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New Legislation Would Bring Calorie Counts to Cafeteria Menus
By Deborah Lehmann —
School food service directors openly admit that they keep their eyes on fast-food restaurants, monitoring what’s popular with kids and offering similar items in their cafeterias. Turns out legislators are also using fast-food as an example in thinking about how to improve school meals.
The trend they’re trying to bring from restaurants to lunchrooms is menu labeling. Over the past few years, dozens of states have introduce legislation requiring chain restaurants to post nutritional information on their menus. Yum! Brands announced in October that it would add calorie counts to menus at KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s. Representative Bruce Bradley (D-IA) introduced legislation last week that would do the same for school cafeterias.
The Healthy Food Choices for Kids Act (HR 2322) would launch a pilot program in 100 schools, requiring them to post nutritional information and teach students how to make healthy choices. Participating schools would also have to consult with a nutritionist or registered dietitian once a year about the program.
Some schools have already started posting calories on their menus. A middle school in Cleveland County, North Carolina just invested in a digital display that lists items like Personal Pepperoni Pizza, at 511 calories, and Clux Delux Chicken Sandwich, at 310 calories. Cleveland County’s health director and other advocates of menu labeling say posting nutrition information allows students to make informed — and hopefully healthier — decisions about what to eat.
I am all for informed decisions, but I see two problems with this approach. First of all, the emphasis on calories takes away from meaningful nutrition education. Students need to learn not only about preventing weight gain, but also about eating a balanced, nutritious diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables and minimally processed foods. Low-calorie doesn’t necessarily mean healthy.
Moreover, menu labeling makes school cafeterias look even more like fast-food restaurants, reinforcing a way of eating that is unhealthy for students and unsustainable for the planet. Schools shouldn’t be teaching students to choose between Personal Pepperoni Pizzas and Clux Delux Sandwiches. They should be teaching them to eat fruits, vegetables and real food.
Giving grants to schools to post nutritional information is a mistake. That money should go to increasing reimbursement rates, improving facilities and providing professional development for cafeteria staff so that every choice can be a healthy choice, and an educational one too.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
How about instead of calories, we focus on CHEMICALS?
May 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Oops! didn’t get to finish my thought there…..Ingredients would be the real teaching tool for students and all eaters. Focusing on calories can be useful but can often backfire. Not to mention middle school and high school girls with body image/ eating disorder problems who will make unwise choices to go “low cal”.
I’m all for posting the ingredient list for every food in the cafeteria.That way parents and kids can make more informed decisions on what they are eating.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
It would also be of benefit to schools and society to use that money for healthier, more local school foods instead of for posting nutritional information. If schools offered healthier, more wholesome meals to begin with, knowing the nutritional information would be less important.
May 30th, 2009 at 9:25 am
[...] But the kids who come through the lunch line are students, not real-world consumers. And schools are educational institutions, not businesses. Punting the responsibility for healthy eating to a middle-schooler is a cop out. It lets schools “address obesity” without making any meaningful changes and without truly instilling healthy eating habits in students. What’s more, the focus on calorie counts eclipses the importance of eating a nutritious, balanced meal — a topic I’ve already addressed in an earlier post. [...]