Advocates of school nutrition standards use high-school chefs' competition to show that food can still taste good

The higher school-food standards required by the Child Nutrition Act expire this year, and Republicans are continuing their efforts to roll back some of them. Democrats and advocates of the standards used a student cooking event on Capitol Hill to generate support for the standards, apparently to counter arguments of some school nutrition directors that some of the healthier options are more difficult to prepare and serve.

In the final competition, the top nine high-school teams served their winning dishes to lawmakers. The dishes had to follow their cafeterias' budgets and the national standards: To win, students had to include products rich in whole grains, low in sodium and a half-cup of fruits and vegetables, Whitney Forman-Cook reports for Agri-Pulse, a Washington newsletter. She doesn't list any of the dishes, but they're listed with the winners on the "Cooking Up Change" website of the Healthy Schools Campaign.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., hosted the event. She said that she and Senate Agriculture Committee Chariman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who has vowed to roll back some of the standards, have been discussing the issue, and she would like to pass a bipartisan bill by Sept. 30, when the current law's authority ends. One standard Stabenow doesn't want to compromise on is the requirement for a half-cup of fruit and vegetables; Michigan is a big fruit and vegetable state.

Stabenow said the Department of Agriculture "is very willing to work with schools where there are issues" in meeting nutrition requirements. (Read more)

Pilot salad bar will determine whether other Jefferson Co. schools follow suit in bid to increase students' veggie and fruit intake

The Jefferson County Public School system is pilot-testing a salad bar at Atherton High School to entice students to eat more vegetables and fruits, a goal of the new federal nutrition standards, Allison Ross reports for The Courier-Journal.

Photo from TheProduceMom.com

"We're always looking for new ideas to increase participation or attract students to come through the serving line," Terina Edington, assistant director for nutrition services, told Ross.

Many of Kentucky's children are falling far short of the daily recommended four and a half cups or more of fruits and vegetables, a shortcoming that one study says will contribute to early heart disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013 State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables found that only 50 percent of Kentucky adolescents reported eating fruit and 43 percent reported eating vegetables with a median intake of one time per day for both.

Salad bars were once common in Jefferson County schools, but concerns about portion control and contamination concerns caused them to "slowly disappear," Edington told Ross. Many schools across the country continue to "remain leery" of adding salad bars because of such health concerns, Ross writes.

This trial will help the district determine whether it will put salad bars in other schools. Cafeteria modifications for the salad bar at Atherton cost $400, Ross reports.

A push for schools to add more salad bars has been led by First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative, which co-sponsors a "Salad Bars 2 Schools" program that has donated more than 4,000 salad bars to schools, Ross reports. "A 2014 evaluation of that program found that 57 percent of participating schools saw an increase in student participation in school lunch, and 78 percent reported buying more fruits and vegetables."

The school's Facebook page said that the salad bar would have diced ham, turkey breast, fajita chicken strips, cucumbers, baby spinach, radishes and four types of dressings, with the lettuce and meat portions pre-measured, while the other ingredients will be self-serve.

Atherton High parent Lynn Greene told Ross that she is "thrilled my child has a healthy option," saying she hopes other schools will also get salad bars.

Event at UK library features discussion of Kentucky food traditions, how they are changing and how to capitalize on them

Story and photo by Melissa Landon
Kentucky Health News

Local food experts gathered at the University of Kentucky April 9 to discuss how Kentucky food tradition is changing and how to develop local food culture through businesses and other means.

"From Plows to Plates: A Journey Through Kentucky Foodways" was an event sponsored by the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center. It included a panel discussion, book signings by local food authors and food samples. Panelists included anthropology professor John van Willigen, author of Kentucky's Cookbook Heritage: 200 Years of Southern Cuisine and Culture; Ouita Michel of Midway, chef and proprietor of several restaurants; Tiffany Thompson, horticulturist and manager of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment's Community Supported Agriculture program; and Kristy Yowell, marketing manager of the Good Foods Co-Op in Lexington.

"I want to elevate Kentucky food culture way above restaurants," Michel said. "Restaurants are not food culture." She said Kentucky is known for its chain restaurants, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but she wants to focus on helping young chefs and small businesses succeed.

Emma Yetter talks about vegetables via community supported agriculture.

Yowell said, "We want to make affordable, healthy food for everyone. That shouldn't be a privilege."

Thompson said Kentucky's history has had a lot to do with tobacco, which is becoming less prominent. He said community supported agriculture, in which local residents agree to buy produce in advance, has much potential. "What can Kentucky agriculture do to positively influence health? Make more vegetables! CSA is growing, and I'm really excited about it."

The college's CSA Vegetable Program allows people to sign up to receive weekly seasonal vegetables throughout the spring, summer and fall. It costs $19 per week for the smallest "share" of vegetables, which is enough for a single person or a couple, said Emma Yetter, who works events and does deliveries for the program.

Associate Dean of Libraries Deirdre A. Scaggs, author of The Historic Kentucky Kitchen, said at the event that her inspiration for the book came from working in the Special Collections Research Center. She found old recipes, many of which were hand-written, and decided to try them out. She collected over 100 recipes, tested them and modified some of the instructions so a modern audience could understand them.

Study: American children's diets will cause early heart disease; Kentucky kids seem to be on the same track

Kentucky Health News

A study shows that American kids are eating themselves toward early heart disease.

The study, published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, looked at a nationally representative group of children and found that "American kids eat too much sugar and salt, they don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, and far too many are overweight," , Maggie Fox reports for NBC News. And of the 8,900 children aged 2 to 11 surveyed, "most were not meeting the goal on three out of four measures of healthy living."

"Our findings indicate that, in general, children start with pretty good blood pressure," Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who oversaw the study, told Fox. "But if they have a horrible diet, it will drive a worsening body mass index and cholesterol levels."

The research found that fewer than 1 percent of the children in the study had four or five of the main components of a healthy diet; only 3 percent of boys and 2 percent of girls ate enough whole grains daily; more than half of the children drank too much sugar-sweetened beverages; and fewer than 10 percent ate the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. The study also found that 30 percent of the children surveyed were overweight or obese, Fox reports.

This poor diet could "put many on the road to heart disease," Fox writes.

And Kentucky's children, who rank eighth in the nation for child obesity, are likely walking down this road to poor health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013 State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables found that only 50 percent of Kentucky adolescents reported eating fruit and 43 percent reported eating vegetables with a median intake of one time per day for both.

As for sugar-sweetened beverages, the 2013 Kentucky High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that in the seven days prior to the the survey: 33 percent of high school students drank a sugared soda one or more times a day; 25 percent drank a sugared soda two or more times per day; and 15 percent drank a sugared soda three or more times per day.

"It seems that children in the United States are losing their ideal cardiovascular health status," the researchers wrote, Fox reports. The study found about "40 percent of the kids already had poor to worrying cholesterol levels."

The main components of a healthy diet, according to the study, are: eating four and a half cups or more of fruits and vegetables each day; three servings of whole grains a day; two servings of fish a week; minimal amounts of sugar; and below 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day.

NBC has previously reported that many studies have found that children who have risk factors for heart disease show signs of clogged arteries that are typically found in middle-aged adults.

But another study found that that eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, low in saturated fats and low on fatty meat "dramatically cuts the risk of heart disease and stroke," Fox writes.

Scheduling lunch after recess, very unusual in elementaries, may lead to less food waste and better nutrition, study says

Scheduling school lunch later in the day could help children to eat more nutritious foods and reduce food waste, according to a study at seven schools in Utah. Researchers found that children threw away more food when they ate lunch before recess instead of afterward, and much of the food they threw away was fruits and vegetables, Roberto A. Ferdman writes for The Washington Post.

Cornell University and Brigham Young University researchers spent 14 days studying the behavior of children during lunch. Three schools served lunch after recess, and the other four before recess. The researchers kept track of how many fruits and vegetables children discarded and how many they ate.

"Students who ate lunch after recess ate 54 percent more fruits and vegetables than those who ate it before," Ferdman reports. The number of students who ate at least one serving of fruit and vegetables was 45 percent greater at the schools that served lunch after recess than the schools who served it beforehand. This is because students are hungrier for lunch after playing, and if they have already had recess, they will not rush eating their lunch so they can go play.

"If recess is held before lunch, students come to lunch with healthy appetites and less urgency and are more likely to eat their fruits and vegetables," David Just, one of the study's authors, told Ferdman.

A 2014 study also concluded, for about the same reasons, that providing lunch before recess leads to more food waste. It is unknown how many schools currently serve lunch before recess, but in 2011, only 4.6 percent of elementary schools reported serving lunch after recess. (Read more)

As school-lunch debate puts attention on rejected meals, we might consider a bigger problem: food wasted at home

The new nutrition rules for school meals have led some students to throw away food they're served. Schools across the country are estimated to waste $1.2 billion worth of food every year, based on extrapolations from a study the National Institutes of Health conducted in Boston schools. That's a lot of wasted food and money, but students and their families waste even more food at home, George Jones writes for WFIE-TV in Evansville.

According to the U.S. Department of Education approximately 49.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade students will attend public schools this year. Each student is estimated to waste about $33 worth of federally funded lunches per year. "The average person in the general population wastes almost that much in total meals during one month," Jones reports.

Americans threw away $161 billion worth of food in 2010—nearly one-third of the available food supply, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means the average person discards $372 worth of food each year, or four times as much as students.

"Sometimes people say it's the family and parents making choices, but it's the larger system we're in that making this problem," aid Pamela Koch, director of the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy at Columbia University. "They're working so many hours they think they don't have time to shop and cook healthy. And the most inexpensive foods are the ones that are not the most healthy for them."

Rising obesity rates and fast food consumption show that adults aren't eating well-balanced meals, much less school-aged individuals. The School Nutrition Association supports the rules requiring reduced-fat and fat-free milk and more fruits and vegetables, but "feels serving only whole grain breads and requiring children to take food they don't otherwise each is burdensome for schools," Jones reports.

"You're never going to be able to promote healthy diets for kids if they don't get healthy options across the board," SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner said. "It's the students who are unfamiliar with those healthier choices who are not responding well."

Students part of the Montgomery, Ala., group called E.A.T. (Education, Act Transform) were much more receptive to trying new foods—such as radishes—when they went through the process of planting and harvesting them. "They come here, and now they have an understanding," E.A.T. South Executive Director Denise Blake Green said. "They've seen the cycle—planting, harvesting, cooking, composting. When they leave here, food looks different to them." (Read more)