Education Week - June 11, 2014 - 21

Some Find
Snack Rules
A Bitter Pill
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
reimbursable lunches and breakfasts.
The rules create standards for what
are known as "competitive foods,"
which include vending machine products,
à la carte offerings, foods sold
in school stores, and the snacks that
students sell to their peers as fundraisers
during the school day.
"It's overarching-from midnight
until 30 minutes after the school day,"
District 214 Superintendent David R.
Schuler said of the time when the
policy applies. "It's really a challenge."
The rules require that grain-based
products must be at least 50 percent
whole-grain. Other products must
have fruit, vegetable, dairy, or protein
as a first ingredient. Fewer than 35
percent of calories must be from fat,
and the rules limit sodium, sugar, caffeine,
and total calories. Each state
may set the number of fundraisers
that schools can exempt from the nutritional
standards each year.
Advocates of the rules, which were
adopted under the Healthy, HungerFree
Kids Act of 2010 and announced
last year, say they address an inconsistency
that has grown more pronounced
in recent years. As schools
have made their meals healthier
under other new nutrition standards
set by the federal law, many of them
have left other, unhealthy offerings
readily available in their buildings,
allowing students to bypass fresh
salads for high-fat nachos from the
à la carte line, say organizations like
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
and other supporters of the rules.
"If we're going to send a message, it
has to be consistent," Secretary of Agriculture
Tom Vilsack said in a conference
call with reporters last month.
Matter of Economics
But, like other phases of the yearslong
rollout of national child-nutrition
changes, the competitive-foods standards
have met with resistance from
some districts and school leadership
organizations.
While District 214's decision to
leave the meal program is unusual,
its concerns are not. Chief among
those concerns is revenue. The allhigh-school
Illinois district is budgeted
to take in $1.3 million in revenue
from à la carte sales and about
$528,000 in vending machine sales in
the 2013-14 school year-more than
the $900,000 in federal funds it is set
to receive from its participation in the
usda meal programs.
Leaders of other districts have said
implementing the Smart Snacks
rules will be an administrative hassle
because they dictate standards for
foods that are not under the control
of school nutritionists. Vending machines
may be run by parent-teacher
groups, for example, and student governments
often run school stores.
The snacks standards cut strange
lines around what is and isn't acceptable,
Mr. Schuler of District 214 said.
For example, high school students
can purchase just 12-ounce portions
of milk, but they can buy 20-ounce
portions of diet cola.
The new snack rules' implementation
comes as some Republicans in
Congress have suggested "hitting the
pause button" on another usda rule
that requires schools to serve more
fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in
their meals while cutting down on fat
and sodium. Some have pushed for
temporary waivers for some schools,
and other have suggested scrapping
the new meals policies all together.
(See Education Week, June 4, 2014.)
Seeking Exemptions
Some lawmakers have proposed
bills aimed specifically at the snack
standards. U.S. Rep. Steve Womack,
an Arkansas Republican, last month
introduced the Jumpstarting Occupational-learning
and Entrepreneurship
(joe) Act, a bill that would exempt
"school-based enterprises from these
new requirements that will effectively
run them out of business by significantly
limiting the hours of operation
and the types of food and beverage
they can sell," his news release says.
Mr. Womack cited the example of
House of Grounds, a school store run
by students in Harrison, Ark., as part
of a business curriculum.
And the School Nutrition Association,
a National Harbor, Md.-based
group that represents 55,000 school
lunch professionals, has called for the
usda to change the rules so that any
food that can be sold as part of a meal
can also be sold on à la carte lines. As
the rules are currently written, such
entree items are exempt from Smart
Snacks calorie caps if they are served
on the à la carte lines the day before
USDA'S SCHOOL FOOD RULES
CONTENTS
ALL
FOODS
Must be "whole grain-rich" products; or have a fruit, vegetable, dairy, or protein as
their first ingredient; be a combination food that contains at least 1/4 cup of fruit
and/or vegetable; or contain 10 percent of the daily value of one of the nutrients
of public health concern in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (calcium,
potassium, vitamin D, or dietary fiber.)
LIMITS PER SERVING
CALORIES
Snack: 200
Entree: 350
SODIUM
Snack: less than
230 mg.
Entree: 480 mg.
FAT
Snack: 35% of calories
Entree: less than
10% of calories
Trans fat: zero grams
NOTE: Beginning July 1, 2016, foods may not qualify using the 10% daily-value criteria, and snack items
must contain no more than 200 mg. sodium per item.
BEVERAGES
JUICE
100% fruit or vegetable
juice with no added
sweeteners
MILK
Unflavored,
low-fat, or flavored fat-free
milk; milk alternatives
are allowed.
NO-/LOWCALORIE
BEVERAGES
High
School Only
WATER
No restrictions on plain
water (with or without
carbonation)
SUGAR
35% of weight
from total sugars
in foods
or the day after they are served on
the main meal line.
Supporters of the snack rules say
concerns can be addressed without
scrapping the rules altogether. And
concerns about childhood obesity and
related illnesses are too great to delay
implementation or provide exemptions
from the rules, they say.
"I don't think the answer is lowering
the bar. The answer is helping districts
that are struggling to meet the
bar," said Jessica Donze Black, the director
of the Kids' Safe and Healthful
Foods Project at the Pew Charitable
Trusts.
She said there are "thousands of
things" that schools can still sell, and
that many districts are already exceeding
the standards. Many of them
have voluntarily adopted competitivefoods
guidelines drafted in 2007 by
the Portland, Ore.-based Alliance for
a Healthier Generation.
Most states already have laws
or policies for competitive foods in
schools. An analysis of those policies
during the 2012-13 school year,
funded by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation and published last month
in Childhood Obesity, found that 38
states had snack-food and beverage
standards for schools.
No state law fully met the usda's
new standards, according to the report.
Sixteen states fully met at least
one provision, 10 states' laws partially
met at least one, and seven states'
laws met no usda provisions. A state
might partially meet a standard by
matching or surpassing usda rules
for elementary school students but
not for older children, for example.
On average, states met four of 18
provisions, the study found. States
were closer to compliance with standards
for beverages than they were
with food standards.
Because the snack policy is an interim
final rule, the usda could make
adjustments based on feedback from
schools during the first year of implementation.
The agency has given similar
flexibility with its meal requirements,
delaying or revising those
rules after they were put into place.
The agency first released the
Smart Snacks rules a year ago, and
child-health-advocacy organizations
encouraged districts to spend the
2013-14 school year making gradual
adjustments and identifying problems
they might need to address before
the rules were in full effect.
Monitoring Feedback
Secretary Vilsack said in the May
22 conference call that he has not yet
seen a need to provide flexibility on
the competitive-foods rules, but he
said the usda would continue to monitor
feedback in the future. Mr. Vilsack
also said he doesn't believe the snack
rules will hurt schools financially.
Roger Kipp, the nutrition-ser*
Restricted to 20 ounce portions: Calorie-free, flavored water (with or without
carbonation), and flavored and/or carbonated beverages that contain less than 5
calories per 8 fluid ounces or no more than 10 calories per 20 fluid ounces
* No more than 12-ounce portions of beverages with a maximum of 40 calories per
8 fluid ounces, or 60 calories per 12 fluid ounces.
NOTE: Elementary schools may sell up to 8-ounce portions of milk and juice, while middle and high schools
may sell up to 12-ounce portions.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Agriculture
SAMPLING OF SNACKS
All à la carte and
vending machine
snacks sold in schools
during the school day
will soon face
nutritional scrutiny.
* Meet new
requirements
* Do not meet
requirements
* Meet requirements
for high school only
SOURCE:
Education Week
vices director for the Norwood city
school system in Ohio, agreed. The
2,100-student district's financially
struggling lunch program became
solvent after Mr. Kipp began making
changes to schools' snack offerings
four years ago, he said. The consistency
in nutritional standards drove
students away from à la carte lines
and back to traditional meals, which
come with reimbursements from the
usda, a boost to the school's nutrition
budget, he said.
A school's former "snack shack"
is now Mr. Kipp's office. Chips were
replaced with baked chips and other
healthier snacks, which the nutritionservices
director plans to shed entirely
next year. And the participation
level in the lunch program jumped
from less than 40 percent to more
than 65 percent at all district schools.
"We don't let kids smoke in school,
we don't let them drink in school, ...
and we shouldn't let kids eat cookies
and candy bars and brownies at
lunch," Mr. Kipp said.
RELATED VIDEO: Watch Bertrand
Weber discuss his successful
efforts to revamp school meals
in Minneapolis.
http://leaders.
edweek.org/profile/bertrand-weber/

http://leaders.edweek.org/profile/bertrand-weber/ http://leaders.edweek.org/profile/bertrand-weber/

Education Week - June 11, 2014

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