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Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

New York City: 860,000 Meals Stress Fruits or Vegetables Serving 860,000 tasty, visually appealing, and nutritious breakfasts and lunches a day at some 1,500 schools across New York City is the challenge of Jorge Leon Collazo, executive chef of the New York City Department of Education's Office of school food.

Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey See book keywords and concepts

Protect school food programs by eliminating the sale of soft drinks, candy bars, and foods high in calories, fat, or sugar in school buildings. ?Require that any foods that compete with school meals be consistent with federal recommendations for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, and sodium content. ?Develop an incentive system to encourage food stamp recipients to purchase fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthful foods, such as by earmarking increases in food stamp benefits for the purchase of those foods. Health Care and Training ?

Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

New York City Department of Education. "School Food." www.opt-osfns.org/osfns/. Rosenthal, Joshua. Comments made at the Instititute for Integrative Nutrition, where Connie studied, and in the UN catalogue. Sanders-Butler, Yvonne, and Barbara Alpert. Healthy Kids, Smart Kids: The Principal-Created, Parent-Tested, Kid-Approved Nutrition Plan for Sound Bodies and Strong Minds. New York: Penguin, 2005. Schibsted, Evantheia. "Brain Food." Edutopia website, http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/edlarticle .php ?id=Art_l 421 &issue=dec_05. School Lunch Initiative website, http://www.

Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it Sue Palmer See book keywords and concepts

Oliver's valiant efforts to change the eating habits of primary-school children made fascinating viewing, and caused the British government to establish much stricter controls on school food standards. But he also showed how difficult it can be to wean children off junk food. As his dinner ladies pointed out, the reason they served up turkey twizzlers and other nutritionally hopeless dishes wasn't just a question of cost and convenience; it was because the children refused to eat anything else.

Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back Michele Simon See book keywords and concepts

Oliver is apparently setting his sights next on overhauling school food in the United States. We could use him. Can We Get Out of This Mess? No matter how hard the soda and junk food companies try to position themselves as being part of the solution, the truth is they care more about the health of their own bottom lines than that of children. Nowhere is this reality more evident than with school nutrition policy.

Improving school food is a good place to start, but it's only one place. Without a long-term vision of the ultimate goal and how we might get there, we will just keep putting out fires. Enormous resources expended A major problem with the piecemeal policy approach is the enormous resources it takes to wage each battle against corporate lobbying. Despite impressive and courageous efforts, the deck is always stacked against advocates in favor of corporations, which have the cash to send career lobbyists to Washington, D.C. and every state capitol to protect food makers' bottom lines.

Considering the numerous other hardball tactics that industry lobbyists are deploying in the battle over school food, this example may seem tame by comparison. Public health experts and pediatricians have been sounding the alarm in recent years over the rise in childhood obesity and illnesses previously seen only in adults, such as diabetes and early heart disease. Because of these concerns, children and schools deserve a special place in understanding the national debate over food choices and good nutrition.

New Mexico: After a hard-fought battle in 2005 in the state legislature, pediatricians, school food directors and nutritionists gained approval to appoint an expert committee with the authority to establish nutrition standards for schools, with just one catch: the compromise legislation required the committee to include representatives of the beverage and food industry. At the first committee meeting, Danielle Greenburg, a doctor and obesity researcher, said that banning soft drinks in schools isn't the solution; rather, students need to be educated on how to balance what they eat.

For example, in 2004, GMA helped defeat a California bill that would have set nutrition standards on school food. At every step along the way, the GMA and its member companies have beat nutrition advocates back because they have more lobbying resources, not to mention money to offer politicians in the form of campaign contributions. In addition to the national trade associations, individual companies have also undermined numerous state efforts.

While nominal federal nutrition standards do exist for school meals, for all other school food sales, it's a junk food free-for-all that makes your corner mini-mart look like a health food store. Other authors have amply demonstrated how food and beverage companies market their unhealthy products incessantly to children, especially in schools.2 A 2003 government survey showed that 43 percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools sold food through vending machines, snack bars, or other venues outside the federally supported school meal programs.

Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it Sue Palmer See book keywords and concepts

The contrast between this and the noisy eating areas, highly variable school food and junk-filled packed lunch boxes in the UK and USA (two countries with very poor social mobility) was stark. Schools in the UK try valiantly to pass on the message about healthy diets, but in deprived areas it's an uphill battle. A headteacher told me recently that, as part of a healthy food campaign, his school began to provide milk, fruit and toast for the children at break time, but the campaign was undermined because some children continued to bring in crisps, chocolate bars and sugary drinks.

Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet Jeremy P. Tarcher See book keywords and concepts

We can choose to support nourishing school food programs and resist commercialization of our schools. A Garden in Every School (Chapter 2) National Gardening Association 1100 Dorset St., South Burlington, VT 05403 Tel: (800) LETSGROW www. kidsgardening. com Commercial Alert For other information about commercialism in schools and how to get involved in your own community. 4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd. #23 Portland, OR 97214-5246 www. commercialalert. org awakening the sleeping giant We can choose to buy from local, family farms.

Feed Your Body Right: Understanding Your Individual Body Chemistry for Proper Nutrition Without Guesswork Lendon H. Smith, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

The children who were getting the worst scores in 1979 were eating the school food; at the end of the five years, the children who were getting the best grades were eating the school food. But remember, the food had gotten better. If children eat good food, their scores improve. The brain is the busiest organ we have. It needs to be nourished or it won't work properly. Schoenthaler went on. In a detention home for really bad boys in Oklahoma, he conducted a double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled study on seventy-one rough, surly male adolescents.

The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children Carol Simontacchi See book keywords and concepts

The American school food Service Association is the national trade association that serves food service departments in school districts. Its goals are lofty, or so states their pamphlet titled The Little Big Fact Book: For more than 50 years, school food service and nutrition professionals have fostered the educational, physical and social well-being of our nation's school children. Every school meal served is more than an isolated investment in a child; it is an investment in America itself. Improper nutrition is not simply an issue of socioeconomic status; hunger does not discriminate.

The health of your child's brain has nothing to do with it. The school food service program, including vending, used to be the responsibility of the principal, but this task was taken over by the professionals. "Where once vending was managed by principals seeking supplemental income, now amid the vending machine clatter, you can hear the sound of coins jangling right down to the bottom line of school food service department budgets.

Food Fight Kelly Brownell and Katherine Battle Horgen See book keywords and concepts

Labeling is now required for packaged foods, legislation has been enacted to improve school food programs, work sites have been targeted for educational programs, and major efforts have been used to educate the publie about healthy eating. Results are not yet available, but the Brazilian effort has shown that consensus requiring the input of multiple parties (health professionals, government, businesses, schools, etc.) can be reached and that creative programs can be implemented.

Both education and environmental change are important. The school food Triad: Three Barriers to a Healthy Food Environment Three barriers to healthy eating are fundamental to schools. These must be considered if schools are to become healthy places to eat. Schools Do Not Consider Healthy Eating Relevant to Their Mission What children eat has not typically been viewed as important to a school's educational mission. Providing food is often seen as a necessary service, much as custodial service might be, and is expected to generate a profit or at least break even.

The American school food Service Association, for instance, has excellent materials not only on school lunch programs, but on general nutrition information for children and parents.56 Tugging in the opposite direction is pressure from the schools to make money. Absorbing a loss might be acceptable if needed education were occurring and the cafeteria were considered a classroom, but residing outside the educational mainstream as it does, food service must focus on income.

In Duluth, Minnesota, the school food service director was forced to offer branded pizza (Pizza Hut and Domino's) to replace the frozen pizza they had been serving earlier. Local principals were hungry for revenue and had started competing for his "customers" by selling Little Caesars pizza in the school commons. The food service director was pleased that his move recaptured his "market share."57 Popular Foods Bring in More Money As long as schools need the extra money and selling popular food provides it, there are heavy incentives for schools to continue current practices.

Feed Your Body Right: Understanding Your Individual Body Chemistry for Proper Nutrition Without Guesswork Lendon H. Smith, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

The children who were getting the worst scores in 1979 were eating the school food; at the end of the five years, the children who were getting the best grades were eating the school food. But remember, the food had gotten better. If children eat good food, their scores improve. The brain is the busiest organ we have. It needs to be nourished or it won't work properly. Schoenthaler went on. In a detention home for really bad boys in Oklahoma, he conducted a double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled study on seventy-one rough, surly male adolescents.

Food Politics Marion Nestle See book keywords and concepts

Early in 1999, at the New York State conference I attended, the participating school food service directors expressed strong disagreement with such views. They were deeply troubled by a broad range of issues related to the length, exclusivity, and financial terms of the contracts, to the lack of adequate federal oversight of foods sold in competition with school meals, and to the widespread failure of schools to enforce even the weak rules that do exist.

Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the True Source of Healing John Robbins See book keywords and concepts

Elizabeth Cagan (the chief administrator of the Office of school food and Nutrition Services for the New York City Public School System Board of Education) and Barbara Freidlander Meyer (city-wide nutrition education supervisor) decided to test what effect, if any, the Feingold diet would have on academic performance. Over a period of several years, they gradually eliminated all artificial colors and flavors, and the preservatives BHA and BHT, from the schools' cafeterias, while also reducing the amount of sugar available. It was an extremely large-scale, ambitious, and ingenious experiment.

Safe Food: Eating Wisely In A Risky World Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., Lisa Y. Lefferts and Anne Witte Garland See book keywords and concepts

Here are some steps you can take to ensure that school lunches are more nutritious, and that your children are exposed to sound information about food—not junk-food propaganda: þ Encourage your local school food service and school principal to serve more nutritious meals that eliminate nitrite, sulfites, artificial colorings, BHA, BHT, and other unnecessary or risky additives. Tell them what foods you'd like them to serve instead. If they tell you that the costs are too great, join with other parents to organize for change.

Food Politics Marion Nestle See book keywords and concepts

I could not obtain reliable sales figures, but school food service directors laughed at tbe suggestion that students might consume an average of one case (24 12-ounce sodas) per year; they thought one soda per day was more realistic, at least for high school students. The quoted comments of a marketing consultant hired by 63 school systems to negotiate such contracts support this higher estimate.

Among the few noncorporate exceptions were the American Dietetic Association, which represents nutritionists who hold credentials as Registered Dietitians ($1,000), and the American school food Service Association, whose members work in school cafeterias that provide federally supported meals to low-income children ($75o).4 In general, PACs that represent consumer, health, or public-interest groups are very much in the minority. Most of Mr.

Lugar (Rep-IN), chair of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Agricultural Retailers Association Agri-Mark American Dietetic Association American Feed Industry Association American Frozen Food Institute American Meat Institute American Peanut Shellers Association American school food Service Nabisco Brands National Broiler Council National Cattlemen's Beef Association National Confectioners Association National Food Processors Association American Sheep Industry Association Archer Daniels Midland Co. Central Soya Co.

As might be expected, commodity groups likely to lose market share opposed the proposals, but so did school food service groups who thought them too difficult to achieve without increased funding. Advocacy groups also complained that the resulting meals were not nutritionally adequate for low-income children. The proposals were enacted over such protests but quickly amended to grant significant concessions to the food industry.

The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children Carol Simontacchi See book keywords and concepts

Where once vending was managed by principals seeking supplemental income, now amid the vending machine clatter, you can hear the sound of coins jangling right down to the bottom line of school food service department budgets."12 One reason food service personnel wrested control of the vending machines was ostensibly to improve nutrition; they apparently believed that their school principals weren't stocking enough healthy foods in the machines and wanted to do better, so to speak. Maybe that is the motivation of some, but according to the industry, money still talks; nutrition walks.

There is big money to be made in the school food service department, particularly in vending machines and the selling of branded merchandise, or in fast-food franchises set up in the place of the school kitchen. Nearly nil M A v AWARD TEEN DIVISION/FIRST PLACE: Your Very Own School District, for choosing profit over health, for bringing the vending machines directly into the schools and stocking them with nonfood substances that poison our children and teach them that nutrition comes behind culture and profitability.

Its goals are lofty, or so states their pamphlet titled The Little Big Fact Book: For more than 50 years, school food service and nutrition professionals have fostered the educational, physical and social well-being of our nation's school children. Every school meal served is more than an isolated investment in a child; it is an investment in America itself. Improper nutrition is not simply an issue of socioeconomic status; hunger does not discriminate.

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