Ann Cooper and Kate Adamick

Last week, a New York State Assembly bill designed to combat childhood obesity by restricting the availability of foods of no or minimal nutritional value in vending machines, school stores, and a la carte luncheon lines on school grounds or property, was held in committee, effectively killing the bill for the session. This news was met with appalling glee by many, including the New York branch of the School Nutrition Association (NYSSNA), – whose stated mission is to “To advance good nutrition for all children” – which lobbied relentlessly for the bill’s death.

While the bill was not perfect, its passage would have guaranteed every New York child a safer school food environment than currently exists today. In an era in which The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has estimated that one in three U.S. children born in the year 2000 will develop Type II Diabetes by age 18, working to defeat a bill that would have helped remedy this epidemic is nothing less than unconscionable.

Some have argued that such legislation by the State is unnecessary in light of the new local wellness policies, required by federal law to be in place in each school district by the 2006-2007 school year. This reasoning is shrewdly misleading, however, given that very few local wellness policies contain the measurable nutrition standards set forth in the defeated bill, and instead use vague terms such as “reduce” or “lower” when referring to permissible levels of hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and sodium. Ultimately, this means that little will be done in school districts in which the local bureaucrats or food service management companies neither wish to expend the effort, nor incur the expense, necessary to effect meaningful change.

Do we need to go further than this bill? Yes, absolutely! Schoolchildren today are often herded into crowded, deafening rooms to eat their meals off paper plates on Styrofoam trays with plastic “sporks” in less than 20 minutes – an environment in which no one would willingly choose to dine. But the biggest problem with school food is not that the kids aren’t being served family-style meals on china plates. The biggest problem is that kids are being served – and sold — toxic processed “foods” in an educational environment intended to nurture their minds and bodies. Schools nationwide are “Drug-Free Zones,” yet we allow chemical-laden foods in our schools on a daily basis. Not until these products are removed from the school venue (which this bill would have gone a tremendous distance in accomplishing), can we focus our attention on other critical matters such as local procurement, preferences for organic foods and reintroduction of dining as a truly social experience. As it now stands, the death of this bill will enable most school food service programs in New York to continuing killing the kids, however unintentionally.

Of course, in a system in which school food service is typically unfunded by the local school district and is often contracted out to food service management companies that profit from the sale of highly processed, prepackaged food products, the ardent lobbying against a bill that would have prohibited sales of these products to our children comes as no surprise. But when adults willingly spend $4 on a morning cup of coffee or an afternoon bottle of beer, it’s at best shameful — if not abusive — to willingly sacrifice our children’s health and well-being – and, ultimately, years off their lives – simply in order to balance the school food service budget.

If those of us who call ourselves “school food advocates” – including the NYSSNA – are not willing to walk the talk, how will we be able to look our children in the eye someday when they come to us, suffering from Type II Diabetes and a host of other life-threatening diet-related illnesses, and ask us “How could you?”

When this bill is reintroduced next year, we sincerely hope that everyone will support it

. . . for the sake of our kids.

Kate Adamick is a New York City-based food systems consultant specializing in school food reform, and the former director of New York City’s SchoolFood Plus Initiative.