Congress: Bringing Kids Gross Lunches Since 1973

UPDATE 12/02/10: The House voted in favor of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, ushering in school lunch reform. The move came after more than 15,000 Change.org members signed a petition supporting the Child Nutrition Act and more than 1,000 members urged Congress to reform school lunch without cutting future funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps.  While the bill still includes SNAP cuts, President Obama and Congressional leaders have promised to fix these reductions. Read the full story here.

School cafeteria menus may differ across the nation, but all the meals are fundamentally the same: Mystery meat, dollop of processed goop, carton of milk or sugar-y juice, and a side of soggy french fries. While the students, teachers, and curriculum in schools consistently change, cafeterias continue to dish out the same, abysmal lunches year after year.

The reason schools stay so loyal to their processed, frozen crap is that Congress hasn't raised the federal reimbursement rate for school meals since 1973. But that could be about to change. The hearing to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act began today. The bill being debated before the House Education and Labor Committee, the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act, is an $8 billion initiative designed to improve the accessibility and quality of school meals. The bill already has bipartisan support, and most folks expect it to pass.

If passed, the bill would boost school meals' accessibility, increasing the number of students enrolled in breakfast and lunch programs and creating more summer and after-school meal plans. It also aims to promote better quality and safety of lunches served. The bill even outlines plans for farm-to-school initiatives, which would help kids know where their food comes from and provide more fresh, healthy produce for cafeteria meals.

From the outside, the bill sounds like a blessing. But after digging into the numbers a little bit, I worry that the Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act won't, in fact, improve nutrition. It's true that the initiative would, for the first time since 1973, increase the federal reimbursement rate for school meals. But break down the numbers and you'll see that it will only provide an additional six cents for every school meal served. Six cents? What are we supposed to do with that?

School lunches need some serious reform. Just take a look at Mrs. Q's "Fed Up With School Lunch" blog and you'll see some of the processed, unsustainable atrocities the nation's kids consume on a daily basis. We're talking rubbery hot dogs with soupy beans, grey burgers with tater tots, and clumpy taco meat with a few cheese sprinkles. Not to mention, everything comes packaged in plastic and cardboard. Six cents might be enough to throw a few carrot sticks on each tray, but it can hardly replace processed meat with free-range chicken and fresh microgreens. Sure, the nation can't afford to feed kids like kings. But I wouldn't feed school lunches to dogs.

Still, the bill does outline plans for farm-to-school programs which, in addition to providing much-needed food education, could add some fresh, local produce to cafeteria menus. And I'm impressed by the fact that the plan highlights the need for summer and after-school meal programs. It's important to support reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, but also push lawmakers to support greater school lunch reform in the immediate future. The Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act may represent a relatively small amount of progress, but it's better than no progress at all.

Photo credit: Fazoom via Flickr