With hunger levels stubbornly high and an estimated 1 in 5 American children obese, Stacy Dean, the deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services, told lawmakers Wednesday that the USDA would update nutrition standards for school meals and the WIC program to meet current Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Dean’s comments came during a hearing of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Standards for school meals — which have not been updated in more than a decade and place no limit on sugar content — have emerged as a point of contention in recent months, as GOP lawmakers and the School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 school nutrition professionals around the country, have opposed efforts to tighten restrictions on salt and sugar.
Rep. Russ Fulcher, an Idaho Republican, pressed Dean during the hearing on sodium targets, which he said fail to “account for the reality on the ground.” Reducing salt content in school meals to meet contemporary dietary guidelines, he said, would depress participation in the program at a time when improving access to food should be a primary objective. “Kids simply won’t eat the food,” he said, noting that the target for sodium — capped at 740 milligrams by July 1, 2022 — would create “unworkable standards.”
Referring to the American Heart Association’s sample menu for school lunches, Fulcher said cafeterias would have to eliminate ingredients or change to foods — a burger without the cheese, or carrots instead of potatoes — that do not “sound appealing to any of us, much less a school-age child.”
Dean said the “controversy around the implementation of school meal standards has obscured the huge strides in making meals healthier over the past decade,” and cited a USDA study indicating that kids are eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and avoiding “empty calories.” The American Families Plan, she added, provides $1 billion to help schools expand healthy offerings, testing recipes to ensure that breakfasts and lunches are not only healthy but appealing to kids. “This will help support local innovation,” she said.
While some kids might balk at a plate that replaces fries with carrot sticks, Dean argued that food education and efforts to change eating habits will be central to promoting nutrition security — in the short and long term. “If a kid rejects a Brussels sprout, you don’t give up,” she said. Healthier school meals “will not just affect [kids’] health today, but in their lifetime.”
To encourage school districts to meet the guidelines, the USDA will create an incentive fund, providing increased financial reimbursement for cafeterias that meet the updated standards and “put healthy food first.”
Dean also addressed WIC, the only food-assistance program that directs participants to a fixed set of healthy foods that promote maternal and infant health. Despite the program’s success — participation has reduced premature births and infant mortality, and has decreased obesity among enrolled children — WIC enrollment has waned in the past decade. Dean outlined plans to streamline enrollment and better connect WIC participants with healthcare providers, putting $390 million toward outreach and grants, as part of the “administration’s broader goal to address maternal mortality,” which disproportionately affects Black women.
“We want to do aggressive ‘inreach’ to SNAP households who qualify for WIC,” said Dean, stressing the need to focus on “retention, not just outreach to the newly eligible.”