Tag Archives: school foods rule

The start of a new school diet…I mean year

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School kicked off yesterday. I couldn’t wait until I could get home and ask my children how their day went. Did they like their new teachers? Did they have any new classmates? Meet any new friends? As a typical mother, I was starved for details!

And also at the top of my mind? Were my children starved as well?

boys on first day of school

Do the these boys look like they would all eat the same amount of food?

For those new to my blog, not only am I a farm wife, a mother of four boys and a lover of all things agriculture, I’m also passionate about a few causes. One of those just so happens to be the new school lunch guidelines. Perhaps it’s because those mandates not only hit me in the pocketbook, they hit my children in the stomach…and it’s something that I cannot stand to see.

So I sat down with my two oldest children, and asked how the day went, I asked about recess, I asked about teachers, I asked about lunch. And what I heard made my heart sink.

My oldest (in sixth grade) told me a story about his lunch. He explained that he was served three chicken strips, about the size of his pinky. And they were good, but you had to pay for seconds to get three more. A friend of his also wanted seconds, but he said he didn’t have school lunch money. (Which in the sixth-grade world, I would take to mean that either he’s on the free-or-reduced-lunch program, but isn’t allowed seconds because even the free-lunch program students need to pay the full price for seconds OR his parents have requested that he not be allowed to go back for seconds.) So he asked another friend to go back for seconds and share his food, which his friend more than happily obliged.

Here are the two things you can take away from this: 1) There is an amazing group of boys in that class that watch out for each other, and 2) The new school lunch guidelines are causing an even larger hurdle for parents to overcome.

My questions that I would love to have answered:

  • Why are schools required to charge a minimum price for lunch?
  • Why are schools mandated to charge for seconds?
  • What is the purpose of calorie limits, unless it is to put our whole public school system on a diet?
  • What else will be at risk if a school were to turn away from the nutrition program?
  • Why are educational funding dollars connected directly to the nutrition program, for example, Title One?
  • Why? Why? Why?

I’ve asked these questions multiple times, including directly to the USDA during a Twitter chat regarding school lunch. All I received was the typical song and dance, no real answers and no real hope of anything being done.

But I’m not done yet.

Can I pack my children’s lunch? Certainly. In fact, I could cater them a meal to the school and not have a worry in the world about their tummy’s rumbling come the bus ride home. But that’s hardly the point.

The system is broken. The “Band-Aid” to fix it is doing little to address the problem, and creating more in its wake.

The media is touting the new guidelines, claiming that our obesity rates are dropping. But I have news for you. They were dropping prior to all of the new mandates. And they can continue to drop with education, and a large variety of offerings at our schools, not calorie limits and federally mandated diets.

No, I will not sit quietly by and listen to my son tell stories about how a couple of elementary students have found a way to beat the system. I will step in and work to change the system. It’s not the children that are broken…it’s the one-size-fits-all regulations that are in place.

I have no doubt that this will be an uphill battle, and there’s a good chance that I won’t get all of the changes that I am hoping for, but I know I’m not alone. In fact, there’s even a whole Facebook page dedicated to seeing Sensible changes. And I’m hoping that one day, before too long, children won’t have to be ashamed that they are hungry, and they won’t have to rely on close friends to smuggle them food.

Not when there is plenty in front of them.

So how do we work together for change? Contact your local school districts and state officials. We CAN make a difference! Is your school doing something different? Do you have stories of children helping each other to get a full meal? Use the contact me above to share your story, and together we’ll make a difference! (I will keep all information confidential, unless instructed otherwise.)

Our kids aren’t as fat as you think

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Whoa. That’s quite the title for a blog post, isn’t it? Here are some other versions I tossed around, “How to make research fit your agenda,” “Misleading the public: Our way or the highway,” “It’s only a few percentage points…who’s gonna notice?”

So, what’s my point? I’ve been reading and researching the 81 pages of the new school lunch guidelines. I’ve read the comments left, I’ve read the “White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity” report. I’ve started to have dreams regarding statistics…and I hated statistics in college. Hated.

What did I learn? I learned that although the powers that be keep using the number “1 in 3” as the percentage of obese kids in our country, well, that number isn’t right. In fact, we’re off by quite a ways. How far? Try about 14%, give or take.

Everywhere you look, you’ll read the statistic that 1 in 3 children are obese. In my mind, that means roughly 33.33%. Again, I wasn’t a math major, so if I’m wrong, please correct me. (And no, I don’t mean just take it out a few more decimal places. 😉 ) What if I tell you that the number is actually closer to 19%? Would that matter?

Well, that’s the truth.

This is percentage of high school students obese, according to the CDC.

Here, read the CDC’s stats directly from their page: “The percentage of children aged  6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period.” (The number in the White House report bounces between 17% and 19.6%, depending on which graph you want to look at.)

So how can they get away with it? Simple. It’s a matter of word choice. In the above report, the next line reads, “In 2008, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.” It goes on to explain that “overweight” is defined as having excess body weight for a particular height from fat, muscle, bone, water, or a combination of these factors. Obese is defined as having excess body fat.

So, when someone is making a statement, or a report, or a news conference, it’s just more newsworthy if you drop the “overweight” part off and leave it as “obese.” But the two terms are not interchangeable. There are so many factors that can weigh in on a child’s weight, not just activity level and diet. What about injuries? What about stress? What about extending health issues?

What causes an overweight child? Here are a few examples: Imagine a high school student, very active, with an injury that requires months of rehab. They continue to eat as they’re used to, but realize they need to make some diet adjustments once they start noticing a few pounds being added on. The pounds drop again once activity is resumed.

Or what about a teenage girl, just transitioning into her cycle. Weight fluctuates greatly, revolved around hormones and other things that occur as the body makes great changes. Same is true for boys as they hit puberty.

No, an overweight child is nothing to scoff at, but it’s also not something to legislate for…it’s a natural occurrence in the life cycle.

But obesity, well, obesity is a little different. And although we do need to take steps to make improvements, the majority of the differences need to be made at home. And that’s not a place where legislation reaches…at least, not yet.

By law, we are not required to buy fruit. By law, we are not prohibited from purchasing soda. By law, we are not limited to the number of times pizza can be served as a meal.

As parents, we need to make the right decisions for our children, that includes after the bell rings.

If we truly want to drop the obesity rate in our children, we can’t expect cuts to the school lunch program to be the smoking gun. School lunch was never the root of the problem.

But we also can’t go around making changes, touting stats and bending the information to fit our goals. Some may not take the time to read the fine print, but when you get caught using misleading numbers, I start to question the rest of your agenda as well.

I applaud the new fruits and increased use of vegetables in our school lunches, I love the new recipes and new twists on the old-standby’s. Yet calorie caps and protein limits will not succeed to achieve a goal that’s been misquoted in the first place.

Can we work together to make real change?

Comparing menus

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I’ve been pretty vocal about my disdain for the changes made to the school lunch menu. On that note, let’s take a look at a sample menu:

  • Fresh apple
  • Spanish omelet
  • Potatoes
  • Pkg. Cream of Wheat
  • 3 slices bread
  • 2 cups skim milk
  • 2 pkg jelly
  • 2 margarine
  • Kosher beverage

Sounds good, right??? That’s what I thought. Unfortunately, that’s the menu being served to our prisoners in federal prisons. That’s right. Prisoners are being fed better than our
own children.

Let’s take a look at another menu:

  • Mango, ginger and curry soup
  • Mediterranean pasta salad
  • Tarragon farmers salad
  • All natural turkey BLTs with basil mayo
  • Grilled Portobello Ciabatta with roasted red pepper spread
  • Ginger glazed carrots
  • Red, white and blue chips
  • Farmer’s market melon
  • Organic milk, greens station, all natural deli bar, whole fruit always available

Sounds pretty extravagant, right? That’s the menu being served at the private school where the Obama’s children attend. I understand that not all schools are on a level playing field when it comes to school lunches, but it the new mandates are so great, why aren’t all schools expected to follow them? Especially this school.

Here’s the last sample menu:

  • Hamburger
  • Baked beans
  • Fruit
  • Milk

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? A little lacking in a few areas? That’s the menu that is offered to my children.

And we wonder why kids that have the option to leave campus are now eating at the local gas station and bakery shops. I’m sure the local businesses are enjoying the boom, but it would be nice if the children that would like to eat at school actually felt like the food was able to meet their needs. And as a parent, I agree.

I enjoy the fact that our schools are now expected to serve fresh fruits and vegetables, but to require it is ridiculous. Where are we supposed to get fresh fruit from in December? What will it take to ship it in? What will the shelf life be for it? What do we do if no one eats school lunch that week?

Yes, changes may be needed to our school lunch menu, but those changes need to be made at the local level, with no ties to federal funding.

So many have stated that if you aren’t happy, if your children aren’t fed, just pack a lunch. There’s nothing you can do once it’s implemented.

Wrong.

We can fight for those that cannot fight for themselves. And we can work for a sensible change that can actually help our children throughout the day, not set them up for failure.

Soon our school won’t be needing many of these, as the number of students eating at school drops.

Due to the widespread claim that these new, improved lunches are the best thing since sliced bread (which, by the way, is no longer offered as an alternative to the main entree at our school) (oh, and pun intended), and that we need to use these guidelines to curb the rampant obesity in our schools, my 10-year-old is no longer eating much of anything. He was never a big eater, but always ate what was needed through the day. He’s now concerned that he’s overweight, because “the news says that most kids weigh too much.”

Thank you, main stream media, for giving my child a food complex that didn’t exist before…and thank you, current administration, for taking children that are impressionable and at-risk for food disorders for making it impossible for kids not to stress over what they eat.

My solution: Let food decisions be made at the local level, where the school lunch experts know their students, know the climate and know what will work. Educate about nutrition, teach proper eating habits, but please, do not tell our children that they are fat. (Oh, and most children over the age of 7 know what the word obese means…that doesn’t make it better.) If you want to see real change, start at home. Make an effort to reach those parents that don’t understand, or just don’t care what they are feeding their children.

School lunch is not to blame for the childhood obesity issue, and putting our children on a diet during the school lunch day will not solve the problem. If anything, it has encouraged binge eating and unhealthy food choices after school.

It’s time to start using common sense…but unfortunately, it’s not so common.

How to NOT answer a question…

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Today’s lesson: How to NOT answer a question in 140 characters…complete with links, quotes and statistics. That was the main takeaway from today’s Twitter chat that was led by the USDA in regards to the new school lunch rules. (I know, I almost went a day without talking about them, didn’t I?)

From noon to 1 p.m., I sat at my computer (thank you George, for taking an unexpected nap!) and participated in the chat. I retweeted information, I asked questions and I commented on answers…I seemed to have more involvement than the party that was hosting, as did many of the concerned parents, students and citizens that participated.

(For a brief overview, check out this blog post by my friend over at Crystal Cattle.)

What did I learn? I learned that we have a long way to go to make improvements. I learned that you can successfully have a non-conversation, not answering questions and referring to links and policy…and never once offer a real solution. I learned that the “science” behind the changes isn’t easy to get to, and that parents are going to have to step it up for awhile.

But I also learned that we have a lot of people supporting change, and that we can work together and make more people aware of the issues that are happening at our schools.

I didn’t expect our questions to be answered, I didn’t expect to feel fine with the whole program after an hour of “chatting.” But I also didn’t expect to feel ignored and for the issue to be sidestepped at every question.

For example, the question was asked, “What about free & reduced lunch students who can’t afford to buy additional food at school?”

The answer was, “Thornton: There are a number of programs available in schools to help meet dietary needs of kids during the school day.“

Later they supplied this link for more information…it just includes the information we already have regarding school lunch, free and reduced-price meals and the school breakfast program. No additional resources, no new snack program, no real answer at all.

That was the way the majority of the hour went.

So where are we now? Well, we’re gaining support, spreading the word and making everyone aware of the short-comings of the new mandates in our lunchrooms. Our schools are being held hostage and our students are paying the ransom.

For more information, check out the Sensible School Lunches Facebook page and browse the information available there. Join in the conversation and share your tips and tricks for getting children the nutrients they need, while working through these restrictions.