Drastic changes made to 65-year-old federal lunch program

My memories of school lunch go back to my days at St. Charles grammar school where there was one choice for lunch.

It was served on real plates with real silverware.

Parents volunteered as “lunch ladies” and helped out in the cafeteria.

Isn’t it funny the things you remember from your childhood? Boy, how things have changed!

After having conversations with some parents, I get the impression that they don’t know exactly what the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is or what it consists of.

The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 101,000 public and non-profit private schools and residential childcare institutions.

In 2010, it provided nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches each day to more than 31 million children.

In 1998, Congress expanded the National School Lunch Program to include reimbursement for snacks served to children in after-school educational and enrichment programs for children through 18 years of age.

The Food and Nutrition Service administers the program at the Federal level.

At the State level, the NSLP is usually administered by State Education agencies, which run the program through agreements with school food authorities.

Believe it or not, school lunch programs have been around since 1946 when President Harry S. Truman began the national school lunch program as a measure of national security.

He did this after reading a study that revealed many young men had been rejected from the World War II draft due to medical conditions caused by childhood malnutrition.

Since that time more than 180 million lunches have been served to American children.

School lunches must meet the applicable recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans which recommends that no more than 30 percent of an individual’s calories come from fat, and less than 10 percent from saturated fat.

Regulations also establish a standard for school lunches to provide one-third of the Recom-mended dietary allowances (RDA) of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and calories.

School lunches must meet Federal nutrition requirements, but decisions about what specific foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by local school food authorities.

Many who read the above information may question that these guidelines are met on a daily basis. Rightly so.

These guidelines are just an average that must be met over the course of a week.

That is why a high fat, high sodium, less healthy meal served one day will be countered by a lower fat, lower sodium, healthier meal on another day. It’s the average that matters.

This past January the USDA recommended some adjustments based on changes made to the Dietary Guidelines.

This was the first major upgrade to nutritional requirements in 15 years.

These tougher standards are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, recently signed into law by President Obama, that aims to reduce both childhood hunger and obesity.

Remember, approximately one-third of children and adolescents—25 million kids— are obese or overweight.

Extra pounds put children at a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other health problems.

An 2005 analysis found that children today may live to be two to five years less than their parents do because of obesity.

Confronting the childhood obesity problem is critical for kids’ health, future medical costs and national security, as so many young adults are too heavy to serve in the military.

Isn’t it ironic that a program that was created to combat malnourishment has been revamped for opposite reasons?

Next week I will continue the subject and review the current changes to the federal lunch program.