Risky Behavior - School Lunch: Maybe Kids Were Right All Along

The chart shows total enrollment in grades K-12 and average participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) for the years 1970-2001. The NSLP is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. NSLP, established by President Truman in 1946, cost taxpayers $5.56 billion in FY 2000, "less than the price of three stealth bombers," according to Kelly Patricia O'Meara, who investigated the program for Insight on the News, a conservative current events magazine. The chart shows that in 2000, more than half of all schoolchildren dined on lunches provided through this program (27.2 million of 52.9 million students). In the charted period, participation in the program rose from a low of 20.7% of all students (1970) to a high of 57.8% (1998).

The NSLP's avowed purpose is to provide "nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches." What could be risky about a school lunch? A number of things. Schools have been plagued by outbreaks of food poisoning and questions about the nutritional value of the food they serve. The emerging trend is for schools to earn extra dollars by offering soft drinks, snacks, and fast food — in other words, unregulated junk food that provides little or no nutritional value, competes with more nutritious offerings, and contributes to unhealthy weight gain. The USDA registered turf alarm over this trend in a report to Congress entitled "Foods Sold in Competition With USDA School Meal Programs."

The NSLP uses donated commodities. Insight on the News reports that in 1999 nearly 1 billion pounds of food were donated to NSLP schools. The magazine quotes Nancy Donley:⁸ "Recent data show that 40 percent of the samples [of meat supplied for NSLP] being taken by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service are turning up positive for E. coli 0157:h7, an often deadly bacterium." The magazine charged that USDA policies for inspecting donated commodities were inefficient. In school year 1997-98, 17 outbreaks of food-borne contamination in the program affected 1,600 people.⁹ The Sierra Club charged in a June 2001 report that hundreds of millions of federal dollars had been awarded for NSLP to companies that had been involved in large food safety recalls.

Most Likely to Become "Plate Waste"

Cooked vegetables	42%
Salads, raw vegetables	30%
Fresh fruit	22%
Canned/processed fruits	21%
Meat alternatives	21%
Meats	14%
Breads/grains	13%

Food donated for the NSLP is surplus — not purchased by consumers and not necessarily based on a child's nutritional needs. A 1993 government report found that school foods did not meet the govern- ment's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, being too high in fat and sodium and low in fiber and calcium. Legislation went into effect in the 1996-97 school year to modify school foods to fit the guidelines. By 2001, 82% of elementary schools participating in the NSLP offered meals that met dietary guidelines for fat, up from 34% in 1993.

Studies show that children who eat school meals are getting a more nutritious lunch than those who bring a sack from home, but it's still not nutritious enough. Some students don't eat their lunches, as we see in the table. It shows the discard rate for foods served through the NSLP.¹⁰ The most popular school lunch item was pizza — in goes the fat, out go the fruits and vegetables. A report from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine stated that public school lunches remain "a major risk to our children's health."

Sources: "National School Lunch Program: Participation and Lunches Served." National School Lunch Annual Summary: http://www.fns.usda.gov. Statistical Abstract of the United States 2001, Table 205. Kelly Patricia O'Meara. "What Is Being Fed to Schoolchildren?" Insight on the News, April 3, 2000. "Compared to Home-Brought Meals." Food Service Director, August 15, 2000. Biing-Hwan Lin et al., "Quality of children's diets at home and away from home: 1994-96," Food Review. (January-April 1999). Jean C. Buzby and Joanne F. Guthrie, "Plate Waste in School Nutrition Programs: Final Report to Congress.": http://www.ers.usda.gov. "School Lunch Program Fails to Make the Grade." Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (Fall 2001), based on a survey of 12 school districts: http://www.pcrm.org/news/health010. Russell Mokhiber. "Spoiled Lunch." Multinational Monitor. (July 2001). Online data retrieved July-August 2002.