RIDGE conference on nutrition assistance research October 14

The 2020 Tufts/UConn Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Conference, held virtually on October 14, will feature new economic research aimed at enhancing food security and dietary quality for low-income Americans.

New and established investigators who were 2019 RIDGE grantees will present on topics ranging from evaluating the impact of nutrition-driven changes in school meals to influences of labor policy on SNAP to nutrition assistance participation amongst populations of interests, including college students and multigenerational households.

The conference is free but requires advanced registration.

RIDGE is a USDA-supported collaboration between the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut and my research team at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Completed studies from an earlier round of grants have addressed many important research questions in nutrition assistance research, including these:

• Dr. Erica Kenney (.pdf) on changes to nutrition standards in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP),
• Drs. Rebecca Franckle and Eric Rimm (.pdf) on the frequency of benefit delivery in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and
• Drs. Michah W. Rothbart and Amy Ellen Schwartz (.pdf) on universal eligibility for federal school meals programs.

The Labor of Lunch, by Jennifer Gaddis

In her new book, "The Labor of Lunch" (University of California Press, 2019), Jennifer Gaddis of University of Wisconsin-Madison covers the history and politics of federal school meals programs from every angle.

The book contrasts with contemporary behavioral economics research, which treats lunchrooms as a "laboratory" for small random-assignment trials of minor changes in product presentation. Gaddis instead pays attention to the big social issues that always have complicated school meals programs: women's work, the labor movement, racism, federal budgets, and class differences in food tastes for nutrition experts and broader populations.

To illustrate the scope, ambition, and topic coverage of the book, here are some homework questions one could ask students after they read this book:

1. What makes the lives of lunch-workers precarious?
2. What organizational sponsor of a free school meals program was labeled the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country” by Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover?
3. In training programs focused on sanitation and cost reduction, what important topic was left out?

(Answers: 1. Neoliberal capitalism. 2. The Black Panther Party. 3. Scratch cooking.)

The concluding chapter aims for expansive changes rather than short-term victories:

There are high-road alternatives to both the cheap food economy and to real food lite that offer a pathway toward a new economy of care in American public schools. Accessing this high road depends foremost on revaluing the labor of lunch. We must invest in professionalizing school cafeteria workers and recognize them for the multiple forms of care they already provide to the nation’s children. I want to move beyond this foundational argument, however, to propose a more expansive vision of what food systems could look like if we focus our collective efforts on transforming the NSLP into a hub for food justice—real food and real jobs—in every community across the rural-urban divide.

In a related New York Times column last week, Gaddis asks why parents still are sending kids to school with bag lunches rather than supporting the school meals programs. It reminds me of a conversation with my children a couple years ago. The kids knew their parents had always placed them in the school meals program as a matter of principle, rather than complete confidence in the product. When they mentioned having brand-name restaurant chain pizza in high school for lunch, they could tell from my face I was disdainful. They reassured me it was just twice weekly. Twice a week for pizza is not so awful, I conceded. But they meant only twice weekly was there brand-name restaurant chain pizza; on the rest of the days, there was reheated frozen generic pizza.

In some respects, the radical critical tradition of Gaddis' narrative may differ from that of most of my colleagues in agricultural economics, or myself. But any reader of this book will see these important nutrition programs should be dramatically better on grounds of taste, nutrition, and fairness to workers.

The long road to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and the long road afterward

Nutrition Today (.pdf) has published a nice history of the initial struggle to design and pass ... and the later struggle to implement ... the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

Colin Schwartz and Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) summarize considerable familiar material, but also provide insight into less widely understood details. For example, while this legislation usually is described purely as an Obama administration victory, the authors highlight much of the preparation that already took place during the W. Bush administration. The continuing policy arguments after passage also are notable. It is true with any legislation, and especially true for this law, that the road to administrative rule-making and implementation may be as important as the initial passage of the bill.

I will add this article to the syllabus for my U.S. food policy class (for a week on child nutrition programs).

Schwartz and Wootan (2019). [Click for larger image].

Seeking grant proposals for research on USDA nutrition assistance programs

The Tufts/UConn RIDGE Program seeks to support innovative economic research on domestic nutrition assistance programs and to broaden a network of researchers applying their expertise to USDA topics. The RIDGE Program seeks applications from a diverse community of experienced nutrition assistance researchers, graduate students, early career scholars, and established researchers who bring expertise in another research area.

Full details are available in the 2019 Request for Proposals (RFP). Additional information will be provided during the RIDGE Informational Webinar for Applicants, Monday, December 17, 2018 at 12PM EST. 

Important Dates for the 2019 Submission Cycle

Request for proposals release:                       November 28, 2018
Informational webinar for applicants:              December 17, 2018 12PM EST
Concept paper due:                                        January 25, 2019
Full proposal (by invitation) due:                     March 29, 2019
Funding period (up to 18 months):                 June 1, 2019 – November 30, 2020

For additional questions, contact ridge@tufts.edu.

Tufts/UConn RIDGE Center releases Request for Proposals (RFP) for economic research on U.S. nutrition assistance programs

Please share this week's announcement with potential researchers:

The Tufts/UConn RIDGE Center seeks to support innovative economic research on domestic nutrition assistance programs and to broaden a network of researchers applying their expertise to USDA topics. The RIDGE Center seeks applications from a diverse community of experienced nutrition assistance researchers, graduate students, early career scholars, and established researchers who bring expertise in another research area.

Full details are available in the 2017 Request for Proposals (RFP). Additional information will be provided during the RIDGE Center Information Webinar for Applicants, Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 2PM EST. Please provide your email to receive information on joining the webinar.

Important Dates for the 2017 Submission Cycle:

• Request for proposals release: January 23, 2017
• Informational webinar for applicants: February 2, 2017
• Concept paper due: March 13, 2017
• Full proposal (by invitation) due: May 15, 2017
• Funding period (up to 18 months): July 11, 2017 – January 10, 2019

For additional questions, contact ridge@tufts.edu.

Here is our October announcement about the start of this Center:

Medford, Mass./Hartford, Conn.- A new center at Tufts University and the University of Connecticut will focus on economic research aimed at enhancing food security and dietary quality for low-income Americans through the nation’s nutrition assistance programs.

The research center brings together the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts and the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, two institutions with long records of research leadership in this area.

The Tufts/University of Connecticut RIDGE (Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics) Center will be funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (for one grant cycle immediately and potentially up to 3 grant cycles in total).

Parke Wilde, associate professor at the Friedman School, will serve as the RIDGE Center Director, and Tatiana Andreyeva, associate professor in the UConn Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Director of Economic Initiatives for the UConn Rudd Center, will be the RIDGE Center Associate Director.

“Nutrition assistance programs have a central role in making sure all Americans have access to sufficient – and sufficiently healthy – food for their families,” Wilde said. “This Tufts/UConn RIDGE Center will help build the diverse network of researchers needed to study what these programs do and how they can do it more efficiently.”

“The new center will offer competitive small-scale grants to support innovative research on nutrition assistance programs. The center’s mission is to further strengthen and expand the research community through vigorous outreach, mentoring and networking with established scholars and promising new talent in the field,” Andreyeva said. “We will aim to fund a diverse group of experienced and emerging researchers, representing a range of backgrounds, disciplines and regions of the country.”

The new RIDGE Center funding offers an exciting opportunity for a diversity of new and experienced researchers in the area of nutrition assistance, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and child nutrition programs. The Center will help connect researchers from around the country to current information about USDA program and policy interests, offering promise for sound research with real-world usefulness.

Mississippi supports more nutritious snacks in school

The Mississippi Department of Education on February 18 approved new "Smart Snack" standards for schools.

According to a summary by the American Heart Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the new policies address snacks provided through school food service and also some types of competitive foods sold by others in school.

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.

Junk food fundraisers — like doughnuts, pizza and candy — are also out the door in Mississippi. Almost all Mississippi voters, 97%, say that serving nutritious foods in schools is important to ensure that children are prepared to learn and do their best, while 79% think it is very important. With this support, Mississippi leaders reaffirmed nation leading standards to prohibit fundraisers selling unhealthy foods – such as doughnuts, pizzas, and candy bars.

639087 from Newswise on Vimeo.

New research on breakfast in the classroom

Educators and school nutrition personnel in recent years have been discussing and debating the merits of serving breakfast in the classroom at the start of the school day, rather than in cafeterias. Participation is higher for breakfast in the classroom, leading to high hopes for increased impact on beneficial health and learning outcomes, while at the same time raising concerns about over-consumption for children whose in-class breakfast is their second meal of the morning.

New research in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management uses a "difference in difference" design before and after implementation in a large urban school district in the southwest, finding that breakfast in the classroom rather than the cafeteria has a positive effect on test scores. It is possible that the benefits are due to improved performance on the day of the test (perhaps because the kids were less hungry that morning) rather than longer term learning, but the favorable results are still notable.

This research, and related research, is discussed in a new video from ChildObesity180, an initiative led by Christina Economos and many colleagues here at the Friedman School at Tufts. This video, which briefly summarizes both sides of the debate before arguing in favor of breakfast in the classroom, is part of an extensive video series on school breakfast issues.

State-level data on children's poverty and nutrition programs

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center this week released new resources about breakfast and lunch participation in Massachusetts schools.  A chart pack (.pdf) illustrates data describing the extent of take-up of nutrition benefits, and a summary graphic (.pdf) traces a wide variety of nutrition assistance programs from the federal funding sources to the state and local implementation level.

More generally, the Kids Count data center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation has a wide variety of state-level data resources for all states.  For example, here is an interactive map showing children's poverty levels by regions within Massachusetts (you can mouse over selected counties to see specific statistics).

Rudd Spark offers resources for parents who care about school food

The Rudd Center at Yale offers a new website called SPARK -- Supporting Parent Advocates with Resources and Knowledge.

Whether you are a seasoned advocate or just getting started, SPARK provides parents with suggestions for building community, garnering support of key stakeholders, gathering information, and proposing policy changes to make school food healthy.

A highlight is the helpful Questions and Answers page, which could be a great help for newcomers to these sometimes-arcane programs.

Transparency in the food service contract for DC schools

Journalist and Slow Cook blogger Ed Bruske has been digging tenaciously -- like the gardener he is -- for information about rebates in the food service contract for DC schools.  This is great citizen journalism.

In a development that could finally crack the code of silence surrounding rebates in school food service, lawyers for D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray have reversed a longstanding decision by local school officials and ordered the release of data showing how much money food manufacturers pay in rebates in order to place their products on children’s cafeteria trays in the nation’s capitol.

The decision comes in response to an administrative appeal I brought before the mayor after attorneys for D.C. Public Schools denied access to the rebate information on grounds it constituted “trade secrets” that could, if disclosed, harm the competitive position of the schools’ hired food service provider, Chartwells.

I originally had sought the information more than a year ago through the city’s Freedom of Information Act in an effort to determine the extent to which rebates might influence the choice of food D.C. schools serve. As a result of my FOIA requests, I was able to determine that Chartwells had claimed receiving more than $1 million in rebates from food manafucturers during the second year of its contract with the schools. However, the schools, citing a “trade secrets” exemption to the FOIA law, refused to release an itemization of which manufacturers had paid the rebates. The schools also declined to release detailed contract proposals submitted by Chartwells and Sodexo in the original bidding process.

John F. Carroll, an assistant New York attorney general invesitigating rebates in that state, has said the manufacturer discounts pose an “inherent conflict of interest” in school food service because they provide a financial incentive to choose highly processed and often sugary products over healthier foods. They also encourage purchases of large, national brands over locally produced goods that might be less expensive and more healthful, but do not pay rebates.

My own investigaton of school food in the District of Columbia showed that children routinely were being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar in the morning in the form of popular branded products such as Apple Jacks Cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, along with chocolate and strawberry milk. D.C. schools have since stopped serving those products, removed flavored milk from the menu and otherwise taken steps to lower the sugar in school food.

The rebating practice is pervasive in the food industry and in school food service, especially where large food service management companies such as Chartwells, Aramark and Sodexo are involved. But while rebating no doubt generates billions of dollars to grease the wheels of the processed food industry, precise information about the practice  is a secret closely guarded by manufacturers as well as by those who benefit from the cash it produces. Essentially, the manufacturers write checks to companies who purchase their products in large volumes. Chartwells’ parent company, the $22 billion international conglomerate Compass Group, maintains an entirely separate entity called Food Buy solely to write purchase contracts and collect rebates generated by its many subsidiaries.

Under the federal school meals program, food service companies retained through “cost reimbursable” contracts must pass any rebates they receive to their school district clients. After I tallied the rebate amounts Chartwells had declared on its monthly invoices to D.C. schools, it was revealed that school officials had asked Chartwells for an itemized accounting of the rebates but had been waiting nine months to receive one. School food services Director Jeffrey Mills was said to be troubled by the rebates and their influence over Chartwells’ food purchases.

As a result of the ongoing investigation in New York, Sodexo last year agreed to pay $20 million to settle claims that it had failed to reimburse schools and other government clients for the rebates Sodexo had received. Subsequently, D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of a “Healthy Schools Act,” asked the city’s then-attorney general, Peter Nickles, to assist the schools in recovering any rebate monies they might be owed. Cheh also oversees implementation of the District’s FOIA laws.

Information about rebates is so sensitive that the School Nutrition Association, which counts Chartwells and other food management companies as well as numerous manufacturers as members, removed from YouTube a taped version of a speech Carroll delivered to the group in March. In that speech, Carroll disclosed that rebates typically generate checks from manufacturers worth 10 percent to 15 percent of all food purchases. Some items are rebated up to 50 percent of the purchse price.

In Denver earlier this year, representatives of the Service Employees International Union were ejected from a conference held by the American Association of School Administrators because they were distributing information about school food rebates and planned to hold a workshop on rebates in school contracting. Aramark and Chartwells were both sponsors of the event, and Sodexo lists itself as one of the association’s “strategic partners.”

In a letter to me dated May 26, the mayor’s deputy general counsel Donald S. Kaufman wrote that attorneys for D.C. schools had erred when they invoked the “trade secrets” exemption to my FOIA request without showing how releasing the rebate and contract information would “result in substantial harm to the competitive position” of Chartwells, a requirement of the D.C. FOIA law.

“DCPS has not pointed to any authority, nor are we aware of any, which holds that the amount or source of rebates or volume discounts is, as a matter of law, protected commercial or financial information for the purposes of FOIA, nor is it apparent that the disclosure of such information would result in competitive harm,” Kaufman wrote.

“The response of DCPS is insufficient to justify the withholding of the documents,” Kaufman wrote in this “final decision” of the mayor’s office. “The documents must be provided to Appellant,” meaning me.

Under the D.C. FOIA, decisions by individual city agencies can be challenged in court, or appealed administratively directly to the mayor. I chose to appeal to the mayor. I suspect that Chartwells may now be contemplating a court filing to block release of the rebate information.

As with many debates in U.S. food policy, the behind-the-scenes argument over transparency is at least half the battle.  If Chartwells does block the release of the rebate information, we will share the news here.

Child Nutrition Reauthorization

You have probably already been enjoying the Fed Up With Lunch blog, a photographic journal of a year of school meals. If you think school lunch should be better, a lot depends on Child Nutrition Reauthorization in Congress this Spring. Here is a sampling of blog and new media coverage.

Tom Philpott at Grist:

Obama's proposed increase would boost the current daily per-lunch outlay by less than 20 cents -- not enough to buy an extra apple a day for every kid.

Now Blanche Lincoln (D.-Ark), the agribiz-friendly chair of the Senate Ag committee, has come out with her draft of the School Lunch Reauthorization Act. She may be calling it the "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act," but what she proposes doing is slashing Obama's proposed increase by more than half, to $4.5 billion over ten years.

If Obama can't spare an extra two dimes per day per kid to spend on ingredients, Lincoln won't even fork over a single extra dime. If Obama's proposal wouldn't even net an extra apple a day, Lincoln's would have trouble procuring a single stick of gum -- not that school kids need any more sugar.

And it gets worse. Because of Congress' "pay-as-you-go" rules, Lincoln has to balance her modest increase with cuts in other agricultural spending. Naturally, she has chosen to target conservation, hunger, and even other school-lunch programs -- leaving commodity payments, beloved of her state's large-scale cotton farmers, intact.

Nutritionist Julie Negrin, M.S., writes at the daily table:

It’s bewildering to me why the government is hemming and hawing over how much money they should invest in CNR. It could be as low as a half a billion (which sounds like a lot but divide that by five years and millions of schools) and as much as $4 billion (which would be a miracle). When they give so little for each child’s school lunch, how can the school staff be expected to produce healthy, balanced meals for growing children? Even the most talented chefs I know would have a hard time coming up with a well-rounded meal appropriate for children if they only had a couple of bucks to spend per person. And had little to no kitchen equipment. And were given low-quality ingredients.

In the new online magazine Agriculture from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Craig Cox takes the Lincoln bill to task for pitting child nutrition against conservation programs.

In a critical miscalculation, she would cap the amount of money spent on the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to pay for the nutrition increase. EQIP, a program chronically underfunded and repeatedly targeted for cuts, helps ensure cleaner water, soil and air for the children in rural communities.

The senator would be much smarter to look to the bloated farm subsidy program.

Healthy choices for school meals

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the National Academies on October 20 published new guidelines, which may lead to more healthy meals in federal school nutrition programs.

The recommendations, if implemented by USDA, will bring school meals standards in line with the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In light of current concerns about overweight and obesity, the IOM report suggests food energy maximum levels as well as the current minimum levels. It also suggests upper bounds on salt and saturated fat.

The report, titled School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children, seems astutely focused and un-fussy. It recommends a drastic simplification in the way nutrition standards are used in meal planning and determining a meal's eligibility for federal reimbursement. It suggests nutrient benchmarks for developing federal standards, but it recommends that actual meal planning and reimbursements be based primarily on foods instead of nutrients. Rather than pursue a long list of distracting micronutrient benchmarks, the report promotes fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

In a special child nutrition issue of Choices Magazine from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), published today, Iowa State University economist Helen Jensen comments: "the recommendations are consistent with a growing body of research, as well as encouragement from stakeholder groups to change the school meals to be consistent with the dietary needs of school children today." Jensen is editor of the special issue and also a member of the IOM committee that produced the new report.

Today's special issue of Choices also contains gently contrasting views about measures that school food services might take to improve school meals, while remaining financially viable. Cornell economists David Just and Brian Wansink use principles of behavior science to suggest nudges in the direction of healthier meals:

Thus, the object of using behavioral economics in school lunch rooms is to guide choices in a way that is subtle enough that children are unaware of the mechanism. These subtle changes often have the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy to implement. This is a clear advantage given the financial climate. However, behavioral economic instruments cannot achieve 100% compliance. For example, the only way to eliminate soda consumption in a school is to eliminate the soda. If we instead approach the problem by allowing choice but place the soda at some disadvantage in the marketplace, we can reduce soda consumption substantially but not eliminate it. To preserve choice, we will necessarily have to allow some individuals to purchase items that are less nutritious. But we can make these choices less convenient or less visible, by moving the soda machines into more distant, less visited parts of the school.

(Wansink was interviewed at U.S. Food Policy in 2007).

On the other hand, I have an article in Choices, with Friedman School graduate student Mary Kennedy, discussing the economic environment in which school food services must operate. Because of interactions between student demand for more and less healthy options, we suggest that reining in less healthy competitive foods may give school food authorities more room to maneuver in providing better choices.

The Just and Wansink article in this theme warns against unintentionally increasing the appeal of unhealthy products by banning them outright. Nevertheless, placing some reasonable limits on competitive food is not really economic heresy.

For centuries, economists have admired markets as a coordinating tool for economic decisions in communities composed of households, but economists have always acknowledged beneficent non-market decision-making within households. Schools are not marketplaces but educational institutions responsible for the welfare of their charges.

If schools are expected to respond to the current epidemic of childhood obesity by improving the school food environment, and taxpayers are reluctant simply to provide more resources, then there is some merit in considering measures to enhance the relative competitive position of healthy meals served through the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program.

Capitol Hill event on school meals, Feb. 26

From the press release:

Interested in how your member of Congress can help make over the school lunch line, infamous for mystery meat, with fresh fruits and vegetables? In a free lecture on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Feb. 26, Neal Barnard, M.D., president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), Robert Lawrence, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and Eboni Morris, M.P.P., health policy fellow for the National Urban League, will discuss ways to improve the food served in the nation’s lunch rooms to help reverse America’s obesity epidemic.

Participants will learn how federal nutrition policies, especially the Child Nutrition Act, which will soon come up for congressional review, play a critical role in our nation’s health.

EVENT DETAILS:
WHAT: Take a Bite Out of Childhood Obesity, a FREE Capitol Hill event
WHEN: Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. WHERE: 345 Cannon House Office Building
SPONSOR: The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
COST: FREE REGISTRATION: No RSVP Necessary
INFO: Contact Ruby Lathon at 202-686-2210, ext. 379, or rlathon@pcrm.org . For more information or an interview with Dr. Barnard or another PCRM nutrition expert, please contact Tara Failey at 202-686-2210, ext. 319, or tfailey@pcrm.org.

School lunch and school breakfast standards

The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, today released a report on meal patterns and nutrient standards for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP).

There is a request for public comments.

The National School Breakfast Program feeds 10 million children each day, and the National School Lunch Program feeds more than 30 million students. Yet the national nutrition standards and meal requirements for these meals were created more than a decade ago, making them out of step with recent guidance about children's diets. With so many children receiving as much as 50 percent of their daily caloric intake from school meals, it is vital for schools to provide nutritious food alongside the best possible education for the success of their students.

At the request of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Institute of Medicine assembled a committee to recommend updates and revisions to the school lunch and breakfast programs. The first part of the committee's work is reflected in the December 2008 IOM report Nutrition Standards and Meal Requirements for National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs: Phase I. Proposed Approach for Recommending Revisions. Phase II of the report is expected in Fall 2009. This first report provides information about the committee's approach as it reviews the school lunch and breakfast programs. In the report's second part, the committee will share its findings and recommendations to bring these meals more in line with today's dietary guidelines.

The committee welcomes public comments about its intended approach. An open forum will be held January 28, 2009 in Washington, DC to receive input from the public.

Federal food assistance programs adjust for food price inflation once per year

Recent food price increases have been dramatic, and many people are discussing the causes.

One source of particular concern has been food assistance programs, such as food stamps and school lunch. Fortunately, federal food assistance programs are indexed for inflation, with updates to program benefits once per year. Program benefits may lag behind recent rapid price increases by 3-5% for a period, and then they are corrected at the next annual update.

A CNN story this week made it sound, unless you read closely, as if food stamp participants have been absorbing the brunt of the food price increases:

But for those on food stamps, higher prices for milk, eggs, bread and other staples often mean tough choices and empty bellies. Many are forced to forgo fresh vegetables and meat, while loading up on pasta and potatoes. Others are turning to churches, food banks and other charities, which are already strained by the increased demand....

"It's been very tough for families," said Stacy Dean, director of food assistance policy for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank. "They don't have the flexibility in their budgets so they just don't buy as much food or they buy cheap food or they skip meals altogether. Congress can and should act to help people survive the spike in prices."

The fifteenth paragraph explained the impact of price increases on food stamp benefits quantitatively.

The maximum food stamp benefit no longer covers the cost of the "thrifty food plan," the menu of food items the government uses to calculate its allotment. In March, it cost $567.20 to buy the items in the plan for a family of four, compared to $542.10 last June, when the inflation adjustment was set.

Food stamp participants are suffering from reduced real inflation-adjusted benefits at present. The real spending power of the food stamp benefit is currently just under 5% [percentage corrected from 3.5%] below what it was at the last annual update, which can be a substantial hardship for families on a tight budget. Barring Congressional action, this shortfall will continue to grow until the next annual update. Some people consider the benefits inadequate even at the time they are updated, but that is a different issue from food price inflation.

In a related story, Alexandra Lewin at Corporations and Health Watch has a nice article recently describing the hardship facing school meals programs, such as the National School Lunch Program.

Both the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and competitive foods, those foods sold a la carte outside the NSLP, are affected by rising food and gas prices. As documented by the Economic Research Service, in 2007 milk prices increased by 17%, cheese by 15%, bread by 12% and rice and pasta by 13%.

Kids in poorer communities will suffer most - these already cash-strapped schools are looking for ways to cut costs, undermining many efforts districts have made to implement the mandated, but unfunded, school wellness policies.

The reimbursements for federal child nutrition programs are updated once each year using the federal government's price index for restaurant and cafeteria food. The real value of the reimbursement may currently be running 3-5% below what it was at the last annual update.

In the 2004 reauthorization for child nutrition programs, the federal government required local school districts to establish wellness policies. During the preceding several years, the nutrition environment in schools had been deteriorating, with the growing sales of sugary sodas and high-fat, high-sugar products in schools, but it was difficult to find any one person or committee that had actually chosen these changes. The important bad decisions had been made made piece-meal. The "mandated, but unfunded" school wellness policies mentioned by Lewin were written by the districts themselves in answer to the mandate in the reauthorization bill. Except in trivial ways, the government did not actually require particular policy changes.

USDA's Food and Nutrition Service recently completed a major report on the question of whether reimbursement rates cover the costs of producing school lunches and breakfasts.

Meals 4 kids

Project Bread and the MA Department of Education for several years have collaborated on the Child Nutrition Outreach Program. The partnership works to enhance child nutrition programs, especially the School Breakfast Program and the Summer Food Service Program.

Interesting components include a Healthy Meals Initiative ...

For many children, the School Breakfast and Summer Food Service Programs provide critical meals that they might otherwise go without. Both programs adhere to nutrition guidelines set forth by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Yet, because these guidelines are so broad, Project Bread has developed additional guidelines that are above and beyond those set by the USDA. We have also worked to create access to the freshest produce available by encouraging food service directors and summer meal providers to purchase locally grown vegetables and fruits.

... and a Locally Grown Foods Project.

The Locally Grown Foods Project is a collaborative effort between Project Bread and the Massachusetts Farm to School Project. Through this partnership, summer meal providers connect with local farmers to purchase fresh, locally grown produce for summer meals. As a result, children who attend participating summer meal sites receive the best quality produce available.

Hershey's regular milk

Yesterday, Mark Frauenfelder at boingboing had a funny post about an incompetent fast food restaurant poster, with an incomprehensible offer of some sort of two-for-one deal at Checkers and Rally's. The related links section at the bottom referenced an earlier Frauenfelder post about Hershey's selling regular milk.

I was walking down Van Nuys boulevard with my daughter, enjoying the 103 degree weather over the weekend, when she demanded milk. We went into a Burger King and I ordered a milk. When the employee handed me this bottle,... I told her I didn't want chocolate milk. She said it wasn't chocolate milk. I had to look at the ingredients to make sure.

Three questions come to mind. 1) Why is Hershey's in the business of selling regular milk? 2) And why would it insist on making the label look chocolately? -- it would be like Lipton selling a bottle of water with pictures of tea leaves and a lemon on it. 3) And why Hershey's they make the label opaque so you can't tell at a glance if the milk is flavored or not?

I don't think the Hershey's label is an accident. Milk manufacturers are purposely blurring the distinction between flavored milks with added sugar and regular milks. They want your mental filing system to file flavored milk in the "healthy" folder instead of the "sugary drinks" folder. Voluntary industry guidelines for marketing beverages in schools are written specifically to permit sweetened flavored milk, so long as the sugar content meets a certain standard.

Removing the Red Tape from the Carrots

Yesterday, the NYTimes reported on the difficult and rewarding nature of trying to get local foods into schools, by overcoming tangible barriers and bureaucratic obstacles in Local Carrots with a Side of Red Tape.

The article illustrates the large example of the NYC School System which has tried to use its tremendous purchasing power to help many of the struggling fruit and vegetable farmers of New York state. This video features a smaller scale example in MA.

The article makes brief mention of the policies which currently make it difficult for the 10,874 [and counting] schools across the country that are part of the Farm to School movement to source school food locally, which brings us back to...drumroll, please: THE FARM BILL

In case readers of this blog don't have enough other reasons to care about the Farm Bill--which is scheduled to be debated by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee next Tuesday, Oct 23--with farm and conservation payments, organic research, food stamps and the myriad other items up for negotiation, the ability for schools to request local foods for school meals is a small item of great import to be included in the draft of the Farm Bill due out any day now.

Specifically, all schools that receive federal dollars for school meal (lunch, breakfast, after-school, summer, etc.) purchases must follow a federal bidding process, also called procurement, and therefore have historically needed to comply with a federal ban on geographic preference for procurement. In the 2002 Farm Bill, Congress included language encouraging schools to purchase local foods. Yet, apparently the law was not clear enough in its intent to exempt schools from the ban on geographic preferences, and it has been difficult (.pdf) for many schools to prove to the USDA that they should be allowed (.doc) to do so.

Therefore, the House included in its Farm Bill a provision which a) encourages schools to purchase local foods when "practicable and appropriate" and b) makes this exemption from the ban on geographic preferences clear for all school meals. This provision does not provide any kind of mandate for local food-- only the option to request it if this is in the interest of the school food service program. Clearly, this is not the only action needed to change the nature of school meals, but many believe it is an important step in the right direction. More info here or at FarmtoSchool.org.