Child Poverty Solutions: Better Childhood Nutrition Support, Part II

Healthy nutritional advice from the Dana-Farber Cancer Inst.

What of school meals programs? For some children, they can be a lifeline – two guaranteed meals per day in an otherwise hungry world during the school year. Good nutrition is essential to developing minds and later health – study after study has backed that up for early childhood especially. 

Some ideas are being floated for improvements to the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill which is up for consideration early next year.  

This bill impacts both the school lunch program and WIC, both of which have a significant impact on early child nutrition for children in poverty. Making these meals and available foods more nutrient rich gives children for whom these meals may be the only ones they get during the week a much better chance at development.

With more families relying on school lunches, this is a critical issue in tough economic times for the long-term health of these kids.  So what can be done? Plenty:

Progressives can and should work together with these two lobbies as well as with parents, educators, and doctors to make their voices heard. Here are several things we can ask for specifically:

• Increase funds for school lunch. The reimbursement rate is $2.55/kid/meal right now. Schools already spend $2.88 on average. Cheap food is junk food. For a budget breakdown of a school meal, read "Many Barriers Keep Fresh, Organic Food Out of School Lunches."
• Expand the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program….
• Make WIC an entitlement. Currently, WIC is not an entitlement like food stamps. That means that it has a certain budget and if the need for WIC exceeds the budget then some eligible people cannot participate. Making WIC an entitlement will save us from having to argue time and time again for adequate funding for the program and it will ensure that everyone who qualifies for WIC will benefit from it.
• Expand the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program. This is a program that provides fresh fruits and veggies at a handful of select schools in each of the 50 states. Right now it’s a pilot programs and the schools that are chosen are typically ones in which a high percent of kids qualify for free or subsidized school lunches.
• Reduce barriers or encourage schools to feed students locally produced foods. …
• End pouring rights agreements. These are agreements in which schools sign contracts with soda companies to receive kickbacks for selling soda. Typically once a contract is signed, the schools place vending machines in more locations and sell more soda – some even go so far as to give the kids "soda breaks" during class or encourage faculty to each do their part and drink more soda.
• Get competitive foods out of schools. A "competitive food" is any food outside the federally reimbursed school lunch. The USDA has nutrition standards for the school lunch but it is NOT ALLOWED to have nutrition standards on other foods, called competitive foods. Competitive foods are typically junk, like stuff in vending machines.
• Keep rBGH milk out of schools.  …
• Provide funds for schools to build and equip kitchens.  …When budgets got tight, they stripped out their kitchens or built new schools without kitchens. Nowadays, schools are often unequipped to do simple tasks like cutting veggies, and that means any food served must be ready to eat and the only prep the school can handle is heating it up.
• Either ensure commodities provided to schools are healthy foods or give the schools more money for lunches in lieu of commodities. Schools are forced to take free government commodities that are often processed into unhealthy junk… the commodities provided flip the food pyramid on its head, giving schools a lot of the things you should eat sparingly (high fat meat and cheese) and little of stuff you should eat a lot of (fruits and veggies).
• Increase regulation of and inspection of slaughterhouses.  …
• Get artificial food dyes that cause hyperactivity in kids out of schools. …

The biggest point we need to make is that the money we spend on our kids’ nutrition is an investment, not an expense, and that all children should have a right to safe and healthy food.

Would love more thoughts and ideas on how to improve this — because we have an opportunity this year to make a huge difference in the lives of children who could desperately use it. This reauthorization only comes up every five years, so we need to make this one count.  This is one issue I’d love to see us win on for a change.

[Part I on childhood nutrition.] 

Related posts:

1. Participation in School Meal Programs to Reach 41-Year High
2. Late Night: Fox & Friends Have No Clue About School
3. Health Care and Poverty: We are Failing Our Most Vulnerable
4. FDL Book Salon Welcomes David Kessler, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite
5. FDL Book Salon Welcomes Jill Richardson, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It