New school meals rules keep spuds

MOSES LAKE - The first major overhaul of school meals nutrition in more than 15 years gave at least a partial victory to the potato industry.

"It's much better than what the original proposed rule is, so we're excited about that," said Washington Potato Commission Executive Director Chris Voigt, who noted the new rules place no restrictions on potatoes in school lunches. "Essentially we're back in the school lunch program."

Last summer the Obama Administration's anti-obesity campaign targeted spuds in schools, proposing a one cup per week limit on the amount of white potatoes and other starchy vegetables served in student lunches.

"It probably would have been one cup of potatoes a month because we were competing with corn, lima beans and green beans," Voigt said. "So for lunch to have no restrictions, that's really good news."

But unlike new lunch rules, the latest breakfast program recommendations do place limits on potato consumption, saying schools must serve five servings of fruit for breakfast each week, although they can choose to substitute vegetables.

The crux, said Voigt, is that the first two substitutes have to be veggies other than potatoes.

"So essentially they can interchange vegetables for the fruit servings, but they have to serve at least two other vegetable types before they can serve a potato," he said. "It's better than the original rule, which just had no potatoes whatsoever for breakfast, but I'm still viewing this as problematic and their ruling doesn't seem to have much science involved; it seems a little arbitrary."

The new USDA nutrition guidelines were announced Wednesday by first lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

"As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet," Obama said from an elementary school in Virginia. "And when we're putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria."

Most lunch line offerings will now come with less sodium, more whole grains and a wider selection of fruits and vegetables on the side, they said.

Pizza won't disappear, but will be made with healthier ingredients. Entire meals will have calorie caps for the first time and most trans fats will be banned. Sodium will gradually decrease over a 10 year period. Milk will have to be low in fat and flavored milks will have to be nonfat.

Vilsack said schools will be encouraged to serve baked or roasted potatoes instead of French fries, but this is something most schools already do, according to National Potato Council CEO John Keeling, who claims only one out of 10 U.S. schools still use deep fryers in their kitchens.

The new guidelines apply not just to lunches subsidized by the federal government, which have long have been subject to government nutrition standards, but for the first time to foods sold in schools not subsidized by the federal government, including "a la carte" offerings on the lunch line and snacks in vending machines.

A child nutrition bill signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 will give school districts about 6 cents extra per meal to help defer some of the cost increases, which are estimated to be about $3.2 billion over the next five years.

The new nutrition rules may not be as aggressive as the Obama administration hoped, but conservatives in Congress called the original proposal an overreach and said the government shouldn't tell children what to eat. School districts also objected to some of the requirements, saying they go too far and would cost too much.

Among those who protested the proposal were potato industry proponents such as Voigt, who ate only potatoes for 60 days straight to prove the vegetable's nutritional value.

"This was an effort driven by essentially everybody in the potato industry," Voigt said. "After my diet, everybody came together and collected really good scientific data to submit to the USDA. We're just thankful the USDA did look at that data and those comments and decided to change their mind on the school lunch program and now we can focus on the school breakfast program."

Some of the nutritional changes will take place as soon as this September while others, such as the breakfast guidelines, will be phased in over time.

Vilsack said food companies are reformulating many of the foods they sell to schools in anticipation of the changes.

"The food industry is already responding," he said. "This is a movement that has started, it's gaining momentum."

Diane Pratt-Heavner of the School Nutrition Association, which represents school lunch workers, said many schools won't count pizza as a vegetable even though they can. Students qualifying for subsidized meals must have a certain number of vegetables and other nutritious foods on their lunch trays.

"Most schools are serving fruit or vegetables next to their pizza and some schools are even allowing unlimited servings of fruit or vegetables," Pratt-Heavner said.

Moses Lake School District Superintendent Michelle Price said she doesn't know yet exactly how the changes will affect cafeterias in her district, but she doesn't expect they'll give up potatoes.

"Certainly for us as a community ... we think potatoes are a healthy food for our students and for individuals, and I think they're important to keep as part of our food service opportunities for kids," she said.

While he hasn't had a chance to review the entire 280 page document detailing the new rules, Voigt believes they could be around for awhile, although this doesn't mean there won't be room for improvement.

"Every five years the government has to revise their general dietary guidelines produced for the public," he said. "There's an opportunity that as new science develops and we produce new data, this might be a chance to also take a look at the meal programs again."

Information for this story was provided by the Associated Press.