Why Kids Are Eating Fewer School Meals and Wasting More

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times revealed that students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are wasting $100,000 in food a day, approximately 10 percent of the district's food costs. David Binkle, the director of food services, cites the new United States Department of Agriculture guidelines that require students to take three of the meal requirements offered -- including one serving of a fruit or vegetable -- as the cause.

Many school food advocates, including the School Nutrition Association, think the new requirement is too strict, and that we shouldn't make students take food they aren't going to eat.

Another issue creating frustration with the new guidelines is an almost 2 percent decrease in the number of students eating school lunch once the guidelines were implemented. A report issued by the SNA compares data from the first three months in the 2012 school year to the same time span in 2013. Overall, the number of students eating school lunch decreased 1.93 percent, which includes students who pay full price and those who received free or reduced-priced lunches.* While we won't know the data for the whole school year until this summer, these findings may be cause for concern.

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The decrease means that school districts are receiving less revenue while their costs are going up, a situation SNA and many school districts find untenable. The solution that SNA proposes is a relaxation of the guidelines, most notably removing the requirement that each student take one serving of a fruit or vegetable with each lunch. This, they suggest, will relieve some cost burden for the districts and will reduce significantly the food waste that districts are experiencing.

Food waste and declining student participation in school lunch is indeed a problem, and I agree with the SNA that we must find a solution. Districts have been asked to make major changes to their food programs without much support to help them offset the increased costs and students' negative reactions to healthier food.

William J. McCarthy, a UCLA professor of health policy and management, said the cost of wasted food "is a small investment for permanently enlarging our children's receptivity to the foods most likely to prolong their lives and minimize their risk of the major chronic diseases that kill Americans."

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Many school districts can't cover that cost indefinitely. The answer, however, is not reducing the standards set for healthier lunch. Our nation is facing a health crisis among our children, and the guidelines are designed to help reduce the growing prevalence of obesity among school-aged children. We shouldn't back away from our goals. Instead, we need a solution that will maintain the nutrition standards that the USDA has established and answers the question, "How do we get kids to eat the healthy food they are being served?"

The answer is food education in the core curriculum. The USDA guidelines for improved school food -- which includes professional training, money for new equipment and a small increase ($.06 per meal) in federal reimbursements -- is missing food education from the equation.

The core curriculum is designed to ensure that all school kids are gaining the knowledge they need to succeed in the classroom. But classroom achievement -- and future achievement -- doesn't depend solely on academics. A child's health is a big factor, and children's eating habits have an enormous impact on their health.

There is nothing else we do more often -- or more consistently -- than eat. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks: A big part of each day consists of thinking about, buying, preparing and consuming food. And with the decline of home economics classes, cooking at home and direct contact with agriculture and agrarian communities, children are passing into adulthood with very little exposure to real food and very little knowledge about nutrition.

Why would a child choose an apricot over hot Cheetos or a Pop-Tart when he doesn't understand the consequences of his daily choices? Why would anyone choose salad over nachos if they've developed a taste for salt and fat, while fresh greens are a mystery?

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At Boulder Valley School District, where I'm the director of food services, we began implementing changes that meet or exceed the current USDA guidelines five years ago. We anticipated negative reactions, and we created a food education plan to help ease children and their families into the new, healthier food: food tastings, Junior Chef competitions, school gardens and salad bar education programs.

After seeing a 4 percent decline of student participation in the school lunch program in 2010, we've seen steady increases each year between 3 and 7 percent, and we've long since exceeded the rate of students who ate school lunch before the changes. But Boulder Valley is a medium-sized school district where we've worked hard to fundraise to create a food education plan. We need food education in all schools, and for that to happen, we need food education core standards and curriculum that is available across the nation.

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It's not fair to expect children to switch from cookies to kale without telling them why it's important and giving them a chance to get used to it. But it's also not fair to give up on their ability to make that switch. Let's give them the education they need to make the right decisions. Let's make sure all schools institute food literacy as part of the core curriculum; it's the only way we'll change our children's relationship with food, cultivate their palates and save their health.

* The SNA also reports a 1.05% increase among students who receive free school lunch -- an important fact for those of us who see school food as an important way to nourish our country's most vulnerable children.

Chef Ann Cooper is a celebrated author, chef, educator and enduring advocate for better food for all children. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Ann has been a chef for more than 30 years, over 15 of those in school food programs. Her books, Bitter Harvest and Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, established her as a leading advocate for safe, sustainable food. Known as the Renegade Lunch Lady, Ann has been honored by The National Resources Defense Council, selected as a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and awarded an honorary doctorate from SUNY Cobleskill for her work on sustainable agriculture. In 2009, Ann founded Food Family Farming Foundation (F3), a nonprofit focusing on solutions to the school food crisis. F3's pivotal project is The Lunch Box, a web portal that provides free and accessible tools, recipes and resources to support school food reform.