already made tremendous strides in offering children healthy food options, but it will take the support of the entire community from parents, to our military leaders to Members of Congress, voting to fund these critical efforts, to turn around the childhood obesity crisis,” said Dora Rivas, director of food services for the Dallas, TX school district and president of the School Nutrition Association.  “The fact that so many youngsters are not fit for military service is, indeed, a wake-up call for this country,” echoed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the Mission:  Readiness news conference.

Military recruitment efforts have been more successful of late, as the recession makes military service a more attractive alternative to unemployment.  And it is recruiters who work with young people to help them get into shape so they are ready for boot camp, Barnett said.  “But given the fact that so many more kids are carrying so many more pounds, asking recruiters to fix the problem is like asking for a safety pin after the seams have burst,” he commented.

Source: TEFAP Alliance

Thousands of U.S. public school districts are teaming up with local farmers to put more fresh fruits and vegetables on lunchroom menus, without breaking budgets or getting any help from celebrity chefs.

The schools are taking early steps toward adding more fresh and homemade foods as advocated by British chef Jamie Oliver, who led a campaign to improve school lunch in his country. But inexpensive, processed foods still dominate U.S. school menus.

Proponents including U.S. President Barack Obama are pushing for a bigger investment in school meals that feed some of the country’s neediest children. The aim is to establish healthier eating habits and curb obesity rates that are driving nearly $150 billion in medical costs each year.

Nearly a third of U.S. children are obese or overweight and public health experts are warning that this generation of youth may be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.

The problem is so severe it has caught the attention of the U.S. military. Last month, two retired generals said in a Washington Post column that being overweight or obese was now the top medical reason recruits were turned down for military service, and that obesity rates were threatening the future strength of the military.

Local farmer Bob Knight supplies 23 Southern California school districts with competitively priced produce, giving poor children access to products sold to upscale customers via farmers’ markets and direct sales.

“We’re taking that elite food and we’re getting it to kids who would never, ever have access to it,” Knight said.

Michelle Ratcliffe, farm-to-school program manager for the Oregon State Department of Agriculture, said schools needed more money to improve entrees in the middle of the tray — where it is common to find processed meats and pizza loaded with fat.

To that end, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon has joined the president and first lady Michelle Obama in calling for an extra $10 billion in funding over a decade for school breakfast and lunch programs.

“You pay more for better foods and that’s true for institutions as well. I think that has to be recognized. The return on those investments will be huge,” Concannon said.

Each day, U.S. schools serve about 11 million breakfasts and 31 million lunches.

A proposal in Congress calls for a $4.5 billion increase in funding over 10 years and would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set new standards for all school food, whether it is served in a lunch room or from a vending machine.

The additional money would raise the amount schools get for each meal served to $2.74 from $2.68 and provide money for farm-to-school programs, school gardens and training.

Right now, after labor costs and overhead, schools have about $1 left per lunch to spend on food. As a result, many depend on inexpensive food like pizza, chicken nuggets and pressed meats.

NO FRUIT BOWL ON DINING ROOM TABLE

While politicians wrangle over money, 15 school systems — including California’s Riverside Unified School District, Oregon’s Eugene School District, Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools and Boston Public Schools — are working with the USDA to strengthen farm-to-school programs already in thousands of schools.

Rodney Taylor, who made a name for himself bringing salad bars to schools in affluent Santa Monica, California, moved to Riverside Unified in 2002.

As Riverside Unified’s nutrition services director, he oversees nearly four dozen schools that serve produce from local farmers, and in some cases, from school gardens.

More than half of lunches served in the district — in an area with some of the country’s highest home foreclosure and unemployment rates — are free of charge or offered at reduced prices, Taylor said.

“My goal was to provide access to those students who may not have access. … I can guarantee you that they don’t have a fruit bowl on their dining room table,” said Taylor.

All but two of the district’s 31 elementary schools have salad bars and the district’s chef is creating prepackaged salads and sandwiches made with fresh ingredients to match the preferences of older students.

Taylor said 47 percent of students in the district were eating school food in 2002. Participation is now almost 70 percent, helped by school menu promotion and the recession.

“We need to get back to more basic food, the kind like this program provides. … I am a believer in the potential for school-based nutrition programs to help children grow up with healthy eating habits,” Concannon said during a recent Riverside visit.

Knight said the farm-to-school program helped him stay on his family farm, which is located a stone’s throw from Riverside Unified’s Emerson Elementary School.

Before he became a supplier to schools, Knight’s farm depended solely on farmers’ markets and direct sales.

“This is totally working financially,” Knight said, adding the program helped preserve farmland while giving family farms a steady market.

Ratcliffe said schools did not need to wait for more money to start making changes.

“Can we do things in the meantime? Yes, we can, and yes, we are,” she said.

Source: Reuters

The egg industry needs to find new markets to “dispose” of spent hens as more mainstream customers drop off because of the notoriously low quality. The primary options include pet food, cattle feed, composting  — and schools.

Meat that is no longer good enough for KFC and Campbell Soup is being fed to our children, hidden in salads and chicken “burgers”.

Because the hens from the egg factories are often restricted to tiny cages, stacked from floor to ceiling, they are exposed to high levels of fecal dust and subject to heavy stress. This may account for the higher levels of salmonella infection and osteoporosis which leads to bone splinters in their meat.

USDA Allows Meat In Schools that Doesn’t Meet Fast Food Chains’ Standards (Huffington Post)

Fast-food safety rules trump those for school lunches (USA Today)