http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/magazine/how-school-lunch-became-the-latest-political-battleground.html
I wanted to share this article with you all about the all too familiar battle of childhood obesity. It was forwarded to me as a employee of the Stowe Food Service in Vermont, a place that doesn't have a high obesity rate. I work in an elementary school cooking these exact meals for about 150 students per day and want to express the difficulties, and benefits these rules have on us.
This article perfectly describes the battle in finding a common ground between feeding kids too much and not feeding them enough. While childhood obesity is a very serious issue it is also a problem to assume every student needs exactly the same diet nutrition wise. The main problem is that the Health, Hunger-Free Kids Act is grouping the nutrition requirements (and calorie restrictions) by grade which can leave one student feeling satisfied while another may still be hungry.
The main benefit I see, working in the elementary level, is teaching healthy eating habits at a young age that will hopefully stick with them throughout their lives. Introducing kids to new vegetables like spaghetti squash or roasted beets is not something that most of us had the opportunity of in elementary school.
There are definitely some kinks that need to be worked out but I definitely don't think that it needs to be considered the "latest political battleground." What needs to be kept in mind is providing school children healthy meals that will allow them to concentrate and remain healthy throughout life.
I actually worked with this bill quite a lot over last summer when I was an intern at the Clinton County Health Department. The school district Food Managers from about ten different districts in upstate New York hold monthly meetings with the Health Department as sort of a mutually beneficial check and balance measure to keep their kitchens on track with what the state and federal administration wants for their schools. So I heard a lot of first-hand commentary about the bill and the difficulties it posed for the Managers in terms of staff, food costs, and promotion. In the end of my rotation I actually created posters for all ten school districts which depicted for the children what foods and food groups they needed to have on their trays at each meal in order for it to be considered reimbursable by the new guidelines. It was a really fun project for me but it's not going to be fun for those who have to implement the changes.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with the writer of this article though, it's clear there is no nutrition background in his past. I think talking about the problem like it's a 'war' as he says only creates that kind of thinking and negative feelings toward each side. The bottom line is that something drastic needs to be done to improve the health of the nations youth. If the bill gets gutted when is anything ever going to happen to improve the standards again? If this sputters out now, it will likely be another twenty years before they attempt something new.
It's not a war, it's a movement. We need to work together and make the best decisions for the youth and not our wallets.