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Another Senate Hearing on Child Nutrition
By Deborah Lehmann —
The fight over a la carte foods is back, but this time around there’s some good news. The Senate Committe on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry held a hearing this morning with a focus on foods sold outside of the National School Lunch Program — in vending machines, snack bars and a la carte lines — and almost all the panelists agreed that federal regulation is necessary. The only opposition came from the National School Boards Association, which argued that federal regulation would be “intrusive and burdensome” to local districts.
The committee heard first from a panel of school and parent representatives, and later from industry members and a dietitian. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), the chair of the committee, opened up with some fabulous words on the role of school nutrition in health reform, and that emphasis resonated throughout the hearing. “We’re trying to focus more on prevention and wellness,” he said. “Well, a lot of that is outside the box of doctors and hospitals. It’s in the box of schools and how we feed our children.”
Here are some other highlights I found particularly interesting:
• Unlike the School Nutrition Association, which testified before the committee earlier this month, the panelists in the first half of today’s hearing weren’t big on federal preemption. Nancy Huehnergarth, director of the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance, urged the committee to allow states to enact stronger standards if they wish to do so. “We believe our kids will be healthier if both states and the federal government have the power to improve on the standards in the decades ahead,” she said. When Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) asked later if there was any consensus about the specifics of the regulations, Byron Garrett, chief executive officer of the National Parent Teacher Association, said a minimum standard would be ideal. SNA and its industry partners have been lobbying hard for legislation that would enforce a consistent set of national guidelines, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
• The only panelist who opposed federal regulation of competitive foods was Reginald Felton, the federal relations director for the National School Boards Association. He said national standards would ”result in several unintended consequences that will require the redirection of additional time and resources away from the school’s primary responsibilities.” Schools are financially stressed, and they already have to worry about keeping test scores high, managing teacher-student ratios and providing adequate facilities and technology. States and school boards “need the flexibility to reflect the desires of local communities,” Felton said. He added that many schools rely on food and beverage sales to fund sports programs and extracurricular activities, and he said federal regulation may limit funds available to those programs. Nutrition is important, Felton said, but it should be controlled at the local level. In other words, schools should be able to sell junk food if it brings in revenue…
Harkin and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) didn’t seem to buy his argument, but Chambliss was a bit more sympathetic and stressed “the importance of having flexibility for local school districts.”
• A represenative from the dairy industry was very gung-ho about federal regulation of competitive foods, as long as it would boost milk sales. “Many students don’t buy school lunches, especially teens,” said Miriam Erickson Brown, chief executive officer of Anderson Erickson Dairy Company. “That’s why we need your help to promote milk and dairy products in the a la carte line and elsewhere on school grounds.” She said stringent sugar standards would make flavored milks less appealing, lowering students consumption. Milk is a top source of vitamins and calcium for children, she said, and more than half of students prefer flavored milk. True, but do we really need to give kids sugar to get them to drink it?
• The representatives from the American Beverage Association and Mars Snackfood urged the committee to enact the 35-10-35 guidelines they have already adopted voluntarily. Under those standards, no more than 35 percent of a product’s calories can come from fat and no more than 10 percent of calories can come from saturated fat. The product must also contain less than 35 percent sugar by weight.
Senator Harkin was not too receptive to the suggestion. “You mean one-third of that bar can be sugar?” he asked. “No more than 35 percent,” said Hank Izzo, vice president for research and development at Mars. “Well that’s more than one-third,” Harkin said. “If one-third of something a student can buy at school is sugar, is that a good nutritional measure? I have a problem with that. I think we need to work on this.”
• Harkin said Mars is “the gold standard as far as advertising to kids.” He was talking about the company’s Generation Max line, which meets the 35-10-35 rule. A step in the right direction, but I’m not sure I’d call it the gold standard. The brand’s teen-targeted website touts its snacks as “a fun way to pump up your day with essential teen nutrients and great taste to keep you going!” By “key nutrients” they mean the Snickers Clusters and M&M’s Cookies are a good source of vitamin D and calcium. Still sounds like junk food to me…
• Pat Cooper, the president of the Early Childhood and Family Learning Foundation in New Orleans and a former school superintendent, made a great point when he said said nutrition standards should be connected to No Child Left Behind. Unless they have some weight behind them, they’ll stay by the wayside, he said, just as they did when schools crafted their wellness policies. “Most of us said to our food service directors, ‘OK, throw something together because the state wants it,’” Cooper said. “It wasn’t important because all we were thinking about was test scores, and we weren’t thinking about the fact that we can’t have those better test scores if we don’t have healthy students and staff.”
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