childhood nutrition
Schools are feeding millions of children. Now they face huge losses.
Public schools served tens of millions of emergency meals in April, mostly often in drive-through lanes, to low-income children after coronavirus closures ended cafeteria service, said a survey released on Monday. Nonetheless, roughly half of the 1,894 districts taking part in the School Nutrition Association survey reported a drop-off of at least 50 percent in meals served. (No paywall)
Restore school ‘flexibilities,’ food directors ask USDA
On Wednesday, two days after a federal court overturned a Trump administration regulation on school meals, an association of school food directors asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for "quick action to restore school meal flexibilities."
Judge voids USDA move to water down school nutrition rules
The Trump administration's decision to delay and dilute rules calling for less sodium and more whole grains in school meals was overturned by a federal judge in Maryland, said the nonprofit legal organization Democracy Forward on Monday. "Our victory ensures that school lunches will be healthier for 30 million children," said the group on social media.
As schools close, USDA vows to deliver boxes of food to some students in rural America
The Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday that it will be delivering boxes of food to children affected by school closures due to the novel coronavirus in rural America. In partnership with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, McLane Global, and PepsiCo, the USDA says it will eventually deliver 1 million meals per week.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Covid-19 relief bill suspends SNAP work and training requirements
The Senate is expected to vote this week on the House-passed Covid-19 relief bill that suspends work and job-training requirement for SNAP recipients, a step that could preserve benefits for hundreds of thousands of people. "I believe the vast majority of Senators in both parties will agree we should act swiftly to secure relief for American workers, families, and small businesses," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the weekend.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Covid-19 drives emergency steps for school food in two states
The USDA approved requests from California and Washington State to provide free meals to low-income students when schools are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The waivers, good through June 30, were the first by USDA to help schools deal with the disease in part by allowing them to stop serving meals in group settings, such as a cafeteria.
Trump plan lowers quality of school meals, say former ag secretaries
With nearly one in five American youths suffering obesity, schools should provide optimal nutrition in the meals served daily to 29.5 million students a day, said former agriculture secretaries Ann Veneman and Dan Glickman. The co-chairs of a prevention initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Veneman and Glickman said the Trump administration proposals announced last week "would reduce the nutritional quality of foods served to children in both school breakfast and lunch programs."
Unrelenting opposition to SNAP cuts
Before leaving Washington for the holidays, more than a dozen House Democrats stood in front of the USDA headquarters on the Mall to register their opposition to Trump administration regulations that would eliminate food stamps for 3.7 million people. Rules Committee chairman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, one of the foremost defenders of SNAP, raised the possibility of a congressional lawsuit against the cuts.
Q&A: Jennifer E. Gaddis on school food, feminism and worker rights
In Jennifer E. Gaddis’s new book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, school lunch is the framework for serious thinking about politics and people power. Gaddis makes the case that to reform school food, we need better working conditions and pay for cafeteria workers in addition to more nutritious ingredients. I asked Gaddis, an assistant professor of civil society and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to discuss the pillars of her research and how school food policy should move forward.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Anti-hunger group suggests ways to reverse a plunge in WIC enrollment
Participation in the Women Infants and Children program has plummeted by 25 percent this decade, reaching the point that only 3 of every 5 eligible people apply for the supplemental food and health care referrals offered to low-income pregnant women, new mothers and their offspring up to age 5. In a report issued today, the anti-hunger Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) spelled out dozens of ways for government agencies, grocers, schools and nutrition activists could remove barriers and maximize enrollment.
Proposed rule would ease standards for retailers that accept SNAP
The Department of Agriculture issued a proposed rule Friday that would ease the standards for how many and what types of products food retailers must stock in order to accept SNAP benefits at their stores. An Obama-era rule had expanded the amount of healthy foods that retailers had to stock in order to participate in the program.
Breakfast in classrooms, universal access boost school breakfast count
Breakfast participation rates at U.S. schools rose in the 2017-18 school year, and a report issued Wednesday by the Food Research & Action Center attributed that increase to decisions by schools to serve breakfast in classrooms and to offer meals to all pupils free of charge.
Dinner at school is a growing option for U.S. students
Compared to the long-established school lunch program, after-school programs that provide snacks or supper to pupils are tiny. In fact, just 1.2 million suppers, versus 30 million lunches, are served in school each day.
Three things that go together: Young adults, affluence and fast food
Roughly 37 percent of U.S. adults eat fast food daily, says a CDC analysis of dietary data, but the rate is much higher for men and women aged 20-39 and for higher-income people. "Fast food consumption has been associated with increased intake of calories, fat, and sodium," says the CDC, which estimates adult Americans get 11 percent of their calories from fast food.
New report finds rate of ‘food hardship’ has risen since 2016
A new report from the Food Research and Action Center found that the food hardship rate for households across the country has increased from 15.1 percent in 2016 to 15.7 percent in 2017. The rate increase was higher for households with children, from 17.5 percent to 18.4 percent. The study comes as wages remain stagnant, despite falling unemployment.
School food group aims to stop block grants
The biggest threat to school lunch and school breakfast, the federally funded programs that feed more than 30 million pupils daily, is legislation that doesn't exist at the moment but could easily be proposed as a deficit-cutting tool, says the School Nutrition Association. The group, which speaks for school food directors, put opposition to block grants at the top of its list of congressional goals this year.
The ‘Commod Bod’ and USDA’s box-o-food program
There are federal predecessors to the Trump administration's "Harvest Box" proposal, to provide half of food-stamp benefits in the form of a box of processed and packaged foods, says the NPR blog The Salt. "Among those horrified at the thought: American Indians who recognized this as the same type of federal food assistance that tribes have received for decades, with devastating implications for health."
Slower growth in school breakfast participation
About half as many children take part in the school breakfast program as the more than 30 million who eat a hot meal through the school lunch program, according to USDA's most recent data. The government and the anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center say that participation in school breakfast grew at a slower rate during the 2016-17 school year than it did in previous years.