by Aimee Keenan-Greene
 
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed a new rule to update the nutrition standards for National School Lunch and School Breakfast meal programs that will go into effect this fall.

The new proposed meal requirements will raise standards for the first time in fifteen years and will make critical changes to school meals and help improve the health and nutrition of nearly 32 million kids that participate in school meal programs every school day says the USDA. 

It is an important component of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative to solve the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation. 

"The new nutrition standards for school meals represent an enormous improvement over the status quo. Capping calories, limiting French fries, and reducing the salt will all help America's school children avoid unnecessary weight gain and diet-related diseases. And requiring school lunches to contain more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables will teach kids healthy eating habits that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives. The recently passed child nutrition reauthorization law will provide schools with more model menus and recipes, advice, and funding to implement these rules once they're finalized and adopted.", said Margo G. Wootan, Nutrition Policy Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The proposed changes to school meal standards would add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat milk to school meals.  The recommendations are based on the October 2009 report by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (IOM),  School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children. Schools would also be required to limit the levels of saturated fat, sodium, calories, and trans fats in meals.

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

  • obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5 percent in 1980 to 19.6 percent in 2008.
  • obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0 percent to 18.1 percent in 2008. 

Doctors say obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure, bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.  They are more likely than youth of normal weight to become overweight or obese adults, and more at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.
The school menu improvements come as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, signed into law by President Barack Obama last December. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the nutrition standards announcement Thursday.

"Raising a healthier generation of kids will require hard work and commitment of a host of partners," said Vilsack. "We understand that these improved meal standards may present challenges for some school districts, but the new law provides important new resources, technical assistance and flexibility to help schools raise the bar for our kids." 

"Secretary Vilsack has been a champion for providing children with nutritional meals they need to learn and grow. Under his leadership, USDA is fighting childhood obesity by moving quickly to ensure that every school cafeteria offers healthy choices.", said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Nancy Rice, M.Ed., RD, LD, SNS, President, of the School Nutrition Association says "School nutrition programs are constantly working to provide a greater variety of fresh produce, whole grains, low-fat dairy products and healthier entrees in school cafeterias. By raising the bar for school meals nationwide, these proposed standards will promote healthier lifestyles for America's schoolchildren. SNA and its members look forward to working with USDA to find ways to help all schools stretch limited food service dollars to meet each new standard and to encourage students to make more nutritious choices." 
Administration officials and nutrition advocates reiterated their commitment to improving the health and well-being of kids nationwide.  

"FRAC congratulates USDA on its quick action to release the proposed school meal nutrition standard rule. Revising these nutrition standards is one important step to remedy nutritional shortfalls in our nation's children's diets and help to address the obesity crisis. It will lead to improvements in nutrition of low-income children across the country. Offering school meals consistent with the current nutrition science will provide much-needed fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lower-fat dairy foods to low-income school children throughout America. This is a key step in the comprehensive overhaul that is long overdue, and we applaud the Administration for moving quickly on this.", said James Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center. 

Recently, one of the largest new weight studies completed says you don't have to be obese to raise your risk of premature death - being just overweight can cause problems as well.

New England Journal of Medicine study involved 1.5 million people and concluded healthy white adults who were overweight were 13 percent more likely to die than those whose weight was in an ideal range.

"Having a little extra meat on your bones — if that meat happens to be fat — is harmful, not beneficial," Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, senior author of the study toldUSA Today.

Right now two-thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese according to the CDC.

Overweight begins at a body mass index measurement of 25, obese at 30 and morbidly obese at 40.

Globally kids are packing on the pounds.

A new report  last fall by the World Health Organization in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition says the number of young overweight or obese children  has increased about 60% in the past 20 years. In 1990, 4.2 percent of kids under age 5 were overweight or obese - in 2010 it is 6.7 percent. That's 43 million kids, 81 percent of them live in developing countries. The number is expected to increase to about 60 million over the next decade. At least 92 million young children face the risk of becoming overweight.

Researchers say it will likely hit 9.1 percent by 2020.

Obesity is worse in developed nations than in developing ones. “These findings confirm the need for effective interventions and programs to reverse anticipated trends starting from very early childhood,” the obesity researchers say, and that “waiting for school programs to address” the problem will probably be too late.

According to the WHO study, the greatest numbers of overweight young children in 2010 live in South Central Asia, where the estimate is 6.6 million.

“If trends are not reversed, increasing rates of childhood overweight and obesity will have enormous implications, not only for future health care expenditures but also for the overall development of nations,” the researchers say.  The study authors used data from 450 surveys representing 144 countries.

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Additional Resources:
Click here to see a comparison of the before and after school lunch menu changes

Do you know your BMI? Try this calculator.