Heart Association Says Too Much Chocolate Milk a Health Risk

by: euclidarms

Tue May 24, 2011 at 03:58:25 AM PDT

The U.S. dairy industry spends millions trying to convince parents that medical professionals are firmly behind feeding kids milk spiked with sugar as a healthful way to deliver calcium and Vitamin D. Dairy interests pay for "research" that conveniently delivers the message that chocolate milk is a better choice than Coke. Proxies such as the School Nutrition Association and the American Dietetic Association then make sweeping statements implying that physicians approve kids drinking unlimited amounts of milk that tastes like candy.

It's all part of a well-oiled public relations campaign that deftly obscures the truth about how various medical groups approach sugar in food. The dairy industry has a lot riding on keeping things murky: For decades, milk sales have been plummeting, but sales of flavored milk have tripled. It would be very helpful indeed if the nation's medical doctors all stood  behind the dairy industry's campaign to put a carton of chocolate milk on every kid's cafeteria tray.

In this first report on the actual policies of various medical groups the dairy industry calls allies, I look at how the American Heart Association, once pre-occupied with the fat Americans eat, is now focused on the risks of heart disease and other dangers posed by the excessive amounts of sugar we and our children consume--including flavored milk.

Read closely and you may find that your child already is drinking more chocolate milk at school than the heart association thinks wise.

In 2009, the heart association issued guidelines on sugar urging that men consume no more than 150 calories worth of "added sugar" daily, and women no more than 100. To put that into perspective, 150 calories of sugar represents the amount in 10 teaspoons, or a bit less than the sugar in a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola.

The heart association reasons that Americans already eat too much and exercise too little. We therefore have little room for "discretionary" calories in the form of sugar, which has no nutritional value. If you are an average sort of guy, consider that can of Coke your entire allotment of sugar for the day.

In January of this year, the association in its journal Circulation published an article identifying cardio-vascular risks for adolescents who eat too much sugar. A third of all U.S. children are overweight or obese. On average they get more than 21 percent of their calories from "added" sugars, meaning sugars that don't occur naturally in food--such as the sugar in an apple--but are put there by the food industry to sell product. (Manufacturers aren't required to identify how much sugar they've added to prepared foods, but consumers can get a fair idea by reading ingredient and nutrition labels carefully.)

A detailed survey of 2157 adolescents aged 12 to 18, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in the years 1999 to 2004, revealed that sugar consumption was positively correlated with several key risks of cardio-vascular disease, including increased triglyceride levels, suppressed HDL ("good" cholesterol) and elevated LDL ("bad" cholesterol). Researchers pointed to an emerging body of science linking sugar and refined carbohydrates with these and other health risks, such as insulin resistance--a precursor to diabetes--and increased fat production by the liver. They said the federal government's position on sugar was out of date.

"In 1986, the Sugars Task Force of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a review of the research then available and concluded that there was no conclusive evidence of an association between sugar consumption and (cardio-vascular disease) or its risk factors," the researchers said. "Since then, the results of several new epidemiological studies and short- and long-term experimentsal studies have provided more evidence linking the intake of carbohydrates and sugars (particularly fructose) and increased risk of (cardio-vascular disease). And importantly, consumption of added sugars has risen substantially since the research reviewed in the Sugar Task force report was done."

According to the heart association, no more than half of discretionary calories--those beyond what are needed to provide proper nutrition--should be consumed as sugar. For children, figuring out what that means can be tricky, since kids come in all shapes and sizes and have different energy and nutritional needs depending on how old and how active they are. Along with its "food pyramid," the U.S. Department of Agriculture has published a chart indicating the discretionary calorie allowances for children of different age and activitiy levels.

For instance, an 11-year-old girl who gets less than 30 minutes worth of "moderate exercise" most days would be allowed 130 discretionary calories. According to the heart association, only half of those--65--should come from sugar. By comparison, a typical eight-ounce serving of chocolate milk contains 14 grams of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, which translates as 3.5 teaspoons or 52.5 calories.

This girl might well have a container of chocolate milk for breakfast. But a second container at lunch would put her 40 calories over her sugar limit--and that represents all the sugar the heart association thinks she should be eating the entire day. In other words, no cupcake at her classmate's birthday party, no soda on the way home, no ice cream for dessert after dinner, no sucking on a lollipop while watching television.

By contrast, a 16-year-old boy who is very active--meaning he gets at least 60 minutes worth of moderate physical activity most days--would be entitled to 650 discretionary calories, half of those--325--from sugar. That represents a much bigger flavored milk allowance--more than six eight-ounce cartons of chocolate milk.

The point is that millions of children already are drinking too much flavored milk at school. Some are taking it at breakfast, lunch and in supper programs--three times a day--then stopping at a convenience store for a 24-ounce Coke containing 290 calories worth of high-fructose corn syrup to drink on the way home. Is it any wonder kids are obese?

The heart association recommends that Americans limit their consumption of sugary beverages--including sodas, sports drinks and ice teas--to no more than 36 ounces per week.

In April of this year, the association urged the USDA to impose a limit on the amount of sugar in school food, something the agency in all the rules and regulations governing the school meals program has never attempted before. The heart association suggests that new school meal guidelines, now pending, should restrict a single serving  of milk to 130 calories or less to hold down the sugar content, and cereal to no more than 7 grams of total sugar. (A 1.25-ounce serving of Kellogg's Raisin Bran contains 11 grams of sugar.)

The association says it is disappointed the USDA would allow schools to serve half of all fruits portions as juice. Too much sugar. It would rather schools serve exclusively whole fruit.

"It just makes sense if you're asking the American public to reduce sugars you wouldn't add more sugar than needed to flavored milk," said heart association science advisor Dorothea Vafiadis. "There has to be a limit."

Associated Press' Big Chocolate Milk Fail

by: euclidarms

Tue May 17, 2011 at 04:43:34 AM PDT

An Associate Press report last week on the controversy surrounding flavored milk in schools was widely reprinted in media outlets across the country, from the Washington Post to Huffington Post to Yahoo! In it, the AP declared that a number of professional and medical groups--including the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics--had issued a "joint statement" in favor of flavored milk, arguing that "the nutritional value of flavored low-fat or skim milk outweighs the harm of added sugar."

There's just one problem with the story: no such "joint statement" was ever issued. The AP is simply the latest victim of a well-oiled dairy industry propaganda campaign designed to fend off efforts to remove chocolate milk from school cafeterias. Not only did the medical groups AP mentioned never issue a statement supporting dairy's claims, some have come out squarely against the practice of routinely feeding kids milk tarted up with sugar.

Dairy Industry Co-Opts Science, Bullies Parents in Pursuit of Profits from Chocolate Milk

by: euclidarms

Thu Apr 28, 2011 at 03:27:31 AM PDT

Los Angeles schools are prepared to announce they will no longer serve flavored milk beginning in the fall, according to a report yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. Superintendent John Deasy says he will make that recommendation to the L.A. school board in July. Could this surprise development in the nation's second-largest school district spell the end of chocolate milk as we know it?

Faced with a cultural shift away from milk in favor of drinking sodas, the U.S. dairy industry has pulled out all the stops to scare parents and school food service directors into believing that kids will collapse in a heap of rickets and osteoporosis unless they have access to milk tarted up with sugar.

It's no surprise that kids love sugar and sweets of all kinds--including chocolate milk and strawberry milk and grape milk and any number of other flavors. The question is whether the dairy claims are true, and whether enticing kids to eat foods laced with added sugar is a good thing in the midst of an obesity epidemic that threatens to cut short the lives of a generation of children and send the nation's health care bill through the roof.

Corporate Food Interests Censor Talk of Rebates in School Meals

by: euclidarms

Thu Apr 21, 2011 at 16:47:45 PM PDT

Giant food service companies apparently will do whatever it takes to squelch information about the impact of rebates on meals served to children in the nation's schools.

At a recent conference hosted by the American Association of School Administrators, representatives of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) who had paid $5,000 to participate in the conference at Denver's convention center were forced to leave after being told that the information they were handing out on industry rebating practices "slandered" at least one of the other participants, which included food service giants Aramark, Chartwells and Sodexo.

D.C. Schools Food Chief Calls Chartwells Contract "Crap"

by: euclidarms

Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 05:59:01 AM PDT

D.C. Publice Schools food services chief Jeffrey Mills is deeply disappointed with the district's contract with cafeteria giant Chartwells, The Slow Cook has learned, calling the agreement "crap" and outlining plans to establish nine satellite production kitchens the schools can use to make their own food sometime in the future.

Lunch Ladies Tell USDA to Stuff New Meal Guidelines

by: euclidarms

Wed Mar 30, 2011 at 04:42:22 AM PDT

The School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 of the nation's cafeteria professionals, has told the USDA it objects to nearly every aspect of proposed meal guidelines that call for bigger helpings of fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, fewer French fries, and less salt.

Food policy advocates--including first lady Michelle Obama--have hailed the guidelines as a giant step forward toward healthier school meals. But lunch ladies complain the federal government is sticking them with a bill they can't afford, that the rules in some cases may be impossible to implement, and that kids may not eat the improved cafeteria fare the government is proposing. The SNA says key provisions of the guidelines should be delayed, softened or abandoned altogether.

The SNA's formal comments, submitted to the USDA this week, point up the huge disconnect that sometimes exists between policy makers and those who work on the front lines of the school food controversy. For instance, Congress in its recent re-authorization of the school lunch program increased funding by just six cents per lunch. The USDA now estimates that the proposed meal guidelines will require 15 cents more for lunch and 51 cents more for breakfast.

Investigaton Reveals How Food Industry Rebates Thwart Healthy School Meals

by: euclidarms

Tue Mar 15, 2011 at 03:42:49 AM PDT

Food manufacturers catch plenty of grief over the way they market junk food to kids. But the public is entirely unaware of the hundreds of millions of dollars those same corporations spend influencing the choice of foods served to children in schools by paying food service companies off-the-book rebates--sometimes referred to as kickbacks--to push their brand of industrial processed goods on unwitting school districts.

Giving a rare glimpse into the highly secretive rebate system, assistant New York State Attorney General John F. Carroll last week described in detail his unprecedented investigation of the influence rebates wield in the world of food service companies like Sodexo, Chartwells and Aramark. As a result of that investigation, Sodexo, the French-owned food service giant, last year agreed to pay New York $20 million to settle claims it had improperly withheld rebates it was supposed to turn over to its school district clients.

Speaking to a meeting of the School Nutrition Association in Washington, D.C., Carroll said what he uncovered about Sodexo was just the tip of the iceberg. His investigation continues, and he expects more claims to be brought against other food service providers over rebates that not only create "an inherent conflict of interest" in the choice of foods children are served at school, but also discourage the use of locally produced goods from smaller suppliers, including local farmers.

Decoding Congress' Stealth Formula for Raising the Price of School Lunch

by: euclidarms

Mon Mar 07, 2011 at 15:09:39 PM PST

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing-especially when it results in a stealthy government formula for raising lunch prices at the nation's schools that will cause hundreds of thousands of children-perhaps millions--to abandon the program.

In its recent re-authorization of the school meals program, Congress included a provision that would force schools to raise the price they charge students who don't qualify as low-income.

Some hailed this little-noted mandate as a way to generate what the USDA estimates could be a $2.6 billion windfall for schools over 10 years. But I wondered, did this estimate include all the kids who will stop buying the much-maligned school lunch if it gets more expensive? And how could the federal government possibly know how many kids would drop out of the lunch line rather than pay the higher tab?

It took some weeks of prodding, but I finally obtained an internal document from the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services branch revealing how the agency at the Senate's behest formulated the magic number--$2.6 billion-that it then passed on to the committee where the price mandate was hatched.

It also confirms what I originally suspected: The government can't really know what will happen to participation in the lunch program if schools raise prices. You might expect the federal government to bring every possible resource to bear and weigh ever so carefully a decision that stands to affect some 90,000 public schools. But that is not the case.

"We do not prepare or publish cost estimate memoranda in the way that the Congressional Budget Office sends such materials to members of Congress," explained a USDA spokesman. "There was no formal document or methodological write-up given to the committee.  The agency gave the committee a number in answer to a question."

So here's where the number came from:

School food experts for years have known that raising the price of lunch means some students who pay "full price"--about 12 million of the 32 million who participate in the school lunch program on any given day-will stop buying it.

In 2005, Mathematica Policy Research, contracted by the USDA to conduct one of the agency's periodic reviews [PDF] of the school meals program, created a statistical model that estimated 56 percent of paying students would buy lunch if the price were $1.50, but that fewer-50 percent-would pay if the price were $2.00.

It's important to note that Mathematica did not conduct a study of children's actual purchasing behavior at different price levels. What they gave the USDA was a modeled prediction based on all sorts of data the firm collected from 2,314 students at 398 schools that year, including the types of food served, the amount of time kids were given to eat, prices charged, and interviews with children and their parents revealing what the kids typically ate in the course of a day and family income.

Based on Mathematica's prediction within this narrow price range, Food and Nutrition Services extrapolated its own formula in order to respond to the Senate committee's request for an estimate: For every cent the price of lunch increases, students who pay full price will drop out at a rate of .11 percent. It then calculated that the Senate's proposed lunch price mandate would generate $2.6 billion more income over 10 years-and cause nearly 500,000 paying students to stop buying lunch.

But that's hardly the end of the story. Under the new mandate, schools will be required to raise prices each year by an amount equal to the rate of inflation plus two percent until they are completely caught up with what the USDA estimates is the actual cost of providing a school lunch, currently $2.72. Many schools now charge as little as $1.50.

As if things couldn't get any more complicated, the government's baseline is a moving target. What the USDA calculates as the cost of providing lunch-the amount it gives schools to pay for a fully-reimbursable meal--is adjusted upward annually with the rate of inflation. Thus, the vast majority of schools will take longer than 10 years to reach the government's baseline. Nearly half will take more than 20 years.

Could the USDA's formula for calculating drop-outs possibly hold up that long and under all sorts of different economic conditions?

"They [the USDA] asked us that, and we told them we had a problem with it," said Mathematica senior researcher Anne Gordon, one of the report's primary authors. "I don't remember exactly, but I think it was around $3 we couldn't make a prediction. We can't know what will happen at that price, because none of the schools we looked at charged that much."

In other words, accepting the USDA's predictions years into the future requires a leap of faith. "It's probably the best they can do," Gordon said.

The prospect of annual price hikes out to the horizon has caused great alarm among the nation's lunch ladies. In the current recession, they are grappling with millions of dollars' worth of meals eaten by children whose families are deemed able to pay, but haven't.

School food service directors opposed a congressional edict to raise prices, but would have preferred a House version that "sunsetted" the law after 10 years and required the USDA to conduct an impact assessment after four years. In a last-minute rush to enact the child nutrition legislation, that version never came up for a vote.

When I asked the School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 school food workers, to comment on the new law, they reported results from some recent price increases in different school districts.

When the lunch price rose 15 cents to $1.75 in Munster, Ind., in 2008, for instance, nine percent of the kids dropped out. In Caroline County, Md., the price rose 35 cents to $2 in 2007 and participation plummeted 16 percent. In Franklin Township, Ind., schools hiked the price 15 cents to $2.10 in 2009 and 12 percent of the kids stopped buying. Schools in Willoughby-Eastlake, Ohio, raised the price 10 cents in 2008 to $2.60 and participation fell 10 percent.

SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner said that while food service directors accept Mathematica's 2005 report as "the most comprehensive data available to FNS, they question it's accuracy in portraying how families will react to current price increases."

"The economy is worse than in school year 2004-2005, and their own experience tells them that participation drops when you increase prices," Pratt-Heavner said.

The School Nutrition Association is asking the USDA to test increasing lunch prices on a pilot basis before imposing the congressional mandate nationwide.

Besides higher prices, other looming factors will likely suppress school lunch participation and upset the cafeteria business model.  Upgraded nutrition standards-including more helpings of vegetables, more whole grains, fewer French fries and other potato products, and much less salt in food-are expected to cause more paying kids to reject the federally-subsidized hot meal.

In a 2010 report to the USDA [PDF], Mathematica predicted that adopting a full range of improvements to make meals "healthier" would result in 5 percent of elementary school children dropping out of the program, and even more-12 percent-at the secondary school level.

Sociologist Janet Poppendieck, whose book on the national school lunch program, Free for All, has become a widely-cited text, rejects the idea of forcing schools to raise prices across the board.

Undercharging may give an unfair advantage to some families who can afford to pay at the expense of low-income children. But Poppendieck says the USDA is probably underestimating the number of parents who will react angrily to higher prices and pull their children out of the lunch line. And that could hurt the entire program's ability to function.

She fears for millions of children on the margins--those who aren't exactly affluent, but don't qualify as "low income" either.

"If we lose them, it's not just the loss of children, we lose the claim that this is not just a welfare program," Poppendieck said. "And the more school lunch has the label of being a welfare program, it imposes a kind of a shame tax on kids who do want to participate. I think that's the wrong direction to go."

Buyer's Remorse Over Better School Food?

by: euclidarms

Mon Feb 21, 2011 at 05:20:13 AM PST

School food is poised to look less like prison fodder and more like a Moosewood Restaurant buffet if new USDA guidelines are adopted. Colorful vegetables-lots of them-more whole fruit, more whole grains, less salt, less processed junk-that's the plat du jour. The only question now is, who picks up the check?

A tight-fisted Congress would only ante up six extra cents for school lunch in its recent re-authorization of child nutrition programs. Now the USDA says that's not even close to covering all the goodies school food advocates have been asking for. Between more expensive ingredients and the increased labor needed to turn them into meals, the USDA estimates [PDF] school lunch soon will cost an extra 15 cents, and breakfast a whopping 51 cents more.

That compares to the $2.72 the federal government currently pays schools to provide a fully-reimbursable school lunch, $1.48 for breakfast.

According to wonks in the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services branch, the money to pay for these long-awaited changes will just have to come from state and local governments that at the moment are worse than broke. In other words, schools will be switching out frozen tater tots for fresh sweet potatoes and replacing processed beef crumbles with scratch-cooked spinach lasagna at the same time law makers are sending pink slips to teachers, shuttering health clinics for the poor, and unscrewing light bulbs in street lamps to resolve the worst budget deficits since the Great Depression.

Is anyone else feeling a teeny bit of buyer's remorse?

I count myself among those who think the food served to kids in school could be a whole lot better. But something about the notion that kids must have fresh local broccoli on their lunch trays while teachers worry about the next mortgage payment doesn't sit right. I'm doubly conflicted, because after a year of writing about school food on a daily basis, and monitoring what goes on in the cafeteria at my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia , I know that kids routinely refuse to eat and throw in the trash vast quantities of those very same vegetables and whole grains that constitute such a large portion of the looming school meals bill.

And it's not just me. Here's a Chicago Tribune story exposing the same thing in cafeterias there.  The Tribune found hundreds of pounds of food being tossed in the trash in a single school, including unopened cartons of milk and juice, uneaten oranges and bananas, whole cartons of cereal. Just as they do here in D.C., Chicago school children describe the healthier food as "nasty."

We are about to embark on a multii-billion-dollar culinary experiment with unknowable results. This is faith-based nutrition on a huge scale. Nationwide, the USDA says the proposed changes will add $6.8 billion to the cost of preparing school meals in the first five years. The federal government spends $13 billion annually on school feeding programs.

State and local governments currently contribute around nine percent of the total cost of school food service. In California alone, the new guidelines will add $75 million to the annual bill just for fruits and vegetables, according to the Environmental Working Group. Where will Sacramento, currently in utter budget meltdown, come up with such a sum? The EWG proposes diverting money currently paid to subsidize dairy, cotton and rice farmers.

In an effort to wrap my head around all this, I recently spent a few hours reviewing financial briefs for all 50 states. I could hardly have assigned myself a more dismal task. It truly is a blood bath out there. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [PDF], states are seeing the worst decline in tax revenues ever recorded.  So far, at least 46 states have reduced services and 30 have raised taxes to some degree. With billions in federal stimulus dollars drying up, local budget woes will only get worse-and stay bad for years to come. Even education spending is now fair game for deficit hawks.

Consider these factoids:

Newly-elected California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed closing a $25 billion budget gap by cutting salaries for non-union state employees, slashing funding for higher education by 20 percent and even reducing aid for K-12 schools if voters don't approve tax increases.

Los Angeles, described as on the brink of bankruptcy, is planning to send pink slips to 4,000 teachers, just in case the city needs to let some of them go.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has called his state "functionally bankrupt," and proposes to close most of a $10 billion budget shortfall by reducing education funding and Medicaid.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells voters he will not raise taxes, but his approach to addressing an $11 billion budget deficit would include cutting $820 million in education funding.

Arizona is so broke, lawmakers are considering mortgaging state office buildings.

And in Madison, Wis., thousands of state workers-including teachers--recently rallied to protest Gov. Scott Walker's plan to cut their benefits and bargaining rights--and his threat to call out the National Guard if things get out of hand.

Here in D.C., extra funding for school meals approved under a "Healthy Schools Act" narrowly avoided budget cuts last year. But now the city faces a huge new shortfall of some $600 million, much larger than anticipated.

How does all of this square with the idea that schools should be feeding kids fresh chicken on the bone rather than re-heated chicken nuggets? Advocates would say we need to embrace the USDA guidelines in order to head off an epidemic of childhood obesity--and the nearly $300 billion estimated annual cost of medical care and lost productivity due to weight-related illness. But do kids really need a full-blown restaurant meal covering all the food groups every day?

Already schools on average lose more than 30 cents on every lunch they serve.  They may soon be forced to start charging students higher prices. Yet Lucy Gettman, director of federal programs for the National School Boards Association, says the outlook for funding school meals may not be so dire. Some states and some school districts have already been moving toward the kind of food service the USDA is proposing.

But there's more turbulence on the horizon. Pending standards for food sold in vending machines and in school stores-presumably requiring healthy choices rather than candy, chips and soft drinks-will likely cut into food service revenues, Gettman said. Congress has also told the USDA to examine how schools assign operational costs to food service, another potential drain.

"Over the last few years, three dozen states have either changed state laws or have considered changing state laws regarding school nutrition," Gettman said. "Every state and every school district is probably going to be in a different place. Some may be very close to meeting some of the standards. But for those that haven't, there may be a very wide gap."

The School Nutrition Association, representing some 53,000 school cafeteria workers across the country, is looking for ways the federal government can contribute more to pay for the new meal standards. For starters, they are asking the USDA to consider giving schools credit toward commodity food purchases for serving breakfast.

The USDA currently awards schools about 20 cents toward purchasing commodity goods for every lunch meal they serve. The program does not cover breakfast, and many schools are now trying to increase breakfast service by offering it in the classroom, which serves the dual purpose of ensuring kids aren't forced to learn on an empty stomach while also generating more federal reimbursements for the food program.

Still, I can't help thinking there ought to be a way to make school food much less complicated. There must be a better funding mechanism that doesn't pit kids against other worthy government programs for the needy.

Maybe it's time for a national guilt relief act in the form of a big, fat federal tax on soda and junk food that pays for school lunch. Now that's something I would not lose any sleep over.

Still Think Raising the Price of School Lunch is a Good Idea?

by: euclidarms

Tue Feb 15, 2011 at 04:45:31 AM PST

At a time when many families are least able to pay-and are racking up millions in debt at local cafeterias-Congress would profoundly alter the school meal landscape by forcing schools to raise prices.

Schools that now charge only $1.50 for lunch would, over time, have to increase the price to at least match the federal contribution for a fully-subsidized meal--currently $2.72--according to a provision in Congress' recent re-authorization of the federally-subsidized school meals program.

The Truth About "Whole Grains" in School Meals

by: euclidarms

Fri Jan 28, 2011 at 03:39:41 AM PST

If the U.S. Department of Agriculture has its way, kids will soon be seeing lots more whole grain food on their cafeteria trays--up to 80 percent more at breakfast under the agency's proposed new meal guidelines [PDF].

But as my colleague Lisa Suriano pointed out in this space recently, if you thought that meant spelt and quinoa suddenly making an appearance in the nation's lunch rooms, you might want to re-assess. In fact, federal rules permit products containing just 51 percent "whole grain" flour to be classified as "whole grain."

New Report Challenges Dairy Industry Campaign Promoting Chocolate Milk in School

by: euclidarms

Mon Jan 10, 2011 at 13:26:54 PM PST

"Milk -- it does a body good," claimed a '90s dairy industry advertising campaign, and few have dared to question the industry's position that children need calcium and vitamin D however they can get it, even if it comes from sweetened flavored milk. (The National Dairy Council's latest campaign is even called "Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk.") But a landmark study on calcium and vitamin D nutrition recently published by the Institute of Medicine poses a serious challenge to that idea, finding that only girls aged 9 to 18 might need more calcium -- and only by an amount contained in a half-serving of calcium-fortified cereal .

In setting new dietary standards, the IOM found claims that Americans are deficient in calcium and vitamin D to be greatly exaggerated. The dairy industry, which has spent millions of dollars promoting sugary flavored milk in schools based on the idea that children are threatened with a "calcium crisis," is fighting efforts to remove flavored milk from school menus, saying kids will be in danger of not getting the calcium they need to build strong bones.

Obama's New Normal: Tax Breaks for Billionaires, Higher Lunch Prices for School Kids

by: euclidarms

Tue Dec 14, 2010 at 04:19:03 AM PST

Somehow Congress can find money to give tax breaks to billionaires. But in a little-noted provision of its reauthorization of child nutrition programs, signed into law yesterday by President Barack Obama as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, lawmakers have told schools to raise lunch prices to at least cover what it views as the full cost of making a meal. Entitled "equity in school lunch pricing," the new mandate could, by increasing prices gradually for students whose families aren't low income, pump an additional $2.6 billion into the school meal program over the next 10 years, according to one estimate.

What I'm Thankful For: Salad Bars in Every School: Healthy Food For All Kids!

by: chefannc

Tue Nov 30, 2010 at 07:21:07 AM PST

For the past year Beth Collins and I have worked hard on The Lunch Box's project; The Great American Salad Bar Project (GASP) with our partner Whole Food's Market.  With the help of Whole Food's shoppers we raised money to donate over 550 salad bars for schools across the country and I'm thankful for all of the support we received from Whole Foods and their shoppers for this project.

Not Your Momma's Lunch Ladies: The New Faces in Boulder Cafeterias

by: euclidarms

Fri Nov 12, 2010 at 04:20:05 AM PST

I was happily stuffing cheese quesadillas at Boulder's Monarch High School one morning when a perky young woman in a crisp white shirt, natty black apron and spiffy billed cap extended a paper container filled with freshly mashed potatoes in my direction.

"Taste this!" she said. "Do you think they have enough salt? I'm not sure they have enough salt."

In fact, they did need a little salt...But wait! Who was this person, and what was she doing in a school kitchen? Weren't "lunch ladies" supposed to be old and gnarly and wear hair nets?

Turns out her name is Margaret Hancock, a recent graduate of the elite Culinary Institute of America,  and she'd spent a good part of the last two years pestering Ann Cooper for a job cooking in the Boulder schools.

"I've been trying to get my foot in the door since the program began," Hancock said.

Nearby was Hancock's co-worker, Ali Metzger. She, too, was a CIA graduate. "I was joking that if people at the CIA knew Ann Cooper was advertising jobs on Craig's List, they'd be all over it," Metzger quipped.

News flash, Ali: They already are all over it. There are two CIA externs waiting to move to Boulder as we speak.

As I discovered during my week in Boulder school kitchens, Cooper not only is remaking the food service in area schools, ditching junk food for meals cooked fresh, she's also created a parallel culinary universe where newly trained chefs forgo a glamorous career in fancy restaurants in order to mash potatoes for teenagers.

"When I first applied, Ann said I was too young," said Hancock, who sports degrees in business and culinary arts. So Hancock went off to run a bagel shop in Denver, but kept calling and calling until Cooper gave in. "It's a way for me to do something meaningful. This is the first job I've ever had where I walk out the door at the end of the day and no matter how many hours I work, I feel good about it."

Even the sous chef who runs the kitchen at Monarch High has caught the fever. Yuri Sanow, a professional chef of many years experience, was working at the Black Hawk Casino when he saw an ad Cooper posted on Craig's List. He gave up a hefty annual bonus to pull up stakes and come work in Boulder.

"All I was doing was making millions of dollars for a big corporation," said Sanow. "Here, I feel like I'm making a difference."

Before you imagine a trend sweeping the school food landscape, know this: These people have no interest in slinging corn dogs and tater tots. They're only here because Cooper, in her makeover of Boulder's school menu, determined that what the schools needed desperately was a handful of production kitchens manned by trained chefs to make meals for the entire district. The chef's jackets, aprons and monogrammed caps reading "School Food Project" are all intended to project a sense of order, competency and professionalism. In Boulder, lunch ladies never had a uniform before.

Sarah, who asked not to be identified by her last name, was a sous chef at an upscale Boulder restaurant who wound up in a school kitchen as a parent volunteer. But she was soon ready to quit after she saw the stuff the schools were serving as food. "They said, 'Hang in there. Ann Cooper's coming.' And they gave me a copy of her book." Sarah now directs the meal service at Casey Middle School.

Prior to Cooper's arrival, food was being prepared by those very same lunch ladies in 22 of Boulder's 48 schools. Eleven kitchens made food for multiple schools. Eleven prepared meals only for individual schools. The cooks involved were minimally skilled. They received virtually no training or oversight. Cooper cringes to think of all the waste and inefficiency involved. In her ideal world, she would consolidate all of the district's cooking into one central facility where everything could be managed to a fare-thee-well.

A central kitchen that size, she said, would probably cost $10 million and require voters to approve a bond measure. And that is precisely her objective.

Now in her second year of the makeover, Cooper has reduced the number of production kitchens to five and hired a busload of eager chefs--some young and starry-eyed, like Hancock and Metzger, others older and more experienced, like Sanow--to prepare the food. Henceforth, the lunch ladies would only re-heat and serve it.

Why didn't Cooper just train the lunch ladies to do the job? "We have our hands full just making sure they re-heat the food properly and don't cook it to death," explained Cooper. "They just don't have the skill sets for the level of food preparation that's required.  Thirty-five to 40 percent of them didn't know how to use e-mail. Forty percent don't know how to open a document on the computer. You need professionals in some capacity if you're going to change a system of this size."

The great kitchen re-alignment started with a simple formula: 20 meals for every hour worked. That's the production level Cooper would aim for and it spelled bad news for the lunch ladies. In order to accommodate the new production teams--five district managers, each managing eight or nine schools, five sous chefs, and assistants such as Metzger and Hancock for each sous chef--hours would have to be cut elsewhere.

From the lunch lady budget covering all 48 schools, Cooper slashed 265 daily work hours. "For people who were working eight yours, that meant they were working 6.5. People who were working five hours, they went to four. Fours hours is now three; three hours is now two," Cooper said. "We lost a couple of people and a few people thought it was time to retire. But at the end of the day, anyone who wanted to work had a job."

The entire kitchen staff, meaning all those lunch ladies, works part-time. And, yes, some work as few as two hours per day for wages that start at $10.61 an hour. If they make it to "step 7," they could look forward to $14.81 an hour. That compares to a pay range of $13.64 to $18.59 an hour for production cooks. Sous chefs who run the production kitchens earn "around $40,000" Cooper said.

According to one published report, some of the kitchen staff now complain that they have to work hours off the clock to complete their assignments.

To get everyone on the same page, Cooper in the first year of the program--fall 2009--spent some $200,000 in privately donated funds for a week's worth of training for the entire kitchen staff. That meant more than 150 employees took the ServSafe course in food sanitation. Two long-time collaborators of Cooper flew in from California to teach basic kitchen skills: how to re-heat and serve food, how to use a thermometer, how to use knives, how to set up and break down salad bars, how to manage a cash register. There were team-building exercises with a local coach. Cooper and her business partner, Beth Collins, also gave instruction.

This year, in August, Cooper spent another $75,000 training her new production crew, giving basic lessons in how the Boulder system works, familiarizing them with recipes, how to pack and ship food. A software representative came in to explain a new system for integrating recipes, production schedules and inventory.

"If you're going to make these changes sustainable and systemic you have to fund training," Cooper said. "You have to train your people and give them the tools to succeed."

One of the five new district managers is Brandy Dreibelbis, who gave up a job as executive chef for Whole Foods in Boulder to lock arms with Cooper.

Originally from Delaware with a degree in hotel and restaurant management, Dreibelbis had spent years working a frantic pace in restaurants when she took a flyer and applied for a job with Whole Foods. She landed in Boulder, and within six months had the top kitchen position. She liked the new lifestyle, too: formerly a beach girl, she climbs mountains, skis, hikes in winter on snow shoes. But after two years as executive chef, she found few options to advance and continue cooking. Meanwhile, she'd seen numerous reports about changes happening in Boulder's cafeterias. Whole Foods was raising money for the project.

"I went in for an interview and left feeling a little unsure about venturing into something so different food-wise than what I had known, and I wasn't sure if I was really ready to leave Whole Foods," Dreibelbis said. "I came back to work from a day off and all of a sudden I was surrounded by posters and advertisements for healthy school lunches and pictures of Ann at work.  I thought this was probably a sign."

"I took this job because I wanted to be a part of something that is truly important and I wanted to make a difference," Dreibelbis said. "I wanted to get in on this project and have a part in a model that any district could pick up and learn from."

Not only did Dreibelbis take the job, she started poaching talent from among her former underlings at Whole Foods. That would include Ali Metzger and Margaret Hancock's twin sister, Michelle, who works as a production cook at Casey Middle School. She took a pay cut to leave Whole Foods.

"I never had a job before where I was giving back," Michelle Hancock explains. "It's rewarding to see the kids eating the food and raving about it. One day I bumped into a mom in the parking lot and she talked to me for half an hour about how much she loves what we're doing and now she wants to get involved, too."

Hancock's supervisor, Sous Chef Phil Stinar, a onetime Army cook, was recruited by an old colleague in the restaurant business who also had signed on with Cooper as a district manager. With 25 years of corporate kitchen work under his belt, Stinar has been around: regional manager for Applebee's, eight years at Cheescake Factory, a stint at Rock Bottom Brewery. He likes the mellower pace of a school chef.

"I love this work," he said. "The pace is set by me. We produce a really good product. Some of my friends in the business have asked me, 'Why do you want to be a lunch lady?' I tell them I'm not a lunch lady. I run a production kitchen."

Next: The new food in Boulder schools. It's not quite cooked from scratch...yet.