It seems like just yesterday we were reporting on a brave new future in our school cafeterias in the form of a federal mandate dictating a new set of guidelines for what schools must serve their students.
Though government mandates tend to be given an extraordinarily bad reputation (with good reason, a lot of the time) this was one order that was easy to get behind. That goes doubly for those young enough to recall the recent state of school lunches, in which “cheese,” “breading” and “sugar” seemed to occupy their own, prominent slots on the food pyramid.
This story seems like it landed just yesterday because it practically did. The standards were put in place at the beginning of this school year. Yet already, districts are bucking the trend and dumping the program.
We recently reported the Niskayuna Central School District moved to drop the new guidelines by April 1 after its lunch program operated at a $70,000 loss in the first half of the school year (you can read all about it at spotlightnews.com). It seems kids weren’t going for the new food options, and those who were forced to buy the lunch out of need or for other reasons were tossing their fruits and veggies straight into the trash in favor of going hungry or grabbing some other, easily obtainable source of “nutrition” in the form of candy or junk food.
It’s surprising to see schools quickly discarding the lunch guidelines because that also means the loss of federal aid dollars. In a time of dwindling aid, that’s astonishing. But evidently the issue is so profound it would be preferable to go it alone.
It seems fitting this issue is coming into focus again, given February is American Heart Month — you can read more about that in the Point of View article opposite this editorial. Suffice it to say, this is a time when the American Heart Association and other groups are encouraging Americans to be more cognizant of their overall health, including how they eat.
This development is a setback for that overall mission on several levels. First, it is unfortunate to see schools kowtow to the taste buds of its students so quickly. Parents know getting a child to eat healthy is no easy task, but it is a winnable battle.
But it is not one that’s made simple through the new federal guidelines, which are so restrictive they allow cooks little room for maneuvering. They go so far as to break down vegetables into groups based on color, requiring dark green veggies to be served one part of the week and red or orange options another. These restrictions were drawn up with the best of intentions, but we have to wonder if setting more general guidelines and simply banning the worst of lunch line offenders (cheese sticks, pizza, French fries, vending machine foods, etc) and mandating the use of fresh ingredients might have been met with more success.
We may never know. Sadly, the students who need better nutrition the most, those in poorer urban districts, may end up with the short end of the stick as they’re offered unpalatable, unimaginative options while the vending machine beckons. In the suburbs, we simply hope schools opting out of the program will take their experiences as a learning opportunity instead of returning to the status quo.