USDA Announces Priorities For Child Nutrition Act

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently held a conference call to lay out the administration’s priorities for reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. Broad brush, little detail. But it’s clear they’ve got their mind around the issues and will be seeking some important changes.

We’re dealing with twin problems, Vilsack said. On the one hand, about 16.5 million children live in households that can’t always afford a nutritious diet. In fact, more than 500,000 simply don’t get enough to eat. On the other hand, a third of all children are overweight or obese.

So what does the administration propose?

• “Better access to resources,“ i.e., “more creative and innovative” processes for enrolling children in nutrition programs. These could include automatic enrollment in school meal programs when a family is approved for food stamps and/or TANF.
• A “robust increase” in school breakfast participation. One focus here seems to be getting more schools to offer breakfast. The Secretary mentioned reimbursement rates and providing commodities, apparently recognizing that costs are a major deterrent.
• Improved nutritional quality. “Too much salt, sugar and fat,” the Secretary said. “Empty calories.” They’d like to “encourage” schools to improve, e.g., through funding training for food service professionals and an extension of the food service equipment grants in the economic recovery act. No mention of new nutrition standards.
• Correct, complete information on what’s being served. The target here seems to be parents. No specific reference to nutritional values, let alone whether these would be required or only encouraged. Earlier testimony by the Secretary suggests he may be counting on parental pressure.
• A consistent message during school time. “Message” means what foods are available in vending machines and a la carte areas. And here the Secretary did speak of standards.
• Innovative ways to reach children on non-school days.
• A recognition that the weight issue is also about physical activity. A reference here to the wellness policies that schools have been required to have since the Child Nutrition Act was last reauthorized. Also to USDA’s HealthierUS Schools Challenge–awards for schools that are promoting good nutrition and physical activity. In short, nothing new. But this is a tough issue in a country that prizes local control over school curricula.
• Continued support for the Farm to School Initiative, including technological assistance so that schools accurately account for their reimbursable activities. These include, but aren’t limited to purchases from local and regional producers.

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget includes $1 billion a year for 10 years to support reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. This would obviously cover some financial and technical support for a number of the above priorities. But I have to wonder about improved nutritional quality.

The Institute of Medicine recently recommended significant changes in school breakfast and lunch menus–more fruits, more vegetables (dark green and orange, with a limit on starchy), whole grains, a maximum as well as a minimum number of calories, thus limiting opportunities to load meals up with high-sugar/high-fat options. These changes would obviously cost more.

Rochelle Davis, Founding Director of the Healthy Schools Campaign, says that school districts are already spending, on average, 35 cents more per lunch than the maximum reimbursement they can get from USDA. In urban areas, the gap is about 70 cents per meal. At this point, schools are highly vulnerable to cutbacks–hardly in a position to absorb higher costs.

After-school snack and summer meal providers are struggling too. No point in focusing on innovative ways to expand participation if the programs can’t even sustain their current costs.

Yet of all the administration’s priorities, expanding the meal programs and improving their nutritional profiles may be the most critical–especially for low-income children. So it’s important that the reauthorizing legislation put teeth into the nutritional quality part. Equally important that it provide sufficient funding.

Vilsack mentioned the need for strong grassroots support. And that surely will be needed in these deficit-minded times.

The Healthy Schools Campaign has an online letter we can use to get those grassroots growing.

Congress Approves Free Suppers For Poor DC Children

A piece of good news in the midst of so much doom and gloom. The just-passed final version of the Fiscal Year 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill makes the District of Columbia eligible for federally-subsidized suppers for low-income children in after-school programs.

As I wrote awhile ago, D.C. was added to the eligibility list in the bill the House of Representatives passed. But it was dropped in favor of Wisconsin in the bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee–maybe, just maybe because the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Committee represents Wisconsin.

The version the House and Senate agreed to includes both D.C. and Wisconsin, plus Nevada and Connecticut, which was also in the House bill and is, not coincidentally the home state of the chair of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

In view of the politics here, a lot of credit goes to our non-voting representative in the House and to D.C. Hunger Solutions, which worked hard behind the scenes to get the District’s need for free suppers on the radar screen.

What the Director of D.C. Hunger Solutions says is true not only for D.C. families, but for families nationwide. Parents who are working extra-long or non-traditional hours or struggling to get into (or back into) the workforce need extended after-school care for their children. These children need more than a snack, even if their parents have the time and resources to serve a nutritious evening meal at home. And many don’t.

So, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I hope Congress will go on to consider the unmet needs of poor children in the 37 states that still aren’t eligible for the subsidized supper program.

That’s only part of the unfinished agenda. Congress needs to change the program eligibility requirements because poor children can’t get even a subsidized snack, let alone supper, in an after-school program, except one operated by a school, unless they happen to live in an area where at least 50% of school-age children are poor. That may not be much of a problem in D.C., but it certainly is elsewhere.

And surely Congress should do something about the reimbursement rates too. Hard to see how an after-school program can serve tasty, nutritious suppers when the maximum reimbursement rate is, as for lunches, just $2.85 per meal.

Do Food Stamps Make You Fat?

A new study suggests the answer is a cautious “yes”–at least, if you’re a woman. The researchers found that female food stamp recipients had a somewhat higher average BMI than non-recipients with similar social and economic characteristics. And the longer they were in the program, the higher their BMI.

This study is the latest in a growing and somewhat confusing body of research triggered by concerns about soaring obesity rates. And, like as not, it will fuel the highly politicized debate about how to reduce the rates and the equally politicized debate about nutrition assistance programs.

The problem is that we’ve got a link between food stamp program participation and overweight, but no explanation for it. Or rather, we’ve got a lot of diverse explanations and no research to tell us which, if any, is right. For example, is it that:

• Food stamps encourage overeating because recipients will max them out, even if they don’t need to eat so much.
• Families tend to run out of food stamps before the end of the month, so the moms go hungry and then overeat to compensate.
• Food stamp recipients cope with the stresses of poverty by overeating.
• Food stamp recipients don’t know how to eat healthfully and/or how to spend their food dollars wisely.
• Food stamp benefits can be used for too many unhealthy choices.
• Food stamp benefits are too low to cover the costs of a healthful diet–fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and lean meats, etc.

There’s probably some truth in all these explanations, except perhaps the first–a favorite of right wingers who don’t care much for government benefits of any sort.

But we can’t wait till we’ve got it all figured out. So what do we do based on what we know?

The co-author of the new study suggests that food stamp recipients could be required to take a course on nutrition. My heart sinks at the thought. Are we sure that poor people, unlike the rest of us, are so ignorant about what’s good for them and their families that they all need a course? Do we really want to erect a further barrier to participation–and risk even higher rates of child food insecurity?

The co-author also suggests that the food stamp program could be modified to encourage purchases of healthful products. This seems to me a whole lot more promising–and respectful–than imposing new requirements. Also, for the same reasons, better than restricting purchases to what we’ve decided poor people should eat.

We’re already seeing local efforts to promote using food stamps for fruit and vegetable purchases. For example, Wholesome Wave Foundation is sponsoring programs that double the value of food stamps used at farmers’ markets in eight communities, including Washington, D.C.  New York City’s health bucks program takes a somewhat similar approach.

But, as I’ve said before, these seem to me an inherently limited approach to a major public health problem. How many food stamp recipients live near a farmers’ market? How many farmers’ markets are open year round? How many sell products at prices competitive with major grocery stores?

Seems to me that if we want to help poor people eat more healthfully, then we’ve got to increase food stamp benefits and address the food deserts issue. In short, give poor people access to the resources that we who opine on obesity have.

Will those who need to shed the extra pounds? Well, maybe not. But are all the rest of us as svelte as we ought to be? Count me out.

Congress Moves To Improve Nutrition for Poor Women and Children

WIC (formally, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) is one of our best public investments in the health, growth and development of the next generation.

For more than 34 years, it’s helped eligible pregnant women and parents with young children purchase foods and beverages needed for a healthful diet. It also provides breastfeeding counseling, other nutrition education and links to local health care services.

Like other child nutrition programs, WIC depends on annual appropriations. They’ve never been large enough to serve everyone who’s eligible. But WIC still has far more participants now than in pre-recession days.

In 2007, participation averaged somewhat under 8.3 million women and children. In May of this year, it was up to more than 9 million. The Obama administration projects Fiscal Year 2010 participation at a monthly average of 9.8 million.

Just before the Senate recessed, it passed its version of the Fiscal Year 2010 agriculture appropriations bill (S. 1406). This is the bill that provides funding for WIC, as well as food stamps and the other child nutrition programs.

The WIC part of the bill is similar, though not identical, to the provisions in the agriculture appropriations bill the House passed in July (H.R. 2997). They’re both good news.

First off, both bills will increase funding for WIC. The Senate version would provide $192 million more in new funds than the appropriations for this fiscal year, including the increase that was part of the economic recovery package. With the estimated balance in contingency funds, the total available for WIC would be somewhat more than $8 million–nearly 15% more than the original Fiscal Year 2009 appropriation.

The House bill would provide $10 million less than the Senate bill. However, the House Appropriations Committee states in its report that it will monitor food costs, participation and available funds and “take additional action, as necessary” to ensure that there’s enough funding for all eligible applicants.

The funding increase is just part of the good news. Both the House and Senate committee reports specifically state that some portion of the appropriations are to be used to increase fruit and vegetable vouchers up to the amounts recommended by the Institute of Medicine.

The bills thus override a decision the Bush administration made to limit program costs by covering considerably smaller allotments of fruits and vegetables than what IOM had determined was necessary for a healthy diet. So we should expect further improvements in the recently-expanded WIC food packages.

Of course, WIC is a small part of the agriculture appropriations bills. There are many differences between them that have to be resolved before the Department of Agriculture has a final Fiscal Year 2010 budget. The new fiscal year begins October 1, so we may see a final version some time in September.