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Every five years Congress reconsiders the Child Nutrition Act, which lays out the rules for school breakfasts and lunches and reauthorizes other food and nutrition programs. The most recent authorization took place in 2004 and expired at the end of September, and Congress is just getting started on hearings for this year’s reauthorization.

The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Environment Committee had its first hearing on the issue this week, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the committee that the reauthorization presents an opportunity for the government to do more about childhood hunger and improve the health and nutrition of kids across the country.

“The scale of these programs means that reforms can have a major impact on tens of millions of school children,” he said. “For instance, the National School Lunch Program serves 31 million school children in more than 100,000 schools across the country. The School Breakfast Program is available in over 88,000 schools and about 11 million children participate on an average day.”

Scale of problems is large

He said the problems addressed by the legislation are significant and crucial to the future health of the nation, particularly considering new research released by his department saying that the number of households that had trouble putting food on the table last year reached a record high of 14.6 percent of households.

The study found that 8.9 percent of households had low food security and 5.7 percent had very low food security. In 2007, the total number of food insecure households was just 11.1 percent. Vilsack defined food insecurity as skipping meals, eating less at meals or going whole days without food.
“This legislation is an opportunity to in one stroke confront both the challenges of obesity and hunger — with the prospect of better health and well-being in the years to come,” he said. “Investing in meal quality and access to these critical programs will help support the capacity of our young people to learn and acquire the tools necessary to become the leaders of tomorrow.”

What the bill does

The Child Nutrition Act is most known as being the bill that regulates the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program, both of which are automatically reauthorized. But it also covers other food programs including the Summer Food Service Program, the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the Child and Adult Care Food Program, among other programs.

Some of these programs actually do have expiration dates so they have to be reapproved and funded from time to time.

Expected changes

The Institute of Medicine has already called for stricter standards for the school breakfast and lunch programs, including imposing calorie limits for the first time, providing more fruits and vegetables and leaner meats and dairy products.

It is expected that these recommendations will be incorporated into the reauthorization, as well as calls for fewer processed foods and more training for cafeteria staff in regards to safe food handling.

The final reauthorization bill is not expected to be passed until after the holidays.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 and is filed under Childhood obesity, Food miscellaneous, Kids and families, Nutrition, Public policy, School lunches and junk food. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.