By Renee Zonka, MBA, RD, CEC, CHE, Contributing Editor
It’s said that every cloud has a silver lining, and the new focus on nutrition is that silver lining in the childhood obesity cloud that threatens the future of our next generation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has more than tripled in the last 30 years. Unless that is reversed, the children today might be the first to experience a lower life expectancy than their parents.
For years, media has been abuzz about obesity, particularly childhood obesity, pointing to culprits like high-fructose corn syrup (and added sugars in general), video games, lack of exercise, poor diets, changing family dynamics and insufficient funding for school lunch programs. In fact, all of these factors are involved.
However, the catalyst that has turned talk into action has been first lady Michelle Obama. Her multi-pronged Childhood Obesity Action Plan, introduced in 2010, calls on the food and foodservice industries to produce healthier foods for children instead of the nutritionally empty, calorie-laden choices that tend to dominate today’s marketplace. Her “Chefs Move to Schools" program, in which Chicago’s Kendall College participates, brings chefs together to adopt schools and work with teachers, parents, school nutritionists and administrators to educate children and show that nutrition can be fun.
And one of the most-important developments this year has been the introduction of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which have an increased focus on obesity. The USDA also launched a new healthy eating symbol, “Choose My Plate," to replace the food pyramid, which most found too complicated. Elegantly simple, it graphically shows that the largest part of our diet should be vegetables and grains, with smaller proportions of meat, fruit and dairy.
School foodservice
The new standards are also reflected in the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010" (whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Child_Nutrition_Fact_Sheet_12_10_10.pdf) which mandates new school-meal plans designed to meet the nutrition needs of the nearly 32 million children who take part in lunch and breakfast programs. Once fully enacted, directives include:
• Minimum and maximum calories are established. For lunch, that means 550 to 650 calories for kindergarten through 5th grade; 600 to 700 for grades 6 through 8; and 750 to 850 for grades 9 through 12.
• Decrease starchy vegetables, such as white potatoes, corn, peas and lima beans, to one cup per week.
• Decrease sodium, over the next 10 years, from 1600 mg per meal to approximately 740 mg, with slightly lower levels for younger children.
• Increase grains from 1.5 to 2 servings per day, with at least half being whole grains.
• Include one cup of flavored or unflavored, fat-free milk, or unflavored 1% milk.
• A serving of fruit be offered daily at breakfast and lunch, and that two servings of vegetables be offered daily at lunch.
• Increase legumes and dark-green or orange vegetables to 1 to 2 cups per week.
• Serve 1.5 to 2.5 oz. of meat or meat alternative per meal.
• Minimize trans fats, and reduce total saturated fat to less than 10% per meal.
Schools currently receive $2.72 from the federal government for each child on the free-lunch program. Once fully enacted, if schools follow the new requirements they will get an increase of six cents per meal, which amounts to a little more than 2%. It won’t be an easy challenge to meet, but when the number of meals served is factored in, 2% can be a significant amount of money. It’s an incentive that will, hopefully, help to change the face of school foodservice.
