What

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Whats for lunch?The Child Nutrition Act
Reauthorization

• Zoe Shamash, MD
• Corinna Rea, MD
• Dina Ferdman, MD

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National School Lunch Program--history

•  The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch
  Act is a United States federal law signed by
  President Harry S. Truman in 1946. 
• The act created the National School Lunch
  Program, a program to provide low cost or
  free school lunch meals to qualified students
  through subsidies to schools. 
• The program was established as a way to prop up
  food prices by absorbing farm surpluses, while at
  the same time providing food to school age
  children.
• In response, Congress enacted the 1946 National
  School Lunch Act as a "measure of national
  security, to safeguard the health and well-being
  of the Nation's children."
• The majority of the support provided to schools
  participating in the program comes in the form of
  a cash reimbursement for each meal served. 

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Who is eligible?

• Any child at a participating school may purchase
  a meal through the National School Lunch Program.
• Determined by household income
• Free lunch income lt/130 of the federal poverty
  level
• Reduced price lunch, 130-185 federal poverty
  level 
• For 2006-07 for a family of 3 
• 130 of the poverty level is 21,580
• 185 is 30,710.

Friday, June 11 2010 pizza, fruit cup, carrots
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National School Lunch Program Participation

• Open to all children enrolled in a participating
  school. 
• Approximately 95 of public schools participate.
• During the 2004-05 school year 29.1 million
  children in more than 98,900 schools and
  residential child care institutions participated 
• On a typical school day, 17.1 million of these
  29.1 million total children, or 59 percent,
  were receiving free or reduced price lunches.

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Educational Benefits...lots of potential

• Studies show that proper nutrition improves a
  childs behavior, school performance, and
  overall cognitive development.
• Properly nourished children more actively
  participate in the education experience, which
  benefits them, their fellow students, and the
  entire school community.
• A healthy eating environment teaches children
  good nutrition and the elements of a proper
  diet, which can have positive effects on
  childrens eating habits and physical well-being
  throughout life.

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National School Lunch Program Guidelines

• In the 2004-05 school year, 93-94 of meals
  failed to meet all nutritional standards,
  primarily due to not meeting standards for fat,
  saturated fat, or calories.
• Most schools offered students the opportunity to
  select a balanced meal, but few students made the
  healthful choice. 
• In about 90 of all schools nationwide, a student
  had opportunities to select low-fat lunch
  options, but in only about 20 of all schools did
  the average lunch actually selected by students
  meet the standards for fat
• Schools offer few whole grain foods, and french
  fries and other similar potato products accounted
  for a disproportionate amount of the vegetable
  options on school lunch menus.
• The Institute of Medicine recently provided
  recommendations for updated nutrition standards
  consistent with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines
• increasing the amounts of fruits, vegetables and
  whole grains 
• reducing the amount of sodium and saturated fat
  provided and 
• setting a minimum and maximum number of calories
  for school meals. 
• USDA is currently developing a regulatory
  proposal to guide schools in implementing updated
  standards.

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Lets Move

• In February, First Lady Michelle Obama launched
  the Let's Move! campaign to solve the childhood
  obesity epidemic within a generation.
• As part of this effort, President Barack Obama
  established the Task Force on Childhood Obesity
  to develop and implement an interagency plan that
  details a coordinated strategy, identifies key
  benchmarks, and outlines an action plan to end
  the problem of childhood obesity.
• The action plan defines the goal of ending
  childhood obesity in a generation as returning to
  a childhood obesity rate of just 5 percent by
  2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity
  first began to rise in the late 1970s.

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Lets Move

• Four Major Goals
• Helping Parents Make Healthy Family Choices
• Serving Healthier Food in Schools
• Accessing Healthy, Affordable Food
• Increasing Physical Activity

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Star Power

• Many celebrities have joined the cause
• Rachael Ray is drumming up support for the new
  bill

"The difference an apple or a good school lunch
makes to these kids is more than just keeping
them focused in class, you know, it literally is
everything."
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Star Power

• Rachael Ray is campaigning for the new child
  nutrition act, joined the Chefs Move to Schools
  initiative, and is helping NY city schools to
  provide healthier options for lunch.
• She has gone to congress in person to use her
  big Sicilian mouth to campaign for more money
  to be spent on each childs meals and for trans
  fats to be abolished from school cafeterias.

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Star Power

• Jamie Oliver traveled to Huntington, WV, the
  unhealthiest city in America, and spent three
  months improving the food in the schools in his
  reality TV show, Jamie Olivers Food Revolution.

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Star Power

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vbGYs4KS_djg

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Star Power

• John Salley, Tobey Maguire, Ellen DeGeneres,
  Scarlett Johansson and many more have all
  contacted Congress about improving the quality of
  food in Americas schools.

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In the Media

• There have been many articles, op-eds, blogs and
  videos deicated to the debate over school
  nutrition. Many non-profit organizations are
  lobbying hard for their views

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In the Media

• Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse fame) wrote a
  famous NY Times Op-Ed recommending a budget of 5
  per child per meal.
• An angry mom has become known all over the
  internet for eating lunch at a school cafeteria
  every day for a year and posting pictures online
  on her blog.
• A self-proclaimed Renegade Lunch Lady named Ann
  Cooper has devoted her life to improving school
  lunches.

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Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010S.3307

• Amends the Richard B. Russell National School
  Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to
  revise the school lunch and breakfast programs,
  the summer food service program, the child and
  adult care food program (CACFP), and the special
  supplemental nutrition program for women,
  infants, and children (WIC program).

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EXPANDING FREE MEALS

• Expanding Afterschool Meals for At-Risk Children
  Nationwide
• Child and Adult Care Food Program receives
  reimbursement for snack only, will expand to
  include an additional 21 million meals annually
  by 2015.
• Connecting More Eligible Low-Income Children with
  School Meals
• Expanding certification process to include all
  Medicaid patients
• Creates a new option that will allow schools in
  high-poverty areas to offer free meals to all
  students without collecting paper applications,
  which will expand access to more children and
  reduce administrative burdens on schools
• Eliminates the letter method, which requires
  families to return a letter to the school to
  establish eligibility
• Estimate this will include 115,000 new students
  annually by 2015
• Automatically Enrolling Foster Children for Free
  School Meals
• Promoting the Availability and Locations of
  Summer Meal and Breakfast Sites
• New requirement of school food authorities to
  coordinate with the Summer Food Service Program
  in their neighborhoods to to develop and
  distribute materials to families to inform them
  of the availability and location of summer meal
  sites and school breakfast sites.
• Piloting Innovative Methods to Provide Nutrition
  to Hungry, Low-Income Children
• New funding to test pilot projects to improve
  methods of providing nutritious foods to hungry
  children, including during out-of-school times.

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PROMOTING HEALTH AND REDUCING CHILDHOOD OBESITY

• Helping Schools Improve the Nutritional Quality
  of School Meals
• Performance-based increase in the federal
  reimbursement rate for school lunches 6 cents
  per meal
• Establishing National Nutrition Standards for All
  Foods Sold in Schools
• Secretary of Agriculture will have the authority
  to establish national nutrition standards for all
  foods sold on school campuses throughout the
  school day.
• Promoting Nutrition and Wellness in Child Care
  Settings
• Revises the nutrition standards for meals, snacks
  and beverages served through the Child and Adult
  Care Food Program (CACFP)
• Provides education and encouragement to
  participating child care centers and homes to
  provide children with healthy meals and snacks
  and daily opportunities for physical activity,
  and to limit screen time.
• Farm-to-School Programs
• 40 million in mandatory funding to help schools
  establish school gardens and source local foods
  into their cafeterias.
• Supporting Breastfeeding in the WIC Program
• Expanding the collection of WIC breastfeeding
  data, creating performance bonuses for state
  agencies with high rates of breastfeeding, and
  allowing contingency reserve funds to be used to
  purchase breast pumps.
• Mandatory funding for a program to recognize
  exemplary breastfeeding practices at the WIC
  clinic and state agency levels. The Healthy,
  Hunger-Free Kids Act permanently authorizes this
  program within child nutrition law and expands
  the collection of WIC program data on
  breastfeeding rates.

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IMPROVING PROGRAM MANAGEMENT INTEGRITY

• Establishing Professional Standards for School
  Food Service
• New training and qualification standards for the
  people who operate the National School Lunch and
  School Breakfast Programs at the local and state
  levels.
• Simplifying Program Rules and Reducing Paperwork
  for Day Care Sponsors and Providers
• Gives Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)
  sponsors greater flexibility with their
  administrative funds, and eliminate the need for
  sponsors and day care centers to resubmit
  duplicative paperwork each year.
• Estimates that roughly an additional 2,500 day
  care homes will receive the higher tier 1
  reimbursement rate.
• Allowing WIC to Share Educational Materials with
  Other Programs
• Allows state WIC agencies to permit local WIC
  agencies to share WIC nutrition education
  materials with CACFP institutions at no cost if a
  written materials sharing agreement exists
  between the relevant agencies
• Improving Food Safety Requirements for School
  Meals Programs
• extending existing HACCP requirements to cover
  activities like breakfast in the classroom.

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Bill Status

• 3/17/2010 Introduced by Senator Blanche Lincoln
  (D-Ar), Chairman of the Senate Agriculture
  Committee
• 3/24/2010 Unanimously passed by the Senate
  Agriculture Committee
• 5/5/2010 Introduced to the Senate Floor
• Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under
  General Orders. Calendar No. 363.
• 6/10/2010 George Miller (D-CA) chairman of the
  House Education and Labor Committee introduced
  the Improving Nutrition for America's Children
  Act, a bill to reauthorize and amend the Child
  Nutrition Act

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Controversy

• The main source of controversy regarding the two
  bills introduced in Congress is funding.
• Both bills increase the reimbursement for each
  meal by 6 cents, which is the first increase
  above inflation in over 30 years. But many argue
  that the increase is not enough to substantially
  improve the quality of food. The School Nutrition
  Association recommends a 35 cent increase, and
  Rachael Ray and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are
  lobbying Congress to increase the reimbursement
  to 70 cents per child. A coalition of school
  reformers, including the Renegade Lunch Lady
  Ann Cooper, is asking for a 1 increase.
• Obama had requested 10 billion over 10 years in
  new money for child nutrition, and the Senate and
  House bills only provide 4.5 billion and 8
  billion, respectively.

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Controversy

• Even at the recommended level of reimbursement,
  the bills are pricey and it is questionable
  whether Congress will be able to pay for them.
• The Senate Agriculture committee, which
  introduced the senate version of the bill, has
  found enough areas to cut their budget to fund
  the bill. The bill proposes the appropriation of
  funds that would otherwise go to USDAs
  Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or
  EQIP. This program allocates subsidies to
  farmers to use environmentally friendly farming
  practices.  If passed by Congress, the Healthy,
  Hunger-Free Kids Act would reallocate 2.8
  billion over the next 10 years from EQIPs budget
  to the new efforts to the new child nutrition
  programs.

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Controversy

• Many environmentalists oppose the cut This
  current proposal would not only rob farmers,
  ranchers, and forest landowners of conservation
  and environmental stewardship assistance in the
  next decade, but would take away well over 2
  billion from the farm bill conservation baseline,
  or nearly half of the widely lauded conservation
  increase in the 2008 Farm Bill.
• The bill would also cut 1.2 billion from the
  nutrition education component of the federal food
  stamp program (now known as the Supplemental
  Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP) over the next
  decade, which some say negates the whole pupose
  of the new bill.
• In contrast, although the House bill is more
  ambitious than that of the Senate, they have not
  found the funds to pay for it.

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Controversy

• Others argue that while the bills do address food
  safety, the provisions are too small, especially
  in the Senate version of the bill. Food safety
  experts are calling for a rapid alert system to
  notify schools about recalled food, higher
  purchasing standards for high-risk foods, and
  arguing that school purchasers should have access
  to safety information regarding the organizations
  they are purchasing from.

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Will this even happen?

• It is unclear whether Congress will have time to
  debate and pass a unified piece of legislation.
  The current legislation expires on September 30,
  so if they do not produce a bill before the
  August recess, they will have to extend the
  current funding and no changes will be made for
  another year (like last year).

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How to Advocate

• https//secure3.convio.net/voices/site/Advocacy?cm
  ddisplaypageUserActionid2037
• http//www.change.org/petitions/view/tell_senate_l
  eaders_dont_delay_healthy_food_for_americas_childr
  en

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The best part about researching this talk?

• You Tube videos
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vlint8PiGuRY
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vKj_2xx-UKWo
• http//healthtopic.nationaljournal.com/2010/03/lin
  coln-v-obama-school-lunches.php