Photo courtesy Stockvault
It may be the most important school lunch served this year, and it’s not even going to schools: It’s going to Congress. One day next week, some lawmakers and their staff will dine on chicken fajitas, sliced ham, and green beans. It’s part of an effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to show it has improved the nutrition of school lunch programs, and to ask Congress to provide more resources to continue this improvement.
It may be a tough sell, even though everyone knows — or should know — that children cannot learn as well when they are hungry or suffer from poor nutrition.
“This is part of the education day,” Katie Wilson, then-president of the School Nutrition Association, told me in an interview last year. “We know that a child who is well-nourished learns better. So why we continue to fight this battle is really frustrating.”
Why the continued fight? The answer, of course, is money. Nutritious food costs money, and with the nation in a recession, even strong school lunch supporters say Congress isn’t expected to increase funding this year. (Even though President Obama has proposed an additional $1 billion for child nutrition programs, including school lunches, in his 2010 budget.)
The lunch program’s public relations effort was hurt last week by a USA Today investigation showing that meat not fit for fast-food restaurants has been making its way into schools. Now senators are asking for a stricter testing program for ground beef.
Nutrition and food quality may not be as exciting to school boards as curriculum issues or new technology. But they are tremendously important, especially with food insecurity on the rise and food spending declining among families.
ASBJ will continue to cover this issue, and next month it will feature a cover story titled “Breakfast for All.”
In the article, Senior Editor Naomi Dillon talks to Cynthia Zurchin, principal of Schaeffer Primary School in Pittsburgh, a place where, Dillon writes, “too many students, a majority of whom live in low-income households, [used to come] to school hungry. Crying and complaining of stomach aches, they appeared in the nurse’s office shortly after classes began.”
“We would ask, Well, did you eat breakfast,’ Zurchin says. “And they would say, no’ and we’d give them a granola bar and they’d turn into a completely different child.”
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
