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Legislation Update: A Five-Point Plan to Improve the Child Nutrition
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn outlined a five-point plan this week to improve the Child Nutrition Act, and four of those points deal with school lunches.
Here’s what’s on the (lunch) table:
1. Access to Free Meals: Currently, the children are eligible to receive a free lunch if their family income is below 130 percent of the poverty line. For children who live in areas like New York City, however, that number does not reflect the high cost of living. To ensure that more children have access to free meals, Gillibrand introduced legislation that raises the cutoff for free meal eligibility to 185 percent of the poverty line for children who live in high-cost areas.
2. Increased Funding: Gillibrand and Quinn have proposed increasing reimbursement rates for school lunches by 70 cents, moving them from $2.57 to $3.27 per meal. A larger increase would be nice (something at least in the $1 ballpark), but any talk to raising reimbursement rates is a positive development.
3. Improved Nutrition Standards: Gillibrand has introduced legislation that would ban trans fats in schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program. The senator also said she would oppose any legislation that would pre-empt cities from setting more stringent nutrition standards for foods sold in schools.
4. Buying Local: In an effort to promote local procurement, Gillibrand recently worked with the USDA to create a task force to promote sustainable regional food systems. Gillibrand and Quinn are asking that the reauthorization continue the efforts to promote local food, but to date there is no legislation that addresses local procurement specifically.
In the coming weeks, the City Council will organize leaders from cities across the country to lobby for the proposed changes. Los Angeles and Philadelphia have already signed on. Trans fats and local food aside, if they can raise the reimbursement rate for school lunches, that will be a big win for healthier cafeteria food.
August 18th, 2009 at 8:48 am
[...] Speaker Christine Quinn introduce new plans for the upcoming renewal of the Child Nutrition Act. School Lunch Talk has the key [...]