What's good for lunch?

We all want to eat better and sometimes it’s easy to get into a rut and be bored with the same old foods. Here’s an article from the New York Times that is called The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating. I found I actually had five of them on hand, but I’m going to stock up on the others. They’re all easy to find and easy to eat. In fact, the original article at Men’s Health gives more details and interesting ideas about how to incorporate them easily into your – and perhaps your school’s – diet

National Academy of Sciences urges better diet

Both school breakfast and lunch programs should be revamped according to the report released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science (available now to download free). Their recommendations include:

• Increasing the amount and variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
• Setting a minimum and maximum level of calories
• Focusing more on reducing saturated fat and sodium

There is also a webcast of the report release. "The programs that nourish so many American schoolchildren need to reflect the latest child health and nutrition science given the extent to which dietary habits shape lifelong health," said committee chair Virginia A. Stallings.

Defining Sustainability

According to the official definition from RCW 15.92.010, in Washington State "‘Sustainable agriculture’ means a systems approach to farming, ranching, and natural resource production that builds on and supports the physical, biological, and ecological resource base upon which agriculture depends. The goals of sustainable agriculture are to provide human food and fiber needs in an economically viable manner for the agriculture industry and in a manner which protects the environment and contributes to the overall safety and quality of life.”
A recent article in U.S. News and World Report called ‘New Tools for Sustainable Farming’ the popularity of the term sustainable and cites a report from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen that endeavors to give the term a more definitive meaning. This group of scientists started out with an ambitious research question: How can the sustainability status of farms with available operating data be determined and systematically improved?
Years of painstaking research allowed them to develop indicators and models to evaluate and optimize the sustainability of agricultural practices. The German Agricultural Society, working in conjunction with the Institute for Agricultural Engineering Potsdam-Bornim to add the economic and social factors necessary to balance the assessment, now has a certification system that is being used by agriculture and the food industry as well. It is called “Sustainable Farming – Fit for the Future” and it meets European DIN standards as well.
Maybe now ‘sustainability’ will be easier to measure and prove instead of merely a fashionable label.

United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency Report on Organic Food

Capitol Press published an article last week titled Study slams organics that seemed to purport that the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) had done a study that found that organic products were not nutritionally superior to conventionally produced food products.

Actually the FSA report is only a literature review that examines 162 articles that were published in peer-reviewed journals from Jan. 1, 1958 to Feb. 29, 2008. It is merely a review of the available and credible published data. It does not examine environmental impact or pesticide use. It does nothing more that compile the data that has been gathered to date. More than any kind of judgement of organic and non-organic growing, it is a review of only what has been studied about nutrition in this field to date.

Evidently, some have misconstrued this and interpreted the study as a condemnation of organic farming. The Capitol Press article interviews producers from Washington, Oregon and California who principally argue against reaching these other conclusions. The study never advocates one product over another and repeatedly states the limits of the study and why it was undertaken. It could be the springboard for more investigation because it evaluates and condenses the information that has been available in a more scattered fashion. One of the reasons it was undertaken was because of the rising global demand for organic food.

An interesting read

The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development is a new book about the current debates that revolve around the school cafeteria: nutrition, sustainability, social inclusion, economics, etc.
To the authors it it is becoming clear that the school food service can provide many benefits. The book examines many of the fashionable trends in foods and schools and analyzes the results that have actually been produced in diverse communities including programs like the UN’s Home Grown Program.

Senate bill on competitive foods in schools.

A recently introduced federal bill, Senate (S.) 934, from Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and eight bipartisan co-sponsors, regarding competitive foods in schools is the Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act. It would improve the school lunch and breakfast programs by updating nutrition standards for foods and beverages sold outside of school meals. It would establish minimum nutrition standards and prohibit the sale of food of minimal nutritional value, as defined by the Secretary of Agriculture, in areas where school meals are sold or eaten.

Cereal helps brain

A Telegraph article reports that eating cereal can boost brain power. A study conducted by Kings College London has shown that cereal is quite beneficial for breakfast. Long reputed as the most important meal of the day, these finding show that within that, cereal is actually the best breakfast choice.
In the study some children were given a glucose drink, and others cereal, and others no breakfast at all. Those that got cereal fared significantly better.
Dr Katerina Campbell, one of the researchers, said: "Breakfast cereal consumption has a potentially significant role in improving morning cognitive performance."

A Proposal to Separate Fast Food and Schools

The New York Times recently featured an article linking the tendency to be overweight with the location of fast food restaurants in a tenth of a mile or one block radius of the schools. 

The study looked at weight rates in teens and pregnant women who lived near such resteraunts and found location to be detremental in both cases. Now Eric Giola, a city councilman from Queens wants to use the California study to ban fast food establishments from opening so close to schools.

"Immediate proximity played a crucial role in obesity, according to the report, the Effect of Fast Food Restaurants on Obesity, by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University. If a fast-food restaurant opened a quarter-mile or more from a school, obesity rates were not affected."

The enormous impact of buying local

What are the benefits of using local food sources for schools?
We may just be scratching the surface of understanding the potential advantages according to a study being conducted by Ecotrust and Oregon State University. Preliminary results show that money spent on such programs has great implications in the community. In fact, they estimate that every dollar spent in a grant from Kaiser Permanente to two local school districts resulted in $1.87 of economic activity that reverberated throughout most sectors of the economy, not just in the agricultural industries.
That’s because a multiplier effect includes the impact of buying local food as well as the impact of those food suppliers spending the cash on materials and services in turn. When Portland and Gervais school districts were given funds through a grant from Kaiser they were motivated to reallocate those funds to the local economy. Whereas previously they may have been able to buy food a bit more cheaply, they hadn’t always been able to buy local. With the grant they bought local, sometimes paying slightly more, but the result was a huge boost to the local economy. According to the article in Capital Press Agricultural News, the $66,200 grant generated a total of $225,900.

Study finds that school-based nutrition programs reduce numbers of students who become overweight

There's an encouraging study in the April 2008 issue of Pediatrics about the role of schools in overweight and obesity prevention.

For the study, The Food Trust in Philadelphia created a school nutrition policy initiative that was tested in 10 public schools to see how effective school-based nutrition programs (including nutrition policy changes, social marketing and family outreach) can be at influencing overweight and obesity in students in grades 4-6.

Here's the key finding:

The intervention resulted in a 50% reduction in the incidence of overweight. Significantly fewer children in the intervention schools (7.5%) than in the control schools (14.9%) became overweight after 2 years.

The entire study report is available on the Pediatrics website.

Forgive the lengthy post, but I wanted to include the basic information on what school interventions were used. Here's an excerpt from the report:

"The SNPI included the following components: (1) school self-assessment; (2) nutrition education; (3) nutrition policy; (4) social marketing; and (5) parent outreach. Each component is described briefly below. A more detailed description of the intervention is available at http://www.thefoodtrust.org/.

Self-Assessment. Schools assessed their environments by using the CDC School Health Index.13 Each school formed a Nutrition Advisory Group to guide the assessment. Teams included administrators, teachers, nurses, coaches, and parents. After completing ratings on healthy eating and physical activity, schools developed an action plan for change. Schools proposed various strategies, such as limiting the use of food as reward, punishment, or for fundraising; promoting active recess; and serving breakfast in classrooms to increase the number of students eating a healthy breakfast.

Staff Training. All of the school staff in the intervention schools were offered 10 hours per year of training in nutrition education. At these trainings, staff received curricula and supporting materials such as Planet Health4 and Know Your Body,14 as well as nutrition and physical activity theme packets designed to integrate classroom lessons, cafeteria promotions, and parent outreach. Staff attended trainings both across and in intervention schools, giving them a chance to work together as a team and to share ideas with their counterparts in other intervention schools.

Nutrition Education. The goal was to provide 50 hours of food and nutrition education per student per school year, which was based on the National Center for Education Statistics guidelines.15 The educational component was designed to be integrative and interdisciplinary. Its purpose was to show how food choices and physical activity are tied to personal behavior, individual health, and the environment. Nutrition was integrated into various classroom subjects. For example, students used food labels to practice fractions and nutrition topics for writing assignments.

Nutrition Policy. In each of the intervention schools, all of the foods sold and served were changed to meet the following nutritional standards, which were based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and converted from the percentage of calories to grams per serving,16 which is in alignment with information shown on nutrition labels: all of the beverages were limited to 100% juice (recommended 6-oz serving size), water (no portion limits), and low-fat milk (recommended 8-oz serving size). Snack standards allowed 7 g of total fat, 2 g of saturated fat, 360 mg of sodium, and 15 g of sugar per serving. Before these changes, soda, chips, and other drinks and snacks had been sold in vending machines and a la carte in the cafeteria of schools with full-service kitchens. Schools without full-service kitchens did not sell a la carte food items or have vending machines. Schools were matched by type of food service to control for differences in the sales of vending and a la carte items.

Social Marketing. The SNPI used several social marketing techniques. To increase meal participation and consumption of healthy snack and beverage items, students who purchased healthy snacks and beverages or who brought in snack items that met the nutritional standards from home or local stores received raffle tickets. Raffle winners received prizes for healthy eating, such as bicycles, indoor basketball hoops, jump ropes, and calculators. The message "Want Strength?...Eat Healthy Foods," paired with an easily recognizable character, reinforced healthy messages through incentives and frequent exposure. Both the slogan and the character were developed through focus groups with students who were not in the study schools but were of similar age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Family Outreach. Nutrition educators reached family members through home and school association meetings, report card nights, parent education meetings, and weekly nutrition workshops. They encouraged parents and students, on the way to and from school, to purchase healthy snacks. Students participated in the 2-1-5 challenge to be less sedentary (2 hours per day of television and video games), to be more physically active (1 hour per day), and to eat more fruits and vegetables (5 per day). Intervention schools reduced the amount of unhealthy foods sold at parent fundraisers and discouraged parents from sending sweets to teachers at holiday time. One school chose to have a weekly breakfast club with female athletes from a local university."

via Foodlinks America newletter published by California Emergency Foodlink in Sacramento, CA. For archived issues of Foodlinks America, go to: www.tefapalliance.org. To request a free subscription to the newsletter or to submit story ideas, contact Barbara Vauthier at: bvauthier@tefapalliance.org.

We Are What We Eat

If you still need an argument for going organic, this may be the ticket.

A year-long study of Mercer Island children finds that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found. Food for thought...


“We need to move food back to the center of a well-lived life” ~ Michael Pollan

Digesting the News at Gristmill

Ann Cooper, Berkeley Unified School District's "Renegade Lunch Lady", and Kate Adamick, a school food consultant based in New York, have teamed up to analyze the links between various food news items that have come up in the past week or so. They conclude that corporations have far too much power in the policy debates around school food. Their post is over at Gristmill, the green blog at Grist.org: The school-lunch dog fight: In the clash over school lunches, who's watching out for the kids?

While we all know that corporate interests are at play in school food practice, especially when it comes to "a la carte" or "competitive" foods sold outside the main school lunches, it is worth reading their opinions about the various groups at the table influencing decisionmaking.

It is nice to know that school food issues have reached the level of public awareness that it's regularly in the news and federal regulation over school food nutrition is controversial even among healthy or sustainable food advocates. The stronger the debate, the better the resulting policies!

Not About Schools, Specifically, But a Good Article on Whether Organic is Better For You

Carol Ness at the San Francisco Chronicle has written a great overview of where the current scientific studies fall on the nutritional quality of organic food compared to conventional, and the myriad of other factors that affect the nutritional content of the produce on your table. The article, Food Conscious: Is organic better? It depends, is not about schools, but it certainly ties in to debates about what constitutes healthy food--the goal for school lunches.

(Found via the excellent local and sustainable food issues website: The Ethicurean)

Good News on Healthy School Lunch Sales

University of Minnesota recently released a study that contradicts the commonly-held notion that serving healthier school meals will mean fewer students buy school lunch. According to an AP article Study: Kids Will Eat Healthy School Food , the study found that sales of school meals in Minnesota did not decline when healthier foods were served, and that healthier meals didn't have to cost more to produce.

Note: I have downloaded the journal article in pdf. Please let me know in comments or by email if you'd like more details.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

UK's Ofsted report reveals (among other interesting findings) that school children are not immediately won over to healthier, fresher recipes in British schools. The report provides insight into student response to school meal reform in Britain. It also looks at non-lunch foods like breakfast programs and vending machines, and addresses such things as free lunch stigma, the eating environment and social uses of lunchtime, and healthy eating curriculum changes. (Guardian article; Ofsted Report)