The National School Lunch Program is a federally funded program that provides reduced-price or free lunches daily to over 30.5 million American children.

To qualify for free meals children must come from families “with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level”. To give you an example, 130% of the poverty level for a family of four is a total household income of $28,665.

Participating schools receive cash subsidies for the lunches (and in some cases after-school snacks). The average cost for one free lunch for one student for one day is $2.68.

According to the official website of the National School Lunch Program, the total cost of providing these free and low-cost lunches was $9.8 billion in 2008. That’s a big price tag, especially considering that many students find the food “nasty” and refuse to eat it. (See last week’s post.) And, as you’ll see below, the food may be contributing to the rising rate of childhood obesity.

Here is an excerpt from a U.S. News & World Report article from 2009 called “School Lunches Too Fatty and Sugary, Critics Say” that examines the low nutritional value of school-provided lunches. Writer Amanda Gardner reports:

“Unhealthy eating at school, these food experts believe, is contributing to the surge in obesity rates among U.S. children. Obesity rates have more than doubled among infants and toddlers aged 2 to 5, quadrupled in children aged 6 to 11 and more than tripled among adolescents aged 12 to 19, according to an editorial in the journal.

“The rising rates have health experts concerned about a nascent epidemic of obesity-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, in young people…

“Sam Kass, the chef who followed the Obamas to the White House, also has put the school lunch program under fire. According to a report in The New York Times in January, Cass attributes the nutritional shortcomings in school lunches, at least in part, to the use of donated surplus agricultural commodities that result from government subsidies.

“ ‘As a result, he says, meals served to students are low in vegetables and disproportionately high in fat, additives, preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup,’ the Times report said.”

To me, the frightening thing about this article is the idea that we’re making children fat by serving them free, low-nutrition meals to the tune of about $10 billion dollars a year. So we’re spending lots of money on foods that kids either find nasty and won’t eat or will eat to the detriment of their health. Government at its finest?

In recent news, First Lady Michelle Obama looks at how America might combat childhood obesity by changing the foods provided in schools and motivating children to exercise more.

Here’s an excerpt with source information at the bottom:

“…First lady Michelle Obama launched her highly buzzed campaign to fight childhood obesity today, a problem she called one of the ‘most serious threats to (children’s) future.’

“The initiative, dubbed ‘Let’s Move,’ presents a bold and ambitious agenda to reshape how American children eat, move, and live.

“…Among the initiatives in the agenda are bringing healthier lunches and snacks into school cafeterias, eliminating “food deserts” by opening grocery stores in under-served communities and encouraging children to be more active by joining the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge.

“…Childhood obesity threatens to make this generation of American children the first to live shorter lives than their parents, doctors say. And those lives could be riddled with some surprising consequences. Overweight girls are more likely to enter puberty earlier, while overweight boys tend to have delayed puberty.

“Additionally, obese children are more likely to suffer from asthma and the extra weight can cause liver problems and Type 2 diabetes, which is an adult disease. The arteries of overweight children often resemble those of a 45-year-old, which can lead to heart disease.

“Obese children are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, experts say.

“…The White House has created a Web site LetsMove.gov as a resource to parents offering facts, strategies, healthy recipes and exercise plans.”

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/obamas-fight-childhood-obesity/story?id=9786659&page=1

“White House Launches ‘Let’s Move’ Campaign to Fight Childhood Obesity: First Lady Michelle Obama Pledges to Increase Number of Healthy Schools”
By Sharyn Alfonsi and Christine Brozyna
ABC News, Washington, Feb. 9, 2010

I welcome any comments on the matter!

South Carolina’s Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who hopes to replace the missing-in-action, weeping lover of Argentine women, Mr. Mark Sanford, as governor, said during a recent speech:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

Who was he referring to? Bauer indirectly compared people receiving government assistance, babies making babies, and parents with children who get free or reduced lunches at school with the feeding of stray animals. Yikes. Poor word choice?

Bauer continued to claim that the government could not afford to keep doling out funds on behalf of its citizens without some kind of responsibility being shown on the receiving end, such as parents attending teacher conferences. He said, “We can’t afford to keep just giving money away.”

Though I certainly don’t endorse Bauer’s idea that feeding the poor leads to unwanted reproduction, after reading about his foot-in-the-mouth experience, I wanted to do more research on the National School Lunch Program (one of the programs he targets) to see how much it costs, how many children it serves, and any criticism of the program.

If you’ve read Crazy Like a Fox, you know that Ben Chavis didn’t have AIPCS take part in the National School Lunch Program once he took over. He thought that students generally found the food “nasty” (his word), so as a result they didn’t eat it and the school ended up with a lot of food waste. In addition, running the program would have required paying people (under union wages) an over-priced amount.

Sure enough, right away in my Google search I found an article that claimed: “For decades, American students have tagged school lunch as ‘nasty.’”

The article, “Rethinking School Lunch” by Barbara Cervone, provides background on the National School Lunch Program, which cost $9.3 billion in fiscal year 2008, according to the National School Lunch Program official website. “Rethinking School Lunch” continues with:

“In the 1930s, when policymakers introduced the idea of school lunch, they were not thinking about taste-bud appeal.

“Instead, they saw the school cafeteria as a place to address two problems: how to feed the hungry children of the Great Depression, and what to do with a rising agricultural surplus that was plunging American farmers into bankruptcy.

“When the United States entered World War II, nutrition became ‘a matter of self defense,’ Susan Levine writes in School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton University Press, 2008). In 1946 Congress established the National School Lunch Program—which is still in existence, serving approximately 30.5 million lunches per day…

“In the 1940s and 50s, school lunch was seen as a program for all children, rich and poor. In the 1960s it evolved into a poverty program, though middle-class students had access to unsubsidized school lunches.

“From the start, however, the National School Lunch Program was grossly underfunded, reaching a low in the 1980s under the Reagan administration. Schools turned to private food companies, including fast food chains, to cut costs and operate their cafeterias more efficiently. They also found ways to meet federal nutrition standards with lower quality foods—with the Reagan administration famously suggesting that ketchup could be counted as a vegetable.

“Today, many critics point out that the school lunch program, rather than contributing to food security among low-income families, has become a dumping ground for foods we have too much of, and which are not particularly healthy. Typical school meals sell well to children—in part, because their cheap ingredients are highly processed, with high fat and lots of preservatives.”

http://www.whatkidscando.org/featurestories/2009/11_school_lunch/index.html

Stay tuned next week as I share more research on the National School Lunch Program.