This is an important week for the future of US school lunch nutrition. The Child Nutrition Act is up for re-authorization, and many groups are hoping the program will increase spending to improve the nutritional value of school lunches.

The School Nutrition Association (SNA), which represents more than 75% of the food service workers in American schools, is convening in Washington DC for their annual Legislative Action Conference. Michelle Obama addressed the group, which is very supportive of Let’s Move, her new initiative to battle childhood obesity.  Details here, thanks to ObamaFoodorama.

Yesterday the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee convened a hearing Improving Children’s Health: Strengthening Federal Nutrition Programs.

Lunch for the session was prepared by Chicago high school students who had won a school lunch cooking competition late last year. The lunch they prepared had to be both nutritious and tasty. These amazing kids could only spend $2.68 per meal, the allotted funding by the government for school lunches that feed millions of children across the nation daily.

Last week  we had the honor of participating in a blogger conference call of the Healthy Schools Campaign, headed by Rochelle Davis, Founding Executive Director.  The non-profit organization is dedicated to making schools a healthier place to learn and work. They focus on improving school food and physical activity and their efforts, such as the “Cooking Up Change” culinary competitions for students, have already been showing success in the Chicago area in the past year.

The organization strongly support the First Lady’s efforts and itself has won 2 honorary co-chairs of the Campaign are the Karen Duncan – wife of the Secretary of Education,  and  Christie Vilsack – wife of the Secretary of Agriculture.

According to Rochelle Davis, In many schools today there is a big disconnect between what students are taught is healthy and what they are actually served in school cafeterias.The cheaper foods being served today are the least healthy – full of fat, sodium, and very highly processed. Davis is campaigning in hopes the government will prioritize the funding to be able to pay for healthier foods for school lunch. While she doesn’t expect thing to change overnight, she does believe that raising the awareness level of school administrators, food service directors, and the kids themselves can bring about substantial change, even with small financial increases from the government.

A big question that looms – will kids actually want to eat all the healthy food?

If they don’t like the broccoli at home, why would they eat it at school?

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School lunch is a hotly debated topic these days.

Around 30 Million children are served a hot lunch every day. The National School Lunch Program is funded and regulated by the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA. Participating schools get cash minimal subsidies and donated commodities from the USDA for each meal served (now there’s an incentive to get all the kids to eat..). The meals must meet specific nutrition requirements, and eligible children must receive free or reduced price lunches.

So what are people fretting about?

The low budget for the meals usually means preprocessed chicken nuggets, hot dogs, fries, and a host of other fast foods that may be filling, but hardly nutrient rich. Parents, educators, and nutrition professionals would like to see children getting better food. Entrenched businesses find that concept difficult to accept.

Baltimore public schools, serving 80,000 children, decided to try out a new concept – Meatless Mondays. Instead of protein from meats, they are serving up beans and cheese. This is in order to reduce the amount of saturated fats and cholesterol from the meats (although cheese, an animal product, also contains saturated fats and cholesterol).

The decision, reports Eliza Barclay for the Atlantic, has caused the meat industry serious grief. No less than 4 organizations have attacked Baltimore’s moves:

The American Meat Institute says that kids are being deprived of much needed protein. A bogus claim stating that 75% of kids are protein deficient is totally unbased. In fact, there are barely any Americans with a protein deficiency these days.

Pork Magazine alleged that the decision was made without any dietetic consultation. Unfortunately for them, the entire meal plan was created by a school dietitian and a chef.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance and Missouri Beef Concil were just plain “shocked” and hoped this maligned decision would not spread to other communities.

While the  business fears of the meat industry are understandable, only good can come of Meatless Mondays. Nobody is being forced to become a vegetarian, and a good portion of the kids will probably be having some form of meat for dinner anyway. So why the fuss? Introducing children to vegetable lasgana, various bean dishes, and other additions such as whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables is but a small measure in trying to fix childhood obesity.

Onwards and upwards, school lunchers. Get ready for for tasty Tuesdays and weight-loss Wednesdays…

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