Brasher: USDA buys what kids eat, despite food chart

By PHILIP BRASHER
pbrasher@dmreg.com

Washington, D.C. — The government wants kids to eat more fruits and vegetables but doesn’t seem to be putting its money where its advice is.

For every dollar that the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent buying commodities for school lunches last year, 55 cents went to beef, chicken and cheese vs. about 23 cents for fruits and vegetables.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stumped a group of Iowa business leaders recently by asking them what was the single food item for schools that the USDA spent the most on. His answer: mozzarella cheese.

“Part of our challenge is to figure out how to make the kids’ choice be the salad rather than the pizza slice,” Vilsack said.

Critics have long linked the federal school lunch program to the nation’s childhood obesity problem.

Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and other books, has written that the “farm bill essentially treats our children as a human disposal for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce.”

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation produced a study last year of USDA food-buying practices that was illustrated with two pyramids. One was the traditional USDA food-guide pyramid, which recommends eating more fruits and vegetables than anything else. The other pyramid showed what USDA buys for schools. The pyramids were reversed.

The dairy industry, it should be no surprise, doesn’t think the USDA is buying too much cheese.

“Kids need nutrition and mozzarella is a fairly cost-effective, high-nutrition food, and it’s one that people, especially kids, like,” said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

“If all you did was give kids salads you’d have a lot of wasted food, which is not what schools want, and you wind up with a lot of hungry kids.”

No one is suggesting the USDA stop buying cheese or meat. But should the USDA stop providing so much meat and cheese to the schools and substitute produce?

Not necessarily, according to the people who run the school lunchrooms. They say the USDA purchasing patterns don’t reflect what schools are actually serving kids. Taking meat and cheese from the USDA makes school budgets stretch farther, said Erik Peterson, a spokesman for the School Nutrition Association, which represents school nutrition directors. The schools then buy other foods, such as fruits and vegetables, elsewhere.

For that reason, nutrition activist Margo Wootan doesn’t believe it’s that big of a deal that the USDA tilts its purchases toward meat and cheese and not to produce. Moreover, the USDA in recent years reduced the fat content of the meat and cheese it supplies to the schools, she says. She wants the USDA to provide more cooking advice so schools know how to prepare healthful versions of popular foods, such as pizzas and chicken nuggets. Whole-grain crusts are a start.

Cash-strapped lunchroom directors need recipes that they can be assured will be a hit.

“They can’t afford to take the risk of trying a whole new way of processing their most popular item,” said Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “What if the kids don’t like it and they’re stuck with cases and cases of food that kids won’t eat?”

Congress is due to update rules for the school lunch program this year, and lawmakers are likely to consider giving schools incentives to buy more fruits and vegetables. But there’s unlikely to be much appetite for cutting back on the meat and cheese.

“What’s caused the obesity epidemic is not the school lunches and school breakfasts, it’s the junk kids get in the a la carte lines and the school stores and the vending machines,” said Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.