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Glen Ellyn, IL —
New standards are consistently passed for schools, but for decades many students still have been allowed to eat combinations such as french fries and pizza or whole chocolate milk and cake.
No more, says the U.S. government.
A new set of school lunch guidelines were proposed in mid-January by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and they could force area schools to make some serious shifts in what they serve students.
“This is an evolutionary process,” said Donald Schlomann, St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 superintendent and president of Large Unit District Association, an advocacy group of superintendents from across the state, including Wheaton, Geneva, Chicago and St. Charles.
The current standards, which the USDA said have not been changed in 15 years, don’t offer much in the way of requirements for caloric intake, protein or whole grains. Meanwhile, the proposed standards, which followed as a result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, signed into law in December and aimed to set nutritional standards for food served in school and increase lunch reimbursement amounts, will see new standards set in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and more.
Though Community Consolidated School District 89 will not be affected by the changes, district nurse Sandy Lawinger said the regulations are a move in the right direction.
“I think it’s a great next step in kind of controlling the kind of food items that are brought into the school,” Lawinger said.
District 89 does not participate in the national school lunch program, nor do they provide a hot lunch program for elementary students, Superintendent John S. Perdue said.
Lawinger said the district decided to participate in a lunch program that is much stricter and already applies many of the USDA proposed changes.
Glen Crest Middle School is the only site that provides hot food through Quest Food Management services.
“While I am all for better nutrition in school lunches, our program at this time is shallow,” Perdue said. “We are in the process of developing a bid for lunch services to our elementary students next year, however.”
Lawinger said she hopes healthy meal items at school and good nutritional education will combat the child obesity.
“We have more and more kids becoming diabetic because they’re overweight,” Lawinger said.
National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs serve more than 32 million students, and the USDA said these changes are in large part to help quell their obesity rate.
The USDA has said that many of these moves are to combat the almost 32 percent of people ages 6 through 19 who are overweight or obese. In Illinois alone, the amount of overweight or obese children ages 10 to 17 currently stands at 34.9 percent, besting the national average of 31.6, per the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, the latest data set.
New standards are consistently passed for schools, but for decades many students still have been allowed to eat combinations such as french fries and pizza or whole chocolate milk and cake.
No more, says the U.S. government.
A new set of school lunch guidelines were proposed in mid-January by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and they could force area schools to make some serious shifts in what they serve students.
“This is an evolutionary process,” said Donald Schlomann, St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 superintendent and president of Large Unit District Association, an advocacy group of superintendents from across the state, including Wheaton, Geneva, Chicago and St. Charles.
The current standards, which the USDA said have not been changed in 15 years, don’t offer much in the way of requirements for caloric intake, protein or whole grains. Meanwhile, the proposed standards, which followed as a result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, signed into law in December and aimed to set nutritional standards for food served in school and increase lunch reimbursement amounts, will see new standards set in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and more.
Though Community Consolidated School District 89 will not be affected by the changes, district nurse Sandy Lawinger said the regulations are a move in the right direction.
“I think it’s a great next step in kind of controlling the kind of food items that are brought into the school,” Lawinger said.
District 89 does not participate in the national school lunch program, nor do they provide a hot lunch program for elementary students, Superintendent John S. Perdue said.
Lawinger said the district decided to participate in a lunch program that is much stricter and already applies many of the USDA proposed changes.
Glen Crest Middle School is the only site that provides hot food through Quest Food Management services.
“While I am all for better nutrition in school lunches, our program at this time is shallow,” Perdue said. “We are in the process of developing a bid for lunch services to our elementary students next year, however.”
Lawinger said she hopes healthy meal items at school and good nutritional education will combat the child obesity.
“We have more and more kids becoming diabetic because they’re overweight,” Lawinger said.
National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs serve more than 32 million students, and the USDA said these changes are in large part to help quell their obesity rate.
The USDA has said that many of these moves are to combat the almost 32 percent of people ages 6 through 19 who are overweight or obese. In Illinois alone, the amount of overweight or obese children ages 10 to 17 currently stands at 34.9 percent, besting the national average of 31.6, per the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, the latest data set.
To make matters worse, 20.7 percent of those children are considered obese, according to Trust for America’s Health’s 2010 “F as in Fat” report for Illinois. This means the state is the fourth-worst for childhood obesity in Illinois, the nonprofit advocacy group’s report said.
The regulations are a huge advance, according to Rochelle Davis of the Healthy Schools Campaign, a Chicago-based nonprofit group that advocates for a healthy school environment. She said the guidelines are more in line with what a mother may have suggested young children eat.
“That kind of change is quite significant,” Davis said, noting that for many grade levels, the maximum proposed caloric intake will be lower than the current minimum caloric intake.
Davis said most schools she has visited over the past year-and-a-half have already started making healthier choices for their lunch room, but many schools are at different places with their budget and food.
“I think that the challenge is the fact that Congress has allocated an additional $0.06 to help schools meet those standards,” Davis said. “But everyone is in a really different place. I think it’ll cost a lot of money for every school district (to get to that standard).”
Wheaton Warrenville District 200 officials did not return phone calls regarding this story as of press time.
Staff reporter Cyndi Loza contributed to this story.
