The House Committee on Education and Labor just passed a Child Nutrition Bill. The bill definitely makes some progress, but is it enough? School nutrition is a topic that we care a lot about. Kids who learn about healthy eating now are more likely to grow into healthy adults. Beyond fighting childhood obesity, healthy food has been shown to help reduce behavioral problems in schools.

So how did the Child Nutrition Bill shake out?

The Good

The bill definitely makes some improvements. It supports farm to school programs, which increases kids’ access to fresh, local produce. It also promises to “establish school gardens and use more local foods in school cafeterias.”

There are several initiatives aimed at fighting hunger and helping impoverished children have better access to healthy food.

The folks at Slow Food USA points out that:

The bill passed yesterday also added a number of amendments, including pilot programs for organic foods, a program that will allow schools to donate excess food to food banks, a new program called Nutrition Corps, and grants to make summer lunch programs more accessible in rural areas.

There’s a focus in the bill on school lunch safety, which is great to hear, too.

The Not So Good

In addressing the quality of school lunches, the bill promises to:

 

Assist schools in meeting meal requirements proposed by the Institute of Medicine by increasing the reimbursement rate for lunch by 6 cents per meal — the first real increase in over 30 years.

It’s great that they’re giving schools more money, but 6 cents per meal? Is that really an investment in our childrens’ nutrition? That 6 cents brings assistance to a whopping $2.68. I’d like to see the members of the Committee on Education and Labor spend $2.68 on their lunches each day.

If you’re interested in reading all of the proposed changes, you can check out the Child Nutrition Bill in full.

So what do you think? Does the updated bill address enough of your concerns about the state of school lunch?

If you want to ask your Congressperson to strengthen the Child Nutrition Bill before it passes, Slow Food makes it easy to send a letter directly to the decision makers in your district.

Source: Eat.Drink.Better.

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