Agricultural News
Dairy Nutritionist Examines Improved Standards, Kinks in Revamped School Lunch Program
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:05:15 CDT
Dayle Hayes is an award-winning registered dietitian, author, and educator who brings a delightful blend of practicality and pizzazz to everyday nutrition advice. She works with Dairy Max in the southwestern United States and was the featured speaker at a luncheon for the Oklahoma Action for Healthy Kids Coalition recently. Radio Oklahoma Farm Director Ron Hays spoke with Hayes after the luncheon about the controversy brewing over the current school lunch and breakfast program guidelines from the USDA. You can listen to their full conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of the story.
"All kids in America are missing some nutrients," Hayes said. "Nearly all kids in America are missing physical activity. So how can we, in a positive way, address those problems?
"We are, I think, overshooting the problem when we concentrate just on childhood obesity because our answer to that as adults is diet and exercise. Well, that isn't the answer for children. We need to focus on the food children do need to eat. Yeah, they need to cut back some on soft drinks and snacks, but they actually need more low-fat dairy products. They need more whole grains, more fruits and vegetables, more lean beef. We need to figure out how we're going to get those foods into kids. And I think we have kind of pushed a 'panic button' and, in some cases, gone too far on dieting."
She said it's not just about eating right, but it is about encouraging children to be more active. That doesn't have to mean structured exercise, she said, but play.
"We know that kids who are more active--it doesn't even have to be a sport--just kids who are out playing do better in school. Kids who have breakfast do better in school. So we need to focus on some of these positive things we can do for kids instead of always thinking about taking something away."
Hayes said that there are certain foods that keep cropping up from time to time as candidates to be taken out of schools to combat obesity. She said pizza has become a convenient target as has chocolate milk.
"Flavored milk is another one of the hot buttons in schools and a lot of people want to ban flavored milk because of its added sugar. Well, first of all, kids need the calcium, the potassium, the vitamin D that's in milk. To my mind, it can come from white milk, it can come from flavored milk, but kids need those nutrient-rich products."
The industry has gone a long way in the last six years, Hayes says, to change flavored milk. It has fewer calories and less sugar than it once did.
"Fat-free chocolate milk these days is delicious. Kids love to drink it and it's got all those nutrients. What people don't always realize is that 12 grams of sugar come directly from the cow whether it is white or flavored. Twelve grams of sugar is natural sugar, that's lactose in the milk. And now the industry has brought that down so that in schools you only see about 10 grams of added sugar in a carton of chocolate milk."
New guidelines from the USDA regarding the nutritional content of school breakfast and lunch menus are sparking a lot of controversy. Portions are smaller. Menus include more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Just about everything students were used to has changed. While evolution and changing standards may be good, Hayes says the process could have been improved.
"The first thing I want to say is that I'm sorry it's become a polarized controversial issue. This is about children's health and we should approach it in a scientific, rational way. And now, like many other things, it has become very polarized in terms of how people are viewing it. And that is because- it went into the political arena. And we have the Whitehouse and other folks interested in it. To me, I think that's a detriment to children's health.
"We did need to revamp the school meal pattern. If we look at what the school meal pattern had been for 15 years, yes, we needed to take a new look at that. And some of the things that we have in the new meal pattern I am totally behind. In other words, there's more fruits, there's more vegetables, there's whole grains. We still have low-fat milk. So, there's really some good things.
"I wish we had done a little more pilot testing. If we had not rolled it out to the whole country, if we'd been able to try it in a few schools and work out some of the kinks, I think we might be in a better place today."
Hayes says schools and food processors have not yet caught up with the new guidelines in terms of recipes. Over time, she believes those kinks can be worked out.
One of the more problematic areas is in terms of calorie limits that have been imposed on the meals. She said one of the biggest difficulties is the calorie limited lunches for high school students, especially athletes. She said the guidelines need to be examined and modified.
Thirty-two million children a day eat school lunches in the U.S. and Hayes said it may be the only or the best meal some of those children will receive all day.
"It's worth taking our time and figuring out how to do the best job with that."
Hayes has a lot more to say about the revamped school lunch program and nutrition. Click on the LISTEN BAR below to hear the full interview.
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