Food For Thought: School Food and the need for a National School Food Policy
Published in Diabetes Dialogue, Autumn 2010
by Margaret Webb
“I’m not an expert on food, whether it improves your brain or not,” nine-year-old Caitlyn* tells me, as she strikes a contemplative pose, hand on chin. “But I do think it helps you focus if you don’t have an empty stomach.”
I have sat down with Caitlyn and her grade-four pals at Toronto’s Huron Public School for a hot lunch, served up family style at long tables in the gym, by Real Food For Real Kids. The Toronto-based company, which has won a larder full of environmental awards, delivers cooked-from-scratch meals made from wholesome, locally sourced ingredients to 5,800 daycare and elementary school students in the city each day.
Their pint-sized customers, along with developing a taste for nutritious fare, are also taking in a generous helping of food education. At least, they give me an ear full of it.
Ricky tells me that if you eat healthy food, “you stay strong and healthy.” Yvonne, who describes Mac and Cheese from a box as “gross,” says eating too much sugar and artificial stuff “causes diabetes and then you have to get a shot. You should avoid artificial things like pudding, glucose and soda pop, and eat real food like fruit and vegetables.” Cindy pipes up that she’s concerned that chickens going to fast-food restaurants “are raised on factory farms” and “never touch the ground. By the time I grow up, they likely won’t even have feathers.” She happily points out that the beef in that day’s burritos came from farms that raise livestock humanely and naturally, and that the accompanying vegetables and fruit are “local” and “really fresh tasting.”
I glance around the gym and spot kids not enrolled in the “Real Food” lunch program. Coming up with $5 for the meal doesn’t seem to be the obstacle – many are eating submarine sandwiches from fast-food outlets, along with potato chips and pop.
I turn back to my new foodie friends and wonder, do they wish they were getting fast food? I ask if they like going to McDonald’s. “Ewww,” they sneer in unison. Caitlyn rolls her eyes in disgust. “Sometimes, when my parents are in a hurry, we stop,” she admits. “But it’s not good.”
Clearly, these kids are making the link between healthy food and their own health, as well as with great taste and healthy, sustainable farming. But, sadly, these Huron pupils are in the minority. Canada is the only G-8 nation that has no universal student nutrition policy and no federal funding for student nutrition programs. As both education and agriculture fall into provincial jurisdiction, what exists now is a hodgepodge of nutritional policies and programs (if any) across provinces, school districts and even within districts. That means students must navigate a food landscape of candy and hotdog fundraisers; soda pop vending machines; and cafeteria lunches of pizza, chicken nuggets and French fries; as well as the corner stores and pizza shops that often surround schools. Even “homemade” lunches are often packed with heavily processed “kids’ foods” that, while convenient, are often high in fat, salt and sugar. Advocates for healthy school food say that allowing such low-nutrition fare to be served in educational settings not only compromises student health and learning, but sends children a message that such foods are acceptable, and children often demand the same at home.
A 2009 Nutrition Task Force Report by the Toronto District School Board says that children are paying a heavy price for poor nutrition. In the past 25 years, the number of overweight and obese children has doubled in Canada — one in four children are now overweight – a precursor to Type II Diabetes, one of the fastest growing diseases in Canada, according to Health Canada. The TDSB study reported that in the Jane Finch neighbourhood of Toronto, as many as 68 percent of secondary students go to school without eating breakfast and 54 percent without lunch. The neighbourhood has the highest rates of poverty, childhood obesity and diabetes in Canada. As well as poor health, children who experience malnutrition are likely to score lower on tests, repeat grades, and suffer more behaviour disorders, including increased aggressiveness.
The Metcalf Foundation’s “Food Solutions Report” for Ontario, released last spring, says poor student health and performance will negatively affect future health-care costs and the economy. It called on Ontario to develop a single, integrated school food policy that does not just stipulate what food can be served in schools (as the Ministry of Education’s new School Food Beverage Policy does) but that all children have access to healthy nutritious in breakfast, snack or lunch programs. The report also recommended reintroducing food literacy into educational curriculum, teaching kids what constitutes healthy food as well as the skills to grow and cook it. It also suggests using school nutrition programs to procure local foods, to strengthen local, healthy food systems. The People’s Food Policy Project, developed by a broad coalition of eaters, food activists, farmers and food systems workers, went one step further, urging the federal government to develop, as part of a national food policy, a national school food program.
In the meantime, parents and community groups are not waiting for government action to improve school food. Huron Public School’s parents’ council hired Real Food For Real Kids to deliver hot lunches twice a week, which they hope to increase to three times this fall. In turn, Real Food owners, David Farnell and Lulu Cohen-Farnell, dreamed up their catering company in 2004 after researching childcare centres for their son Max and discovering that meal programs consisted of processed, frozen, and canned fare. They thought that young scholars would develop healthier bodies and minds if nourished with fresh, all natural, healthy, and locally grown foods, free of chemical preservatives, artificial colouring, fake sweeteners, synthetic ingredients, and the hormones and antibiotics in factory-farmed meats. “Now,” says Lulu proudly, “we’re feeding goodness to 5,800 kids. Every mouthful is educating them. There’s so much confusion around food, but we’re making it simple, joyful, delicious and healthy.”
In Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, a parents’ and teachers’ group, concerned about rising obesity rates, poor fitness levels and behaviour problems among students, initiated a healthy school program in 1997. It aimed to make the “healthy choice the easy choice” by prohibiting junk food and fast food in school cafeterias, home lunches and fund-raising drives while increasing access to healthy fruit and vegetables. They also developed after-school fitness opportunities for children in the school gym.
With funding from the Canadian Diabetes Strategy, the Annapolis Valley School Board extended the “Health Promoting Schools Program” to eight schools on a two-year pilot. Dr. Paul Veugelers, then a professor of public health at Dalhousie University in Halifax and now at the University of Alberta, surveyed 5200 grade five students in Nova Scotia, comparing excess body weight, diet and physical activity. He found that students in the AV’s healthy schools program had significantly lower rates of overweight and obesity, healthier diets, and were more physically active. The results of that study created such a stir that Nova Scotia extended the program across the province, developing Canada’s first provincial Food and Nutrition Policy.
“Instead of putting more pressure on kids, telling them to eat healthy, they changed the environment for kids,” says Veugelers. “Everywhere in society, it’s the other way around. Fast food is everywhere. Schools are there to prepare kids for the future but the emphasis is on math and language, and they forget that good health is essential for the future.”
With the prevalence of fast and processed foods increasing and children facing a barrage of advertising enticing them to eat unhealthy foods, Veugelers says children have little defense. “In the past three or four decades, the things we’re eating are not the things we should be eating. So there’s a childhood obesity epidemic, which is a precursor to adult diabetes and serious diseases. This is not a topic that will go away. It will get worse and worse, and we’re going to be looking at a huge public health problem.”
Still, Veugelers says creating a national school food program that serves breakfast, healthy snacks or lunches would be “a long difficult road.” Even establishing a policy governing what foods can be served in schools is challenging. “How do you define ‘the best?’” asks Veugelers. “Is `best’ aiming for the highest goal? Is the ‘best’ implementable or is a policy ‘best’ for achieving results?”
Though Veugelers says the evidence is overwhelming that proper nutrition benefits student health and learning, revenue-pinched school boards find it difficult to give up candy fundraisers and contracts with food service providers and vending-machine companies that return revenue to schools to supplement music and sports programs. As well, many schools lack kitchen facilities for healthy food preparation. And parents often pose another obstacle. Some are concerned that the school is encroaching on their responsibility to feed their children or that school meal programs will deny their children food choice. The Real Food for Real Kids program, for instance, offers children a single healthy meal option comprised of four food groups – grain, protein, veg and fruit.
David Farnell says, initially, parents were concerned that their children wouldn’t like certain things. “Food is one thing that parents give on, then they feed their children what they perceive as “kids’ food” – chicken nuggets, Kraft dinner and processed sugary cereals. We actually have to train the parents. School food is a good teaching moment. It models healthy food and says to kids, this is what’s for lunch, period. That can help parents at supper time.”
Of course, the number one challenge to implementing a comprehensive school nutrition program is funding. It’s difficult to estimate what a national school food program might cost for Canada’s 5.2 million children as it depends on what such a program would entail — whether it is fully or partially subsidized, what meals and snacks it covers, and whether it includes food literacy programs.
And to make their case, critics of school food simply have to point south to the United States, whose national school food program, funded through the Department of Agriculture, often delivers a smorgasbord of subsidized junk food that complies with national nutritional guidelines in letter but not in spirit. Janet Poppendieck, author of the book Free For All: Fixing School Food in America, describes the program as “a series of good intentions leading to problems.” But she believes the US program can be fixed and that Canada, “without the burden of history,” can develop a strong school food program.
First, though, Poppendieck advises that school food programs must change the perception of kids’ food as cheap food. “You don’t want an emphasis on minimum standards, but on quality and health. It makes sense to use the opportunity of meals at school to ensure that kids are getting one or two meals a day that are really healthy. You want to use school food actively, to teach health and nutrition and science.”
She says any program Canada implements should also be universal. In the US, lower-income children receive subsidized meals but schools waste enormous energy and administration budgets doing means tests and charging kids separately for meals. And charging some and not others, she says, is “inimical to spirit of free public education. You don’t want kids to regard each other as separate social classes.”
She also suggests using school food as a strategy to shift the entire food system to a healthier system, using public procurement to support environmentally sustainable farms that produce healthier foods. She cites Italy’s school food program as the classic example. School boards there award food contracts based not only on price but quality, rewarding service providers that serve higher proportions of organic, local and fair-trade food. And each time a school board awards a contract, they “ratchet up the standards,” so children can enjoy a greater proportion of healthy, local and organic fare and local farmers benefit too.
I visited a similar school food program in Scotland last year and spoke to its architect, Robin Gourlay, who managed to implement it in one of the country’s poorest councils. In 40 primary schools, 30 percent of the food sourced is organic, 70 percent local and over 90 percent is fresh and unprocessed. He sends his school cooks to seminars with the best chefs in the country, and tells them, “We’re providing you with the best ingredients possible. You should be aspiring to excellence in your cooking.”
Students can now choose one of three meal options – a typical day’s menu may include roast pork, seafood risotto or curried vegetable pasty, served with soup, a vegetable or salad, and a fruit dessert. The meals are free to children from low-income families and subsidized for the rest, so that a school meal may cost as little as C$3. Oh, and the kids eat their meals on real crockery — Gourlay banished plastic trays from school cafeterias and introduced family style service, with older kids serving younger ones, to “teach table etiquette” and to treat food with respect rather than simply as “fuel.”
Gourlay, a former manager in the hospitality industry, says school food programs require more than good policy and funding to work. They require people who are passionate about student health and making a difference with school food. He says, ultimately, his program is about addressing Scotland’s “cultural problem with food. We think we can eat and drink as much as we want, because we’re hardy, but we have all these health problems. We need to value good food more, and I hope we can introduce that to kids in schools and hopefully that lesson will follow them through life.
*Children’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.