Berkeley Schools Cook from Scratch: An Epic Chicken

by: euclidarms

Mon May 10, 2010 at 03:55:56 AM PDT

My instructions, simple enough, were spelled out in permanent black marker on the cover of a brown pizza delivery box: Lay six chicken breasts down one side of a parchment-covered baking sheet pan, lay four across, then fill all the spaces in between. The precise pattern, altered only by the quantity of pieces involved, held for thighs, drumsticks and wings, all of which--1,400 pounds worth--had been marinating over the weekend in a teriyaki-flavored brine. If all went well, the final product--roasted teriyaki chicken--would be ready three days hence, to be served as lunch to some 2,350 children in all 16 of Berkeley, California's, schools.

I would spend the next several hours "panning up" this mountain of chicken, preparing it for its destiny in a bank of convection ovens in the district's central cooking facility at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. This was my first assignment after offering my services as galley slave in exchange for a one-week, first-hand look at how Berkeley schools accomplished a switch from the typical school diet of frozen, industrially-processed convenience foods to cooking fresh meals from scratch.

There was much more to come.

"Healthy Schools" with a Big Lump of Sugar

by: euclidarms

Mon Apr 19, 2010 at 04:18:09 AM PDT

"Healthy Schools" legislation written by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh comes up for its first committee vote today after months of deliberations and with one very conspicuous missing element: no regulation of sugar in school meals.

Removing the astonishing amount of sugar served to D.C. school children every day is probably the quickest and cheapest way to make school meals healthier. But you won't see any of that in the "Healthy Schools" legislation. How can that be, you might ask, when kids are being served 15 or more teaspoons of sugar every day for breakfast at school: strawberry milk the equivalent of Mountain Dew, candied cereals containing three or more teaspoons of sugar per serving, Pop-Tarts, juices that might as well be sodas.

A teaspoon of sugar contains 16 calories, meaning the breakfast described above contains 240 calories worth of sugar, or 44 percent of the 550 calories the "Healthy Schools" bill sets as the maximum total breakfast calories D.C. school children through eighth grade should be consuming.

Truth is, federal regulations that govern school food programs contain no limits on sugar in subsidized meals. Consequently, according to a top legislative aide involved in writing the "Healthy Schools" bill, there were no standards on which to base a limit on sugar for meals served in the Distict of Coumbia.

"We certainly have heard the concerns that you and others have expressed about sugar in school meals, but we haven't seen any guidance about how to regulate it," the aide said. "Neither the HealthierUS [School Challenge] nor the IOM [Institute of Medicine] standards have recommendations for limiting sugar in school meals.  (The IOM notes, on page 52, that "By far the largest contributors to the intakes of added sugars (45 percent of the total amount) were regular soda and noncarbonated sweetened drinks," which are heavily restricted under the HSA.)  Therefore, there does not seem to be any guidance about how to do it."

The American Heart Association last year issued specific guidelines on consumption of added sugars for adults, but not for children. For instance, the AHA recommended that "moderately active" women consume no more than five teaspoons-or 80 calories-of added sugar per day. That would rule out much of the food children are served daily in D.C. schools.

And what about flavored milk served at breakfast and lunch in D.C. schools? Chocolate milk contains the same amount of sugar as Classic Coke, and strawberry milk nearly as much as Mountain Dew.  The strawberry milk contains 28 grams of sugar--about seven teaspoons--or 112 calories. That represents 66 percent of the 170 total calories in the one-cup containers routinely handed out in D.C. schools for breakfast and lunch.

"Regarding flavored milk, we do understand your concerns, but we have also heard concerns from other nutritionists who say that milk is important for child development and that even if the milk is flavored it is better for children to drink flavored milk than to drink no milk at all," the aide said. "We are not nutritionists and have no way to resolve this debate.  Therefore, we are choosing to use this bill to set the floor for school nutrition and then to empower OSSE [Office of the State Superintendent of Education] and schools to set higher standards -- to ban flavored milk and other things if they so choose."

In fact, there is no scientific body of evidence indicating that children who are not offered a flavored milk option either drink less milk or are deprived of important nutrients. That seems to be more of an assumption encouraged by the dairy industry, which counts on flavored milk for a large portion of its sales.  

Still, how can it be that the federal meals program, in existence since 1946, has no standard to govern the use of sugar in school meals, especially at a time when child obesity and attendant diseases such as diabetes are such a concern? I asked Marion Nestle, a prominent nutritionist and author of  Food Politics.  

"Here's the short answer: Sugar industry lobbying," Nestle said.  

"And here's a bit more:

"Sugars were never a problem when schools were reasonably well supported in part because competitive foods were reasonably well regulated and in part because snacks were too.  All that changed when schools ran out of money and had to start pushing snacks and sodas in order to fill the budget gap.  Nobody paid much attention to what kids were eating-until recently.  

"No federal agency has ever set a maximum for sugar intake although dietary advice for years all over the world has been to limit sugars to 10% or less of daily calories.  That percentage was embedded in the recommendations of the 1992 USDA Pyramid which said, "Use sugars only in moderation."  USDA defined "moderation" as 6 teaspoons a day of total added sugars for a diet containing 1600 calories, 12 tsp for 2200, and 18 tsp for 2800.  If you do the math (assume that a tsp is 4 grams and 16 calories), this comes to less than 10% of daily calories.  But the Pyramid did not say so explicitly.  That's just how it works out.  

"Some years later, in developing the new Dietary Reference Intakes, the Institute of Medicine recommended 25% of calories from added sugars as an upper limit.  

"In the early 2000s, the World Health Organization attempted to set an upper limit of 10% of calories from added sugars to its global strategy for health.  U.S. sugar lobbying groups went berserk and got the attorney for the Department of Health and Human Services to write a letter to WHO threatening to withdraw U.S. funding if that recommendation was not eliminated.  The controversial figure disappeared.  

"The bottom line: no standard of intake exists so anything goes.  My understanding is that sugars not only pervade the meals, but also treats given out by teachers and brought in by parents for birthdays.  

"The one bright side is that the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act contains provisions to revisit the standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines that will be coming out later this year. These, hopefully, will refer to a recent IOM report developing new school meals standards for the USDA."

The IOM found that children's consumption of "discretionary" calories from solid fat--as from hamburgers and pizza--and sugar "were much higher than the amounts specified" by the federal food pyramid. For children aged nine to 13, for instance, the excess averaged 543 calories, or about a third of the total daily calories recommended for children in that age group.

But rather than address sugar directly, the IOM panel took a back-door approach: increasing the amount of "healthy" foods in school meals and setting a maximum on calories served in school meals would drive down the amount of calories from sugar, the panel reasoned. "The committee notes that its approach to developing the standards for menu planning leaves relatively few discretionary calores for added sugars and saturated fat," the report reads.

But with "careful menu planning," the panel suggests, schools would still have enough of those discretionary calories to make room for flavored milk and sugary cereals. "The ommission of those sweetened foods might result in decreased student participation as well as in reduced nutrient intakes."

Nestle calls this last statement by the IOM committee "a sellout. I've been in plenty of schools where the kids eat unsweetened foods and are doing just fine.  Those schools are run by adults who care what kids eat.  Kids will eat foods prepared by adults who care, as witnessed by Jamie Oliver."

Although Cheh's original "Healthy Schools" bill embraced the proposed IOM standards, she abandonned them after school officials said they could not guarantee schools would be able to serve additional vegetables that kids would actually eat and not throw in the trash. The bill now adopts less stringent standards under the "HealthierUS Schools Challenge" sponsored by the USDA. Those standards likewise do not address the issue of sugar in school meals.

Nestle said the best hope may be if Congress, in its pending re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, requires that schools adhere to the government's own Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Those call for no more than two to eight teaspoons of sugar per day for discretionary calories, according to Nestle.

"The USDA [food] Pyramid allows 200-300 discretionary calories a day for fats and sugars.  That's less than 10% of calories, and still not bad," Nestle said.

Parents Manifesto for Better School Food

by: euclidarms

Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 11:47:50 AM PDT

Please write your D.C. council members and urge them to pass the "Healthy Schools Act." Include a link to this post.

From Alternet: "Is Our Obsession with Weight Misguided?"

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Apr 14, 2010 at 06:43:00 AM PDT

So, please, take a read and see what you think. Then help change the discussion so that instead of talking about obesity we can talk about health.

What's for School Breakfast: 15 Teaspoons of Sugar

by: euclidarms

Tue Apr 13, 2010 at 03:31:59 AM PDT

Can you say c-e-r-e-a-l real fast three times?

That's what one little boy had on his tray at my daughter's elementary school. "See how skinny I am?" the boy explained, lifting up his skinny arms to show me. "I want to get big."

I wondered how he got past the ladies at the food line with three containers of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But there it was, plain as day, along with the strawberry milk, the apple juice and a package of graham crackers already devoured.

Mendy Heaps Answers Her Critics

by: euclidarms

Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 03:23:35 AM PDT

The story of Colorado middle school teacher Mendy Heaps and her crusade for better school food at risk of her job has reverberated around the internet. Some readers have called her a modern folk hero (a Facebook group--Support MENDY HEAPS, and teacher like her! has 358 members), while others say she recklessly pursues an unsavory agenda. After her husband fell ill with cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure,  Heaps began selling fruit and healthy snacks to the students from a "fruit cart." She bombarded colleagues and school administrators with e-mails, urging an overhaul of the school's food service. Finally, Heaps was forced to sign a personnel memo written by the school's principal in which she agreed to cease and desist.  There have been so many comments about the story here and at other internet sites that I thought a follow-up interview with Ms. Heaps was warranted.

Food Industry to Obama: Don't Regulate Us

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Apr 09, 2010 at 18:54:14 PM PDT

The U.S. food industry is willing to let the White House take the lead on making foods healthier in schools, but said on Friday it could improve what is sold on store shelves without government intervention.

Recently, industry made a deal with public health groups that will give the government more say in what foods are sold in schools. They are clearly trying to stave off government regulation outside of the schools while simultaneously getting good press for themselves. See?

"They respect our ability to find ways to produce more products that offer consumers more choices including choices with less sodium, less sugar, less fat," said Faber [vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association].

The food industry group said its members improved the nutritional value of more than 10,000 products between 2002 and 2006 and plans in May to update that total to include changes through 2009.

A separate initiative called the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation -- which includes many GMA members -- will announce pledges to improve the health content of its products later this month.

But food manufacturers are businesses. Their goal is making money any way possible. In this case it serves them to make just enough changes to their products to maintain or even increase sales while keeping the government off their backs. And they aren't going to make truly healthy products. If that was a profitable thing to do, they would have done it already. What you can expect from this is more of the same - Whole Grain Chips Ahoy, Reduced Sodium Velveeta, etc.

Also, note the focus on weight (as opposed to health). The two are not synonymous. Industry wants to give us foods that can play into whatever diet fads are trendy (calorie counting, Atkins, South Beach, etc) without necessarily giving us foods that provide for good health. And, unfortunately, the methods our society often adopts to lose weight are not necessarily healthy and frequently don't even result in losing weight. In other words, packaged foods with 1/3 fewer calories or 20% less fat or whatever isn't going to help very much. The only thing it WILL accomplish, in fact, is to put off any government regulation of the food industry. And that's precisely industry's goal.

You Call This Food?

by: euclidarms

Thu Apr 08, 2010 at 03:10:31 AM PDT

I was ready to have a perfectly civilized discussion--blog-to-blog--with Sam Fromartz over at ChewsWise on the subject of what we can do to get kids to eat better when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the lunch being served at my daughter's elementary school here in the nation's capitol. Look at the photo above and tell me what you see. Do you see the same thing I do? French fries, a bag of Sun Chips, and an 8-ounce carton of strawberry-flavored milk.

You almost have to rub your eyes and take a second look. Can this really be true? Hello, Jamie Oliver! Not all the bad school food is in Huntington, W.Va. We've got the same stuff right here in Washington, D.C., barely a mile from the White House.

A Teacher Crusades for Better School Food and Gets Stomped

by: euclidarms

Tue Apr 06, 2010 at 02:41:35 AM PDT

Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.

Chicago Removes "Treats" from School Menus

by: euclidarms

Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 07:01:01 AM PDT

The Chicago Tribune reports today that schools there are undertaking a major revamping of menus, removing sugary foods such as Pop- Tarts and embracing Institute of Medicine recommendations that call for more vegetables and whole grains.

Chicago public schools use the same food service provider--Chartwells--as the District of Columbia, where Pop-Tarts and candied cereals are routinely served for breakfast. The Chicago schools will reduce serving nachos to just once a week in high school, and once a month in elementary schools. According to the Tribune, sweet packaged desserts will also be reduced to weekly treats. Doughnuts and Pop-Tarts will be eliminated entirely.

The new guidelines state that "no items served may contain 'dessert of candy type' ingredients or flavors such as chocolate etc." Apparently that will not affect flavored milk, such as the chocolate and strawberry milk that are ubiquitous in D.C. school cafeterias. Another exception to the rule is Chocolate Mini-Wheats cereal--also served here in the District--because it is high in fiber. The new Chicago rules require that all breakfast cereals contain no more than five grams of sugar unless they provide three or more grams of fiber.

The Tribune further reports that the new rules "include meal planning guidelines that generally meet Institute of Medicine recommendations developed last year at the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture" that call for increased servings of vegetables and whole grains. But it was unclear whether the Chicago approach included the IOM's call for increased portion sizes of vegetables, which has been rejected by drafters of "Healthy Schools" legislation pending before the D.C. Council because school officials say they can't guarantee kids will eat the vegetables they make and not throw them in the trash.

The Tribune reporter who wrote the story, Monica Eng, said in an e-mail she believes the schools are specifically targeting nachos, cookies, Pop-Tart and doughnuts "because of specific page one stories I wrote singling them out." Eng has been nominated for a James Beard award for a story she wrote about nachos served daily in Chicago schools.

Is Marion Barry My Soul Mate?

by: euclidarms

Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 06:59:40 AM PDT

Testifying before the D.C. Council on "Healthy Schools" legislation yesterday, I found an unexpected ally in Councilmember and former Mayor Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who went out of his way to criticize the food in D.C. schools

I was there to tell the author of the legislation, Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), that she had left a huge hole in proposed school food nutrition standards where lawmakers ought to be regulating the amount of sugar and cheap carbohydrates schools serve children for breakfast and lunch.

Barry noted that he has visited city schools recently "and the food is terrible." He seems to take particular delight in skewering schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee whenever possible, so he couldn't help pointing out that neither Rhee nor any of her minions were present at yesterday's hearings. That promped Cheh to reply that school officials have been "especially cooperative" in crafting the "Healthy Schools" bill.

Barry also pointed out that the job of food services director for D.C. Public Schools had gone unfilled for a year, that food services for a time were being run by Rhee's chief operating officer, Anthony Tata, and that the man recently selected to fill the food services role, Jeffrey Mills, is a New York restaurateur with no prior experience in schools. "We have to stop this sort of nonsense," Barry said.

Identifying himself as a diabetic, Barry picked right up on the concerns I've expressed about the over-abundance of sugar and cheap carbohydrates in school meals. Barry said fruits and vegetables have been key to his own improved health. "I look healthier because I eat healthier," he said.  And indeed he does.

He then pulled out photographs I had recently taken in the cafeteria at my daughter's elementary school, H.D. Cooke, and posted on this blog and at the Better D.C. School Food blog. One photograph in particular, titled "Glycemic Bomb," shows chicken tenders thick with breading alongside a big blog of barbeque sauce for dipping, baked beans in a sugary sauce, diced peaches in a sugary syrup and a side of still more carbs: macaroni and cheese. Some students wash all this down with strawberry-flavored milk that contains only slightly less sugar than Mountain Dew. The second photo captured a child pouring strawberry milk into a container of Apple Jacks cereal for breakfast.

Either Barry himself or one of his staff apparently had copied the photos from my blog because anonymous comments had been left there asking me to identify the school where the photos had been taken, and saying the commenter needed to know for "my testimony" at the "Healthy Schools" hearing.

"I commend you for doing this," Barry said to me from the dias, adding that he had once studied biology and chemistry, and "I understand what you are talking about."

Barry then held up the "Glycemic Bomb" photo a second time for everyone in  the packed hearing room--as well as those watching via television--to see.

Here is my testimony. Note: we were given three minutes to deliver our testimony and I ran horribly over. Councilmember Cheh finally had to stop me and ask me to summarize. The is the complete version:

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ed Bruske. Let me briefly tell you who I am.

I am the parent of a 10-year-old student at H.D. Cooke Elementary School. I am a food writer, former Washington Post reporter and author of The Slow Cook blog, where my observations after spending a week behind the food lines as an observer at H.D. Cooke recently appeared as a six-part series titled, Tales from D.C. School Kitchen. I am also a certified master gardener and co-founder of D.C. Urban Gardeners. I grow much of the food our family eats in the kitchen garden that used to be our front lawn in Columbia Heights NW. I am an avid home composter and lecturer on the subject of composting. I built a 1,600-square-foot edible garden at the charter school my daughter formerly attended, and worked with the children there in food gardening and cooking activities. I teach weekly cooking and "food appreciation" classes in the after-school program at Georgetown Day School. I sit on the advisory board of the year-old D.C. Farm to School Network. Recently I helped organize an advocacy group called Parents for Better D.C. School Food.

Perhaps you now understand why I think Councilmember Cheh had me in mind when she drafted the "Healthy Schools Act."

You won't be surprised to hear that I heartily endorse most of what is contained in this legislation. This bill represents a landmark effort to bring student health and well-being into proper alignment with the health and well-being of our community, our environment, and even with the fate of our planet. This integrated approach to children's health and environmental sustainability is long overdue and cannot be delayed. At long last, we need to start sending children the right messages about healthful eating, as well as responsible environmental stewardship. Schools can and should take the lead. It won't be easy.

For several decades now, corporate food interests as well as their allies in Congress and the federal government have been conducting what you might call a giant dietary experiment on the American people. It is a diet composed of cheap, industrially-processed foods designed not for people's health but for maximum profits. This is a diet cheap on the front end, but ruinously expensive in terms of healthcare costs on the back end. It is loaded with unhealthful fats, salt, refined grains and sugar at levels previously unknown in the entire 2 million years of human evolution. And the results have become glaringly obvious: A generation of children inordinately overweight or obese, suffering unprecedented levels of metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and diabetes, a generation that is on track to be the first with a life span shorter than its parents.

I wanted to spend time in the kitchen at my daughter's school because I had heard that the food provider for D.C. Public Schools, Chartwells, had ditched pre-packaged warm-up meals made in a factory and sealed in plastic in favor of something it called "fresh cooked." Imagine my surprise when I saw what "fresh cooked" actually meant: some of the worst our industrialized food system has to offer--extruded meats mixed with soy protein and doused with chemicals, highly processed foods that do not occur in nature, cooked in factories hundreds of miles away and shipped frozen to District of Columbia where they can be easily reheated and served to children.

The food I witnessed represents the culmination of unfortunate trends that have been converging in school cafeterias for decades, a perfect storm, if you will, of private industry intervention, cheap, unskilled labor, and underfunded government policies run amok. A classic example: flavorless scrambled eggs made not on a stove, but in a factory 1,100 miles away in Minnesota with no less than 10  industrial ingredients: soybean oil, xanthan gum, artificial butter flavor, lipolized butter oil, medium chain triglycerides. The pre-cooked eggs, looking something like a pale yellow version of cottage cheese, arrive frozen, then are simply warmed in a steamer before being tossed with shredded, processed cheese. Amazingly, the egg salad served at H.D. Cooked is made with pre-boiled eggs, already diced and frozen.

Are these really the lessons we want to teach our kids about food? Do we really think that feeding this kind of food to children day after day has no effect on their health or academic performance? In fact, we are perilously close to losing our collective memory of what constitutes real, wholesome food.

The "Healthy Schools" bill you have before you addresses many of the issues of poor quality school food with a vision of school gardening and locally grown farm products. Having used just such an approach with children in the past, I know it works. I know how eagerly kids will plant and harvest vegetables, fight for a turn to wash lettuce and spin it dry, jump at a chance to handle a vegetable peeler or a box grater. Children will eagerly eat their vegetables and all sorts of healthful foods if given a chance to learn about them in a personal way. Education about healthful foods is key to getting kids to eat more healthfully.

But something even worse than all the processed, pre-cooked foods in D.C. school meals leapt out at me during my week at H.D. Cooke, and that's all the sugar. Children are routinely doused with sugar, at breakfast and at lunch. Since the 1970s, we in the U.S. have been waging a war against fat. More than 30 years later, we are fatter than ever. It turns out that while we were barring fat at the front door, sugar was pouring in through the back door. Federal regulations in the subsidized meal program set a limit-30 percent of calories-for the fat school food can contain. But there is no such limit on sugar. Similarly, the "Healthy Schools  Act" has a hole in it big enough to drive a high-fructose corn syrup tanker through: No limit on sugar.

What food providers cannot serve as fat, they serve as sugar to meet minimum calorie requirements. Thus, our kids are being stuffed with nutritionally worthless sugar on a daily basis. It's not just the Pop Tarts and Giant Goldfish Grahams and Apple Jacks cereal and Crunchmania Cinnamon Bun cookies being served in public school cafeterias. We're also talking about concentrated fruit juices with the same sugar content as Coca-Cola, and flavored milks that rival Mountain Dew.

One morning recently I stopped by H.D. Cooke and saw kids eating a breakfast of those Kellogg's Crunchmania cookies, grape juice and chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk. In fact, some kids were dipping the sugar-glazed cookies in their cartons of chocolate milk. I made a calculation and found that in that single, highly processed breakfast, kids were consuming 13 teaspoons of sugar. And that's before their school day had even begun. Is it any wonder teachers complain of kids being out of control after they eat?

Some authorities, such as Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady" known for introducing freshly cooked food in the schools of Berkeley, California, and now Boulder, Colorado, recognize that sugar is not just a problem of empty calories. Sugar and refined carbohydrates trigger insulin, a powerful hormone that is also responsible for fat storage in the body. More and more medical researchers are recognizing that it's not just the number of calories we consume, but the type of calories that can determine our health. Too many refined grains, starchy potatoes, sugar and other cheap carbohydrates may be great for cash-strapped school budgets and food industry profits, but they are not good for kids' health.

The good news is, you don't have to wait for D.C. Public Schools to access locally grown farm products to make a dramatic difference in the quality of school food. You can make a huge difference by simply limiting the amount of sugar being served. It is high time that nutrition standards place a limit on the amount of sugar in school meals, just as they do on fat. Ann Cooper and other school food authorities have eliminated flavored milk from their menus. You can do the same, or at least limit flavored milk to one day a week. You can replace sugary fruit juices with whole fruits, which not only contain less sugar, but also deliver fiber and valuable micro-nutrients.

Beyond that, we should have no illusions that simply upgrading nutritional requirements in school food will solve the problem. Processed foods can be loaded with nutrients and still come out of the kitchen unpalatable. Food service in D.C. Public Schools currently is a money-driven program. It needs to be a food-driven program. For positive changes to truly succeed, schools and kitchen staff  need to be trained, properly equipped and committed to the idea of serving fresh, whole food to children on a daily basis.

Kids are too young to make informed choices about the foods they eat. As adults-as administrators, teachers, legislators, parents-we need to step up and make decisions about what is best for our children. The "Healthy Schools Act" is an excellent place to start.

$6.5 Million Tab for "Healthy Schools" in D.C.

by: euclidarms

Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 06:57:45 AM PDT

Improved nutrition, easier access to school food and incorporating local produce in school meals would cost the District an estimated $6.5 million annually under proposed "Healthy Schools" legislation, according to the D.C. government's Chief Financial Officer, Natwar M. Gandi.

Gandi released written testimony yesterday indicating that most of that money would be spent on increasing the city's contribution to school meals by 10 cents for breakfast and 10 cents for lunch, as well as a 5 cent bonus for meals that contain locally grown products, free breakfast for all students and covering the cost currently paid by students who qualify for reduced-price meals under the federally-subsidized meal program.

The cost of the legislation, which had previously been undetermined, brought out a parade of charter school officials complaining that they did not have the means to pay for it. They appeared at hearings before D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of the bill.

"This is much like 'No Child Left Behind,' full of unfunded mandates," said Donald Hense, of Friendship Public Charter School. "The financial incentives are not enough for us to change our food service."

Along with setting healthier food standards, the legislation also mandates increased physical activity for children. Charter school officials said in many cases their schools have neither the funds nor the facilities to comply with the proposed standards. "How can charter schools implement all this?" said Josphine Baker, executive director of the Public Charter School Board. "Ten cents for breakfast and lunch is just barely enough. It could be cost prohibitive for all schools to use local produce. It's a challenge sometimes to provide both a rigorous education and healthy, nutritious meals."

Gandi estimated the total cost of the legislation for the city's charter schools at $1.6 million. Cheh vowed that she will find funding to cover all of the bills requirements. "We fully appreciate the costs," she said. "I'm working assiduously on getting that money. And I'm pretty much sure that I will get that money."

Cheh added that the legislation will save money in the long run in reduced health costs for city residents. "Even if it cost money and we didn't save money, how much is it worth to have people lead healthy lives?" Cheh said. "We will save money and have better lives."

Tracking Obesity in "Healthy Schools" Bill

by: euclidarms

Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 04:13:32 AM PDT

Re-tooled language in "Healthy Schools" legislation scheduled for a public hearing before the D.C. Council this week would require city schools to provide parents each year with a measurement of the body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio of every child, as well as an estimate of the amount of exercise each child engages in. It also calls on city schools to consider extending the school day in order for children to have more time for physical activity, and would offer grants to schools that commit to making students more active.

Schools would also be required to send parents information in English and Spanish explaining how to interpret unhealthy body mass and waist-to-hip information and what steps can be taken to address weight problems.

Drafters of the legislation last week backed away from strict nutrition standards recommended by the Institute of Medicine that would require increased portion sizes of vegetables served in school meals, saying schools cannot guarantee the quality of vegetables offered  in cafeterias or that students won't throw them in the trash.

Instead, the legislation embraces requirements set forth in the U.S. Department of Agriculture "HealthierUS School Challenge," which establishes several different levels of stringency in school food nutrition.

The "Healthy Schools" bill would require all D.C. public schools to adopt the "gold" level of the USDA program, meaning school cafeterias would need to offer 1/4-cup servings of  dark green or orange vegetables three or more days per week, and cooked dry beans or peas once per week.  Schools would also be required to offer a different fruit, either fresh, frozen, canned, dried or 100 percent juice, every day of the week, but 100 percent fruit juice could be counted as fruit only once per week. At least one serving of whole-grain food would be offered each day.

The new bill also drops an attempt to create detailed nutrition standards for foods served outside the reqular food line in school cafeterias--so-called "competitive" foods--as well as those sold in vending machines and in school stores. Again, the "HealthierUS School Challenge" standards would apply. Total fat in those foods could be no more than 35 percent of calories, trans fat must be less than .5 grams per serving, saturated fat less than 10 percent and sugar no more than 35 percent by weight.

The only beverages allowed would be low-fat or skim milk, 100 percent fruit juice with no sweeteners and water, meaning no sugary sodas, sports drinks or ice teas. The standards would not apply to foods and beverages offered at official after-school events.

Among the other major features of the new "Healthy Schools" draft:

* Minimum and maximum limits for calories in school breakfast and lunch at all grade levels.

* Zero trans fats is school meals

* Random testing of school food to ensure that nutrition standards are being met.

* An additional 10 cents in funding for each breakfast and 10 cents for each lunch.

*Full funding for students who qualify for reduced-price meals.

* Offer breakfast in the classroom in all elementary schools where at least 40 percent of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, and other alternative methods of serving breakfast in qualifying middle and high schools.

* Phasing in minimum levels of exercise over a five-year period for elementary and middle-school students, from 30 minutes per week to 150 minutes per week for children in Kindergarten through grade five, and from 45 minutes per week to 225 minutes per week for children in grades six through eight. Sources say the demand for more physical activity is one area where the legislation is meeting some resitance, because it might cut into class time. The most recent draft calls on schools to "seek to increase physical activity by considering extending the school day."

As part of better nutrition, the bill requires schools to incorporate local farm products in school meals "whenever possible" and would fund a five-cent bonus for lunches that include local produce. It also calls for a school food gardening program.

Sorry, We Can't Cook: D.C. Schools Say 'No' to More Vegetables

by: euclidarms

Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 02:58:14 AM PDT

In a move that could signal a serious fault line in the argument for more vegetables as a tonic for childhood obesity, drafters of "Healthy Schools" legislation pending before the D.C. Council have skuttled a push for additional produce in school meals after school officials said they cannot guarantee their kitchens can prepare vegetables that kids will actually eat and not throw in the trash.

"More vegetables" has become a mantra of advocates for healthier school food, including first Lady Michell Obama, whose White House vegetable garden created a sensation. The "Healthy Schools" bill, scheduled to come up for a hearing next week, had embraced standards proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that would require larger servings of fruits, vegetables--especially green and organge vegetables and legumes--and whole grains as part of an upgraded school nutrition package designed to bring school meals in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The IOM panel that made the recommendations, working at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, warned, however, that requiring more produce and whole grains would drive up the cost of school meals, and that there could be no guarantee that children would eat them. The requirement for heftier vegetable servings was dropped from the "Healthy Schools" bill after D.C. school officials asserted they did not want to spend precious resources on food that would only end up being thrown away.

"We heard from many that if schools are serving mushy, flavorless green beans that students are simply throwing away, that doubling the portion size would simply double the amount of mushy, flavorless green beans that are thrown away," said an aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of the bill. "Instead, many have said that we should focus our energy and money first on improving the quality of the foods being served before we consider mandating an increase in portion sizes."

Advocates of farm to school programs here and across the country contend that schools can serve meals that are more healthful and appealing by using more locally grown produce. But vegetables traditionally are a hard sell in school cafeterias. The foods most favored by children are pizza, all forms of potatoes and corn, in that order. As I found while spending a week in the kitchen of my daughter's elementary school here in the District, vegetables typically are cooked to death and rejected by kids. A 1996 nationwide survey of school food service managers by the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that 42 percent of cooked vegetables - and 30 percent of raw vegetables and salad - ended up in the trash.

The move to eliminate additional vegetables from "Healthy Schools" legislation suggests that mandating better school meals may not work without funding improvements to school kitchens. In fact, the trend in school food service for years has been in just the opposite direction--to reduce labor costs, which represent half of food service costs, by hiring less skilled kitchen workers who do not work enough hours to qualify for benefits. Frequently, school kitchens are staffed by "warmer-uppers" whose sole skill is being able to re-heat foods that have been pre-cooked in distant factories and shipped frozen. Sensitive perishables such as vegetables suffer as a result.

"If we're going to win Michele Obama's war on obesity and if her 'Let's Move' campaign is going to be successful, then we need to ensure healthy delicious food. We need funds to pay for cooking kitchens, to train staff, and to market to kids to eat the food," said Ann Cooper, noted school food activist and director of nutrition for schools in Boulder, Colorado.

"That seems like nonsense about kids not eating the veggies...of course they won't if it looks and tastes like cardboard," said Debra Eschmeyer, director of the National Farm to School Network. "Kids will eat fresh tasty veggies if they have a chance to access them and learn about them. I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. Kids will eat chard, broccoli, beets, etc. and love it when they have a chance to grow it and have a real learning experience."

The IOM report suggested there might be funds for school kitchen upgrades in the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" (PDF) program instituted last year by USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. Merrigan has said that nearly $1 billion in federal grant funds used in the past for building rural fire stations, hospitals and community centers could be allocated to food-related projects, such as building storage facilities for locally grown produce, food markets and school kitchens. But schools would need to apply for the money.

In a separate development yesterday, legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would provide an additional 6 cents per school meal--something less than $500 million more annually--but that money would be contingent on federally-subsidized meal programs adopting the IOM standards. The School Nutrition Association, representing food service directors across the country, has asked for a minimum increase of  35 cents per meal. But others, such as Cooper, say anything less than $1 a day for each child in the program falls short of what is actually needed.

Still, the retooled "Healthy Schools" legislation sets forth substantial increases in local financial support for school meals, some of which could be used to purchase more vegetables and other healthful ingredients. The bill would provide an additional 10 cents for each breakfast served in D.C. public schools and 10 cents for each lunch, plus a bonus of 5 cents for lunches that include local produce. In addition, the District would fund 50 cents for students who qualify for reduced-price breakfast and lunch, meaning those students would not have to pay for their meals at all.

The bill also provides for construction of a local "super kitchen" where city schools could store and process local produce. The kitchen could also house a greenhouse, bakery or other features and provide a culinary training center.

Significantly, the "Healthy Schools" bill still does not identify funding to pay for the improvements it outlines, but Cheh has vowed to find it.

The Scourge of Chocolate Cake

by: brodog

Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 10:33:48 AM PDT

Actually, no it does not! There are ways and means of avoiding obesity while still being able to enjoy that devilishly tempting chocolate cake. The problem is, it involves some work and most people, especially those who lead sedentary lifestyles, do not like the sound of that! Especially when that work comes in the form of exercise coupled with eating a good, healthy diet. But this is a necessary evil to have to put up with if we want to indulge in the dark side of life - by dark, I am of course referring to that dark brown, sweet, sweet chocolaty stuff!

The trick to keeping the weight manageable is to make sure your body burns as many calories as you can cram into it. So, theoretically, if you want to eat a whole chocolate cake a day, then you are going to have to exercise like its 1999. But also, there are hidden health risks to doing that, not least of all the specter of diabetes from overdosing on the sugar and let's not mention the increased risk of heart attacks from the increase in bad LDL cholesterol and triglycerides!

But there is even a way of getting around that, to a point. Its not just the refined white sugar that is present in chocolate cake that makes it bad. there is also the refined white flour, butter or margarine and of course the chocolate itself.

Believe it or not, there are some changes that you can make that will still create a very tasty chocolate cake with a far lower level of bad ingredients to harm your body. For a start, you can cut the level of refined white sugar almost in half on a general recipe. It will still be sweet, just not quite as sickly sweet. You can replace the refined white flour with wholemeal flour. Yes you can! You can replace the butter or margarine with extra virgin olive oil. Again, yes you can! And use cooking chocolate that is plain with a cocoa content of around 50-60 percent and that's a lot less dangerous than using milk chocolate to cover the cake (yes, I used to be guilty of doing that too).

The resulting cake will be still come out tasting great but will contain lower levels of harmful ingredients, meaning you can eat more of it without feeling quite so guilty.

Okay, as weight loss tips  go, this is probably not the best, because you really should avoid all cake, but if you really, really have to have some, making it this way will not be quite so bad for you and if you can still exercise enough to burn off those extra calories you loaded on by eating the cake, then you can go a long way to avoiding obesity too!