The United States Department of Agriculture released new nutrition guidelines for school meals, this morning. The new standards, which were prompted by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was championed by First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her Let’s Move! campaign to reduce childhood obesity.
Expect to see more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables and to see less saturated fat, transfat and sodium on lunchroom trays. A side-by-side comparison of the old versus the new rules is available here.
In announcing the new rules, the First Lady said: “As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat, and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet. And when we’re putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria. When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won’t be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home. We want the food they get at school to be the same kind of food we would serve at our own kitchen tables.”
Seattle Schools put out a release today stating that the district is already meeting most of the new guidelines.
“Seattle has been very progressive with changing the way we offer meals, offering fruits and vegetables every day, as well as whole grain-rich foods,” said Wendy Weyer, Director of Nutrition Services for Seattle Public Schools. “There is a new requirement that we only offer fat-free or low-fat milk varieties, which we are already doing in Seattle.”
Nationwide, a number of groups put out statements praising the new guidelines. Those included the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Share Our Strength, and the Food Research and Action Center, which said:
“The new USDA nutrition standards for school meals are extraordinarily important to the health and learning of America’s school children. Nearly 32 million children eat lunch at school every day; more than 20 million of them are low-income children whose families are struggling to make ends meet. School meals are crucial to these children, and the new standards will go a long way to remedy nutritional shortfalls and help address the nation’s obesity problem.” Read FRAC’s full statement here.
As the New York Times points out in their article, the food industry succeeded in getting Congress to block an earlier proposal that would have reduced starchy foods like potatoes and would have prevented districts from counting tomato paste on a slice of pizza as a vegetable serving. In the guidelines announced, potatoes are not restricted, and tomato paste can qualify as a vegetable serving.
More information about the guildelines can be found at the USDA website.
