Today, nearly one out of every three children in America are clinically obese, and this statistic disproportionately affects children from low income and underrepresented minority families. Through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) for free or reduced-price lunches for children from low-income households, federal and state governments should continue to take an active role in keeping America healthy. Governments should furthermore not abdicate their responsibility to young children and less fortunate families by allowing industrial cost concerns to dominate the school lunch discussion.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics last week links nutritious, low-calorie school lunches with decreased rates of obesity. The research team studied the eating habits and health of 4,870 eighth-graders in 40 states during the 2006-2007 school year. States and school districts are free to set their own nutritional standards for lunch as long as they meet or exceed the federal nutritional standard floor. According to TIME, the researchers found that students attending schools that did not exceed federal nutritional standards were twice as likely to be obese as those in schools where these standards were surpassed.

The research also encouragingly suggests that children attending schools with stricter nutrition standards do not feel the need to compensate for any potential lack of sugar and fat by purchasing more snacks or soda at vending machines or fast food restaurants. This is good news because many public schools around the country have already taken steps to eliminate vending machines.

The USDA also increased the stringency of federal nutritional standards for school lunches overall in 2012. In light of the new research, these federal, state and district measures passed since 2007 should have a profound effect on student nutrition and obesity.

It is also important that all levels of government continue to regulate free and reduced-price school lunches because recent incidents show that privatizing these important public services can decrease nutrition for those students who need it most. At Coehlo Middle School in Attleboro, Massachusetts, contract cafeteria workers prevented 25 students from eating lunch on April 2 because they could not pay for it. Coehlo, among other New England schools, has its food provided through Whitson’s Culinary Group, who in turn contracts workers from the area to provide cafeteria services. In this most recent incident, the cafeteria workers at Coehlo were acting in defiance of a federal rule requiring a grilled cheese sandwich, an apple and milk to be provided to any student who cannot pay for lunch that day, even if they are not part of the NSLP.

While Whitson’s maintains that its workers were acting rogue that day and has since placed several of these workers on administrative leave, this episode is a symptom of a system where policies based on a misguided understanding of firm profit, and not compassion for students or public good, are allowed to fill in where public-private miscommunication leaves a gap. Indeed, several students were forced to throw away the lunches that they had already picked out. The cafeteria workers seem to have acted irrationally, since it still costs the company money when food is wasted.

This article is not necessarily meant to suggest that the federal or state governments should take over all functions of school service provision, although the introduction of multiple levels of private contracting does seem to increase the risk of policy miscommunication. There is still most likely a balance of efficiency to be found between total government control and a private school lunch model. What is important to keep in mind is that school lunches, especially those provided through the 67 year-old NSLP, are supposed to be provided in a way that prioritizes student health and nutrition over firm profit.

Unfortunately, even the evolution of federal school lunch nutrition standards illustrates how food industry interests have historically been allowed to compromise student health. A few years ago, when potato and pizza producers argued that the proposed rule changes would damage sales, Congress prevented the USDA from discounting potato products and tomato paste as official servings of vegetables.

While the families of Coehlo students made national news, the voices of the families of students who benefit the most from the NSLP are less easily heard over the loud political lobbying from the food industry. It is up to the state and federal governments to remember that public school lunch programs should treat students as people and not as consumers in order to ensure increased school performance, student health and general welfare for even the least fortunate.

 

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