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Personal Health

Credit... Paul Rogers

Harding Senior High, a public school in St. Paul, Minn., has long been known as a 90-90-90 school: 90 percent of students are minorities, nearly 90 percent come from poor or struggling families and, until recently, 90 percent graduate (now about 80 percent) to go on to college or a career.

Impressive statistics, to be sure. But perhaps most amazing about this school is that it recognizes and acts on the critical contribution that adequate food and good nutrition make to academic success. Accordingly, it provides three balanced meals a day to all its students, some of whom might otherwise have little else to eat on school days.

For those who can't get to school in time for early breakfast, a substitute meal is offered after first period, to be eaten during the second period. Every student can pick up dinner at the end of the school day, and those who play sports after school can take the dinner with them to practices and games.

To Jennifer Funkhauser, a French teacher at Harding and a hands-on participant in the meal program, making sure the students are well fed is paramount to their ability to succeed academically. Ms. Funkhauser and the staff at Harding are well aware of the many studies showing that children who are hungry or malnourished have a hard time learning.

After she noticed that some youngsters were uncomfortable eating with hundreds of others in a large, noisy lunchroom, Ms. Funkhauser created a more private, quieter "lunch bunch" option for them.

The attitude and atmosphere at Harding are in stark contrast to the humiliating lunchroom experiences suffered by students at some schools, where youngsters are sometimes shamed in front of their classmates and their meals confiscated and dumped in the garbage when parents have an unpaid lunch bill.

A recent article in The New York Times pointed out this appalling practice. My Jewish friends and I called it "a shanda," which is Yiddish for a scandal, a disgrace, an embarrassment.

But current problems with school lunch go far beyond shaming innocent children. After major improvements championed by the Obama administration in the nutritional value of school meals were already underway, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives and now the Trump administration have begun to undermine them.

In 2010, spurred by the advocacy of Michelle Obama, Congress enacted the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, revamping the nation's school lunch program to increase servings of vegetables, fruits and whole grains, provide age-appropriate calories, remove dangerous trans fats and limit levels of sodium. Schools were given incentives in the form of meal reimbursement funds to prompt them to participate.

Alas, in the fiscal-year 2015 Agriculture Appropriations bill, the House included waivers allowing schools that had a six-month net loss of revenue for any reason to opt out of providing the healthier meals outlined in the 2010 act, Dr. Jennifer Woo Baidal, a pediatrician affiliated with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Now, just days into his tenure as Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, former governor of Georgia, rolled back the timetable by at least three years for reducing the high levels of salt in school lunches. The rollback will also allow schools to serve refined grains and 1-percent-fat flavored milk, instead of nonfat. Will progress on vegetables and fruits, calories and other fats be next on the chopping block?

Providing adequate amounts of nutritious food in schools is more important than many realize. "Students who eat regular, healthy meals are less likely to be tired, are more attentive in class, and retain more information," Sean Patrick Corcoran, associate professor of economics and education policy at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, told The Atlantic.

In fact, well-designed studies have demonstrated that "students at schools that contract with a healthy school lunch vendor score higher" on statewide achievement tests, Michael L. Anderson of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues reported in April. They showed a 4-percentile improvement in test scores above those achieved in schools with less healthy meals.

"While this effect is modest in magnitude, the relatively low cost of healthy vendors when compared to in-house meal preparation makes this a very cost-effective way to raise test scores," the researchers concluded.

In Minnesota, where 10 percent of households are considered "food insecure" and one child in six risks hunger, Wilder Research reported in 2014 that improved school nutrition is a "major component of Minnesota's Statewide Health Improvement Program." The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, in St. Paul, described studies showing that simply providing free breakfast can result in better school attendance, improved behavior and concentration and better academic performance.

Clearly, an expansive food program at schools like Harding Senior High bears replication nationwide, not cutbacks.

"Nutrition can affect learning through three channels: physical development (e.g., sight), cognition (e.g., concentration, memory), and behavior (e.g., hyperactivity)," the Berkeley team wrote. For example, they explained, diets high in trans and saturated fats have a negative impact on learning and memory, reducing substances in the body that support cognitive processing and increasing the risk of neurological dysfunction.

Schools have complained that children don't like the healthier meals and are more likely to throw the food away. However, an analysis of three large studies by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that under the improved nutrition rules, food waste actually declined in 12 Connecticut schools; children consumed more fruits and vegetables in eight elementary schools in southeast Texas; and in four elementary schools studied by the Harvard School of Public Health, children ate more of their entree and vegetable servings and more children took a serving of fruit.

A study conducted by Cornell University researchers at a New York high school in 2012 found that making healthier foods more convenient for students increased their sale by 18 percent and decreased the grams of unhealthy foods consumed by nearly 28 percent.

An earlier Cornell study found that simply moving the salad bar from a corner of the lunchroom to the center increased the sales and consumption of this healthier fare. Offering students a choice between two vegetable options and having them pay cash for unhealthy items like desserts and soft drinks, the findings suggested, may enhance consumption of healthier foods without reducing revenue or participation in school lunch programs. While the studies are not conclusive, they suggest that with a few simple steps, schools may have an impact on the foods students eat.

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Feeding Young Minds: The Importance of School Lunches

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Personal Health Harding Senior High, a public school in St. Paul, Minn., has long been known as a 90-90-90 school: 90 percent of students are minorities, nearly 90 percent come from poor or struggling families and, until recently, 90 percent graduate (now about 80 percent) to go on to college or a career.

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Don't be so quick to judge school lunch: In multiple studies comparing a homemade lunch to the lunch lady's fare, school meals were deemed healthier than what mom and dad packed. Still, packing lunch is an opportunity to create healthier habits and provide nourishing foods, and meals made in your kitchen put you and your family in control. And through repeated exposure, your home-packed meal teaches your child to enjoy new foods. Beyond that, studies show that establishing healthy eating habits in these early years impacts a person's food choices later on. That's why nutritious lunches are key! Here are some tips for packing a healthier school lunch as well as some inspiring recipes to get your school year off to the right start.

If you're not packing whole grains for your child, you're missing an important opportunity to provide fiber, magnesium, and other notable nutrients. You're also missing a chance to help your child expand his or her palette to include these healthy grains. Studies show that home packed meals are often lacking in whole grains, but there's an easy fix: When packing sandwiches, crackers or pasta, insist on whole grain versions over refined, white ones. If these foods are new to your child, layer them with things he or she already loves. Say your child loves pasta with Parmesan. Swap in whole grain pasta for your ordinary noodles but keep the sauce the same. Or start with a 50/50 approach. This works for sandwiches, too, with one side being white bread and the other being whole wheat. Remember, your goal is to reach 100% whole grain foods before too long.

This may sound obvious but according to science on the subject, it's where parents often slip up. Try to include ½ cup of both whole fruits and veggies in your child's lunch box. These foods provide the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and protective plant compounds that growing bodies demand. (While juice may be 100 percent fruit, the goal is to try to encourage whole forms of produce since few kids are missing the mark on juice.)

Pro tip: Since children love to play with their food, try cutting up fruits and veggies into dipping strips and invite them to try different dips, from sunflower seed or nut butter to hummus, tahini, guacamole, yogurt, Ranch dressing, or something you whip up at home. If time and resources get the best of you, fruit canned in juice and dried fruit are easy options. There are a lot of simple ways to make eating more produce fun and inviting, as you'll see below.

Though your child might appreciate the cookie and chips you're tucking in his or her lunch box, these snacks drive up the salt and sugar, which is one reason school meals are often considered more nutritious than home packed lunches. Over time, inclusion of these foods can lead to weight gain, which can have serious health implications as your child grows up. Instead of packing a daily treat, consider packing a snack every so often (say, once a week) or pack healthy, whole grain snacks, like air-popped popcorn more frequently. You can also use non-food party favors to add more flair to lunch boxes: Stickers, note cards with a joke or a loving message, and colorful or character-driven pencils and other school supplies are some to try.

Though you may win your child over in the short-term by packing the lunch of their dreams, consistently serving up nutritious fare is the best way to ensure their good health over time. And keeping their bodies healthy benefits their wellbeing in many ways. Eating well and taking care of growing bodies can lead to improvements in school and on the field, help children grow optimally, boost body confidence, and reduce acne - all meaningful to school-aged kids. It may be hard to resist your child's charm as he or she clamors for cookies, chips, sugary sips, and fluffy white bread, but introducing kids to better options when they're young and impressionable can have a life-long impact.

As you start packing new items in your child's lunch box, don't be discouraged if certain items come home uneaten. Keep it up! Remember that it could take several attempts to get your child to try something new. Make a game of it, say, by encouraging your child to try two foods of the same color (maybe a cherry tomato and a red pepper slice) or two foods that start with the same letter (avocado and asparagus), and ask which one was preferred and why. Remember that children respond to praise so pile it on as a reward for trying something new!

Looking for lunch box inspiration? Here, some registered dietitians show you healthy and clever ways to feed growing bodies. You'll notice a variety of whole grain options, from cereal to whole grain frozen waffles, which come together to create deliciously healthy meals for kids. Treats, when provided, are kept small. Meals provide produce, whether as part of the main course or on the side (or both). And while sandwiches are still featured in lunch boxes, parents today are packing other options to keep things interesting!

Dietitians Cheyenne Richards, MBA, RDN, LD and Kayla Fitzgerald, RDN, LD give you multiple ways to hit several food groups-including plenty of fresh produce-in one lunch box. "The variety helps fuel daily activity and adds fiber which has many benefits," they say. Keep in mind that these lunches may be best suited for elementary-aged children, but upping the serving size would make them appropriate for older kids. And if your child often turns up her nose at your lunch offerings, take note: "Picky eaters will love these meals as they are diverse, yet not overwhelming and there are plenty of finger foods," they say.

Holley Grainger, MS, RD, lunch box-packing mom and creator of Cleverful Living, shares this clever tip. "Have some lunch box fun and combine learning with Alphabet lunch boxes that feature nutritious and yummy foods from A to Z. Start Monday with a bento box packed with favorites that begin with letters A through E. Continue throughout the week concluding with V through Z on Friday. These simple lunches are ideal for preschool through second grade," she says.

"Every kid clamors for a "Lunchable" kit, so pack a DIY version for a fun twist on the classic pre-made lunch that uses simple and fresh ingredients," says Grainger. Her better-for-you lunch idea uses wholesome ingredients resulting in a lunch box with fewer preservatives and less sodium. Grainger's pro tip: Let children help customize their lunch with their favorite pizza toppings.

"Anything in muffin form tends to go over well with the kids, and what I love about these is that they are protein-rich and a great way to get some veggies in," says Jessica Levinson, MS, RDN, CDN, culinary expert and author of "52-Week Meal Planner." She also points out that they're freezer friendly, so with some planning, you can easily keep a batch in the freezer, which means they're ready to be defrosted and popped in the lunch box in the morning.

"There's a lot of research on the health benefits of fish, especially when it comes to brain development in kids, so I try to feed my kids fish at least once or twice a week. This Easy Tuna Edamame Salad is a great way to get a serving of omega-3 rich fish into kids' diets, plus it packs in some veggies and plant-based protein from edamame, which is a favorite of many kids. Serve it in between slices of bread or with crackers for scooping," suggests Levinson.

Registered dietitian and chef, Jessica Ivey packs this chicken salad, which trades half the mayo for nonfat plain Greek yogurt. "When you substitute Greek yogurt in place of mayonnaise, you reduce the saturated fat while adding healthy nutrients, like bone-building calcium. I like to add whatever fresh fruit is in season, whether it be peaches, apples, or grapes, plus celery and red onion for more color and nutrition, and chopped nuts for crunch. Pack with whole grain crackers and more fruits and veggies," she says.

If your child is married to her favorite PB&J, this Peanut Butter and Banana "Sushi" might help her embrace more fruit in her meal. "Most picky eaters love this flavor combination and the finger food aspect makes it appealing for kids (and adults). For those with food allergies or nut-free classrooms, simply substitute sunflower butter or soy butter for an easy swap. It's also a vegan recipe filled with plant-based protein, fiber and potassium, which are nutrients often lacking in lunch boxes," says Lauren Harris-Pincus, MS, RDN

If you're still wondering how to slip more veggies into your child's lunch box, here's a simple and creative idea. "These salad skewers are a fun way to add vegetables to a lunch box, especially because they can easily be dipped in a packed container of your child's favorite dressing, hummus, or guacamole," says Lindsey Janeiro, RDN, CLT of Nutrition to Fit. Just be careful with the skewer; if there is a sharp end, be sure to cut it off with a pair of scissors prior to placing in the lunch box.

Want more tips like these? NBC News BETTER is obsessed with finding easier, healthier and smarter ways to live. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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What nutritionists pack in their kids' lunch boxes

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Don't be so quick to judge school lunch: In multiple studies comparing a homemade lunch to the lunch lady's fare, school meals were deemed healthier than what mom and dad packed. Still, packing lunch is an opportunity to create healthier habits and provide nourishing foods, and meals made in your kitchen put you and your family in control.

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How the quality of school lunch affects students' academic performance | Brookings

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In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The main goal of the law was to raise the minimum nutritional standards for public school lunches served as part of the National School Lunch Program. The policy discussion surrounding the new law centered on the underlying health reasons for offering more nutritious school [...]

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Back in the fall of 2012, all schools that were part of the USDA school meal program were required to follow new regulations. On paper, it seemed like a big improvement. But in the lunchroom, sometimes it's hard to tell. One of the biggest challenges is that students often have many different food choices, and despite the new regulations, unfortunately not all of them are healthy, even if they do meet the guidelines. We all know that healthy food is important, and here are five reasons why ALL food served in schools should be healthy:

1. Eating healthy is an important life le sson.
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Kids go to school to learn, and part of what they learn about is healthy food and nutrition. Even if what they learn about nutrition isn't ideal due to the food industry's influence on what is taught, the food served at school should set a healthy example. Students may like unhealthy foods, but the hypocrisy is not lost on them when schools serve food that is not healthy.

Just like students who go home and tell their parents not to smoke because of what they learned at school, students become advocates for healthy eating at home when they learn about and experience healthy eating at school - we have seen this happen with the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack programs and also our Cool School Food program, which provides healthy plant-based entrees at school. Learning about healthy eating is a life lesson that not only helps each student, but the ripple effect has a positive impact on their families and generations to come.

2. Schools should support good health.

For kids whose parents feed them healthfully at home, schools should not undermine the parent's good efforts. In homes where students do not have access to healthy foods, schools should be a place where students can count on eating healthfully - this is important because some children may be eating more than half of their calories at school on school days.

3. Tax dollars shouldn't fund disease and environmental degradation.

Our tax dollars pay for school food. School food menus are full of processed foods and animal-protein-based meals, the very foods that have been proven to cause heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, as well as overweight and obesity. In addition, animal agriculture requires significantly more water and other resources than the plant-based counterparts and is also a major cause of global warming. I don't want my tax dollars spent on unhealthy food that contributes to suffering and disease, and associated health care expenses, as well as the consequences of environmental degradation.

4. Lunchtime should not be a multiple choice test.

Sixty-eight percent of all adults in the U.S. are now overweight or obese. If grown adults can't make the right choices to keep themselves healthy then how can we expect children to choose healthy items when there are also unhealthy "favorites" available as well? Schools are in the unique position of being able to set an example and help students develop good habits early in life. Despite the latest regulations for healthy school food, there is still plenty of unhealthy school food available for students to choose from.

While five components of food must be offered, students only have to take three. One must be a fruit or vegetable, but unfortunately, 100% juice can count as a fruit. In addition to the main "meat/meat alternate" component of the meal, students often have several other alternative choices on the menu every day, including bagels with cream cheese, bagels with melted American cheese, cheese sandwiches, or even chicken nuggets or pizza. So it's not unusual to see a child get a half-white bagel and cream cheese and a carton of apple juice every day. That meal is considered "nutritious" and meets the regulations, yet it completely lacks fresh, nutrient-dense foods.

Fruits and vegetables are supposed to be occupying ½ the plate but if you visit a school cafeteria you will find that to be a rare occurrence. It's not that kids won't eat healthily, but having to choose between chicken nuggets and a homemade healthy entrée may be too much of a challenge for them.

5. Eating healthfully makes a difference - not just in the future, but now.

Eating habits are established early, and eating healthfully is a life skill. But it's not just about avoiding heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer in the future; it's about ensuring that children are healthy now. That means when students are in school, providing them with nutritious, healthy meals that enable them to focus and maximize their potential and to support a healthy immune system to keep them in school, not homesick. Healthy food equals better health, better grades, and better behavior.

Lead image source: Shutterstock

Browse through some recent posts below:

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Amie Hamlin: Executive Director, New York Coalition for Healthy School Food

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5 Reasons Why All School Food Should Be Healthy - One Green Planet

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Back in the fall of 2012, all schools that were part of the USDA school meal program were required to follow new regulations. On paper, it seemed like a big improvement. But in the lunchroom, sometimes it's hard to tell.

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With a hint of a hyperbole, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue moved this week to "make school meals great again," somewhat relaxing dietary regulations imposed by the Obama administration and Congress in 2010.

"This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals," Perdue said in a release.

"If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition-thus undermining the intent of the program" he added.

Some 30 million children eat the lunches sponsored by the federal National School Lunch Program. The federal government spends some $13 billion a year, parents get charged another $6 billion, and states chip in hundreds of millions more.

The trouble is, children throw a lot of the food away.

How much? Nobody knows for sure. Several studies, each limited to a handful of schools, found waste of roughly 25-45 percent, with vegetable waste up to 90 percent.

There are at least five reasons for this and a couple of solutions attempted by individual schools.

Time to Eat

Some students don't finish their meals simply because the school doesn't give them enough time. One in seven students has less than 15 minutes to eat, a 2013 parents survey showed.

Some experts urge schools to expand lunch breaks to give students more time to not only eat, but to socialize.

Eating Habits

Studies consistently show children often throw fruit and vegetables away without even touching them. More than half the apples and two-thirds of the broccoli ended up in trash at 12 Connecticut schools, a study showed.

Experts look for the reason in eating habits. If children don't eat apples and broccoli at home, they're less likely to eat them at school.

But that's only part of the story, since many children likely do eat apples at home, but may still trash them at school. And many wouldn't eat broccoli even if served at home.

Mediocre Quality

Since the government pays for a lunch served, not eaten, schools don't have a financial incentive to ensure children actually eat their food. That may lead schools to settle for mediocre meals.

It's not that there's necessarily something wrong with the food. But there's not much right with it either. That's especially so for schools serving a lot of students from low-income families, where the taxpayer picks up the whole tab. As long as the food is preferable to hunger, the schools don't have to worry too much about students quitting on lunches altogether-and thus stripping the school of the federal funding.

Regulation

To be sure, the government won't pay for just any meal. It imposes dietary standards. That should ensure schools serve good quality food of sufficient nutrition.

In 2010, the Democrat-led Congress and the Obama administration imposed a new set of school food regulations. The idea was to make the food more healthy.

The resulting regulation set minimum levels of vegetables and fruit served, calorie limits on how much children can put on their trays, it banned 2 percent and whole milk, banned non-whole grains, set maximum fat levels, and set a schedule for lowering the sodium content of meals.

There's more, like a rule that children always have to take fruit or vegetable side with their meals.

The results have been mixed based on several studies, each limited to a handful of schools.

When given more fruit on the menu, children picked it up more often, studies show with some consistency. Yet when forced to pick it up, many children threw the fruit away, one study showed.

Some studies showed that serving more vegetables made children eat more of them. Other studies showed children actually ate less vegetables after the new regulations were put in place.

Some studies and surveys showed the new regulations caused children to throw more food away. Other studies showed same levels of food trashing as before.

The total food cost for schools went up by some $1.2 billion in extra spending in 2015.

Despite the extra spending, the new rules didn't guarantee better quality. In some cases, quite the opposite. Scores of students post pictures of unappealing school lunches on social media and complain the food is bland and portions are too small.

#thanksmichelleobama . @realDonaldTrump fix this pic.twitter.com/oAdzEV1AKZ

- Dylan Simpson (@TheDsimp) November 30, 2016

The regulations limit a high schooler's lunch to 850 calories-an equivalent of one Five Guys cheeseburger with no toppings. Nutrition experts say that should be enough. But some decry the one-size-fits-all approach.

"As far as meal guidelines, you can't say that a 300-pound football player and a 90-pound cheerleader have the same needs on a daily basis," said Brett Lago, business manager at Penn-Trafford School District in Pennsylvania, according to TribLive.

Regulators have trouble adjusting for such individual preferences. They can't quantifying how appealing or appetizing a meal must be. And so schools with passive staff and leadership figure out a way to do an absolute minimum, while enthusiastic teams are constrained in their creativity by the rules.

Respect

Apart from a lack of respect for food in general, children may have more respect for food prepared by their families than for food made by an anonymous government employee. Some schools try to promote respect for the work that goes into school lunches. For example, by introducing "lunchlady appreciation" days.

Solutions

Penn-Trafford High School ditched the federal lunch program this year and instead focused on food quality and variation. Stronger lunch sales made up for the lost federal funding.

"The participation has gone from about 25 to 45 percent, and we're still providing free lunches to all those students who would have been eligible under the [federal] school lunch program," Lago said.

Yet schools in poorer areas likely wouldn't be able to follow suit. Only 14 percent of Penn-Trafford students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In many inner-city schools that percentage easily surpasses 50 percent or even closes in on 100 percent. In absence of federal funding, they would need another sponsor.

Birmingham Public Schools district in Michigan took a different route. It contracted with a food service provider and tries to be creative within the limits of the regulations. For example, children often dislike the taste of whole-grain bakery. And so the schools try to hide them in more appealing forms like whole-grain pizzas or tortillas.

The schools also hunt for trendy recipes and offer fancier meals for a small surcharge. They try to reduce cost by meticulous attention to reducing waste during preparation. Still, even there, food waste among students prevails.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue thinks schools will benefit from a bit more flexibility.

Here are the changes he made:

Rule under Obama:

100% of grains must be whole grain

24% additional cut to salt content starting next school year

Flavored milk must be non-fat

Rule under Trump:

50% of grains can be non-whole grain

No additional cut to salt content

1% flavored milk allowed

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Why Are Children Throwing Away School Lunches?

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With a hint of a hyperbole, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue moved this week to "make school meals great again," somewhat relaxing dietary regulations imposed by the Obama administration and Congress in 2010. "This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting ...

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Toru Takahashi/AP

The country ensures lunch is delicious, healthy, and part of the curriculum.

Do efforts to feed students help improve their performance in school? Mick Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, grabbed headlines Thursday when he argued in favor of cutting federal funds to programs that provide food to poor students. His justification: There's "no demonstrable evidence" that the programs help them do better in school.

Tell that to Japan, where more than 10 million kids receive delicious, fresh food every school day, in large part because the country considers lunch part of a child's education, not a break from school. What students there receive is a far cry from the processed, reheated meals you'd find in American schools. Picture a tray filled with fish with pear sauce, mashed potatoes, and vegetable soup. The ingredients come from local farmers or the school's farm, and a team of cooks made the dishes that morning.

Elementary and junior high school students eat lunch in their classroom, where they learn about nutrition and Japan's food history and culture. They also take turns serving the meal to each other, cleaning up, and recycling. As government school lunch experts Nobuko Tanaka and Miki Miyoshi write, this helps children acquire "a sense of gratitude" and "spirit to appreciate foods and social manners."

In the late 19th century, some Japanese schools began to provide lunches for poor children. But it wasn't until after WWII, with the School Lunch Act of 1954, that school lunch became a nationwide program. In the years following the war Japanese school lunches consisted largely of U.S. and other international donations-lots of powdered skim milk and bread. By the 1970s the meal had become much like what kids eat today. Soups, vegetables, fish, and rice are common.

While municipalities pay for the labor it takes to make the lunches, parents pay for the food, about $2.50 per meal. Reduced or free lunches are available for those in need. Some children depend on school lunch for their main meal; around 16 percent of two-parent households in Japan aren't able to supply enough food for their children, and this figure increases to 32 percent for single-parent households. An education official from Fukuoka, in southern Japan, told Japan Today, "There are many elementary and junior high kids who depend on school lunches, who come back from summer break looking very thin."

There's a term in Japanese for "food and nutrition education": Shokuiku. In 2005, with more children battling eating disorders, the government enacted a law on Shokuiku that encourages schools to educate children on good food choices. In 2007, the government advocated for hiring diet and nutrition teachers. Though these teachers are only in a small percentage of elementary and junior high schools, research has shown their positive effects, from better school attendance to fewer leftovers.

Japan's school lunch program has also no doubt contributed to the country's low global rate of obesity. And Japan's life expectancy, at 85, is one of the world's highest. In contrast, the U.S. has a high obesity rate and a lower life expectancy of 79.8.

The likes of Jamie Oliver and Michelle Obama have tried to improve American school lunch. The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Obama, mandated larger portions of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and limited calories. Studies showed some positive effects, though the legislation is now under threat by lobbyists looking to capitalize on the new administration's likely sympathetic stance on their calls to allow more sodium and reduce whole grains in school food.

As U.S. politicians and local leaders debate these issues, they might do well to consider the Japanese system. Where else do reverence and nostalgia for healthy school meals spur a restaurant to serve up the fare? One municipality in northern Tokyo even publishes a cookbook of its greatest school lunch hits. And parents call up their children's schools for recipes.

"[They] hear their kids talking about what they had for lunch," a Tokyo principal told The Washington Post. "Kids ask them to re-create the meals at home."

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Japan's School Lunch Program Puts Others to Shame

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The country ensures lunch is delicious, healthy, and part of the curriculum. Do efforts to feed students help improve their performance in school? Mick Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, grabbed headlines Thursday when he argued in favor of cutting federal funds to programs that provide food to poor students.

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Jamie Oliver: Is His Food Revolution Changing America’s Public Schools? - PublicSchoolReview.com

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Jamie Oliver started in West Virginia public schools, revamping their cafeteria conundrums. Now he’s fighting with the LA Unified School District, and some are wondering if this star chef can really revolutionize unhealthy schools.

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Revolt

Students say they're not getting enough food. Health experts say they're wrong. Kevin Fallon reports.

Rogelio V. Solis / AP Photo

America, your children are hungry. And they're going to sing about it.

"Give me some seconds, I, I need to get some food today," croons Callahan Grund, a 16-year-old football player from Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kan. "My friends are in the corner store getting junk so they don't waste away ..."

Set to the tune of fun.'s chart-topping hit "We Are Young," " We Are Hungry" is a video made by a group of Wallace County students and teachers who are tired of their stomachs grumbling after new regulations mandated healthier lunches be served in school. In the clip, which has already accrued over 500,000 views on YouTube, Grund and his classmates are seen collapsing during sports practice, stealing food off each other's lunch trays, and frowning over puny-sized pieces of meat. "Tonight, we are hungry / Set the policy on fire, it can burn brighter than the sun."

All across the nation, schools are debuting new lunches featuring smaller portions, more fruits and vegetables, and fewer calories, mandated ( PDF) as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. And students are debuting their rage. Bring on the Hunger Games.

Two years ago, Michelle Obama launched her Let's Move initiative, a program aimed at making child nutrition and fitness a national priority-a key component of which involved making school lunch more healthful. Accompanying the movement was a first lady media onslaught in which Barack's better half promoted her agenda on Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres, and Jay Leno's talk shows. Even Sasha Fierce herself, Beyoncé, got involved, lending a peppy song-and-dance routine to the cause, while Rachael Ray joined the crusade for new federal guidelines for better school lunches.

Then there was Jamie Oliver's fat-shaming spectacular, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which pointed the exploitative reality-TV high beams on Middle American lunch ladies serving up pizza and French fries to obese students and scolded them for slowly killing our nation's youth.

The menu of lessons that we were supposed to digest: the U.S. has a childhood obesity problem. Poor nutrition in schools is partly to blame. Making school lunches more nutritious will make children healthier. Our communities will be happier because of that. We should all be grateful for this change.

Instead, the kids are revolting. And the cries of hunger pangs echoing in the chorus of the Wallace County High video are just the beginning.

"I think it's kind of ridiculous that people say how much we get to eat when there are a lot of kids that are big," Hunter Wishek, a 6-foot-5 football player from Clarence, Mo., told Fox News. "When we can't have our meat and bread, for a guy, it's not fun."

Though he found the whole-wheat pita in his new lunch to be "nasty," Mississippi fifth-grader Marecas Wilson says, "I was just trying to eat it so I wouldn't be hungry later on." Other students aren't pleased that perennial favorites-chicken nuggets, for example-are being replaced with less delectable fare, while some just wish the food they were being offered was enough to sustain them throughout the day. "The fruits and vegetables are good at first but once they wear off, I get hungry," says Rachelle Chinn, a freshman also from Clarence. "It's just not enough to get through the day."

"We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value," Kansas seventh-grader Zach Eke told KAKETV.

Even teachers are noticing. "We hear them complaining around 1:30 or 2 that they are already hungry," Linda O'Connor, an English teacher at Wallace County High who worked with her famished students on the "We Are Hungry" song, told ABC News. "It's all the students, literally all the students ... you can set your watch to it."

Are these new lunches really that bleak?

According to the nutrition standards ( PDF) released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in January 2012, high school students must receive a minimum of 700 and a maximum of 850 calories in their lunches. (For students in middle school, the range is 600 to 700 calories). That means that, for grades 9-12, the standard lunch includes a cup of fruit, a cup of vegetables, two ounces of a grain, two ounces of meat, and a cup of milk.

"Let me just say this," Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food studies at NYU and author of What to Eat, tells The Daily Beast. "Eight-hundred fifty calories ought to be plenty-far more than enough-to tide a kid over until after school."

The government's dietary guidelines state that teenagers should consume between 1,800 calories a day for the most sedentary to 2,400 calories a day for those who are exceptionally active. If students ate three meals a day-and no snacks-with the same caloric value as their school lunches, they would even exceed their recommended intake.

Yet many students, chiefly athletes, continue to gripe about the rumblies in their tumblies. That oh-so-witty singer in the "We Are Hungry" video is, after all, a football player. Hunter Wishek claims to weigh 210 pounds and require 4,700 calories to maintain his rigorous training regimen. How could he possibly subsist on a sad 850-calorie lunch? It's that kind of question that blogs blasting "Michelle Obama's Share-the-Starvation Lunch Program" have seized on.

But the school-lunch reforms were never supposed to fuel growing gridiron boys. "It's obvious that athletes need more calories," Amie Hamlin, executive director of NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, tells The Daily Beast. "But the school lunch program isn't intended for athletes. It's intended for food-insecure households"-the ones unable or unwilling to provide balanced nutrition to their children. Besides, she says, athlete or not, it's unreasonable to think that a school lunch will sustain any student into the twilight hours of the night when a sports practice or other activity may end. If a student goes home after the bell rings, the routine-and healthy habit-is to eat a light snack. Even if they're trapped at school, athletes should be doing the same thing. If these kids are that hungry, the school should be providing it, she says. "If that's what sports' fundraising needs to include, then so be it."

Even the USDA, which enforces these new lunch regulations, endorses snack time. "It's not surprising that some youngsters will in the middle of the day be hungry," says USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, saying the administration is working to create snack programs for schools. "I remember my two boys when they came back from school they were always hungry, we always had snacks prepared for them."

There's another issue at play here, says Mandi Pek, a New York-based registered dietician and nutritionist. Kids are turning up their noses at the new, healthier food they're being given and chucking it in the trash-which could certainly explain hunger among the pickier eaters used to their chicken nuggets. "If they had more grilled chicken instead of canned pears, the students may actually eat the food that they're given," she tells The Daily Beast.

It's one thing to impose an overhauled meal system in schools, one that affects, according to the USDA, 32 million children. But the kids are mostly clueless about what they're eating. "Drastic changes should not be made without education," Pek says. Agrees Nestle: "Where are adults in these schools? Why aren't they working with the kids on issues of health and common sense?"

Beyond education-and stopping short of more major reforms-a lot of these issues could be solved through collaboration. Schools could ask, for example, what the kids want to, or will, eat, and work with them on developing a menu. It's the age-old trick, says Pek. Young kids will eat healthier foods at home when their parents involve them in the cooking. The same principle applies here. "Maybe serve a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a chicken nugget," she says. "Maybe that would be an easier transition."

But even with health professionals singing the praises of healthy, portion-controlled lunches (though perhaps their cause could benefit from an original song), the tension between them and those opposing the changes is tightening. On Thursday, congressional representatives from Iowa and Kansas responded to the outrage by introducing the No Hungry Kids Act, which would replace the current school-lunch legislation with one requiring calorie limits.

Hamlin, of the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, calls such a move outrageous. "If you have a 225 lb. high school student who should really weigh 150 lbs., and they're 75 lbs. overweight, it does take more calories to maintain that weight. Yeah, they're hungry. But do they need those extra calories in the school lunches? Is it the taxpayers' job to pay for more calories so that they can maintain that weight?"

Food for thought.

America, your children are hungry. And they're going to sing about it.

"Give me some seconds, I, I need to get some food today," croons Callahan Grund, a 16-year-old football player from Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kan. "My friends are in the corner store getting junk so they don't waste away ..."

Set to the tune of fun.'s chart-topping hit "We Are Young," " We Are Hungry" is a video made by a group of Wallace County students and teachers who are tired of their stomachs grumbling after new regulations mandated healthier lunches be served in school. In the clip, which has already accrued over 500,000 views on YouTube, Grund and his classmates are seen collapsing during sports practice, stealing food off each other's lunch trays, and frowning over puny-sized pieces of meat. "Tonight, we are hungry / Set the policy on fire, it can burn brighter than the sun."

All across the nation, schools are debuting new lunches featuring smaller portions, more fruits and vegetables, and fewer calories, mandated ( PDF) as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. And students are debuting their rage. Bring on the Hunger Games.

Two years ago, Michelle Obama launched her Let's Move initiative, a program aimed at making child nutrition and fitness a national priority-a key component of which involved making school lunch more healthful. Accompanying the movement was a first lady media onslaught in which Barack's better half promoted her agenda on Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres, and Jay Leno's talk shows. Even Sasha Fierce herself, Beyoncé, got involved, lending a peppy song-and-dance routine to the cause, while Rachael Ray joined the crusade for new federal guidelines for better school lunches.

Then there was Jamie Oliver's fat-shaming spectacular, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which pointed the exploitative reality-TV high beams on Middle American lunch ladies serving up pizza and French fries to obese students and scolded them for slowly killing our nation's youth.

The menu of lessons that we were supposed to digest: the U.S. has a childhood obesity problem. Poor nutrition in schools is partly to blame. Making school lunches more nutritious will make children healthier. Our communities will be happier because of that. We should all be grateful for this change.

Instead, the kids are revolting. And the cries of hunger pangs echoing in the chorus of the Wallace County High video are just the beginning.

"I think it's kind of ridiculous that people say how much we get to eat when there are a lot of kids that are big," Hunter Wishek, a 6-foot-5 football player from Clarence, Mo., told Fox News. "When we can't have our meat and bread, for a guy, it's not fun."

Though he found the whole-wheat pita in his new lunch to be "nasty," Mississippi fifth-grader Marecas Wilson says, "I was just trying to eat it so I wouldn't be hungry later on." Other students aren't pleased that perennial favorites-chicken nuggets, for example-are being replaced with less delectable fare, while some just wish the food they were being offered was enough to sustain them throughout the day. "The fruits and vegetables are good at first but once they wear off, I get hungry," says Rachelle Chinn, a freshman also from Clarence. "It's just not enough to get through the day."

"We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value," Kansas seventh-grader Zach Eke told KAKETV.

Even teachers are noticing. "We hear them complaining around 1:30 or 2 that they are already hungry," Linda O'Connor, an English teacher at Wallace County High who worked with her famished students on the "We Are Hungry" song, told ABC News. "It's all the students, literally all the students ... you can set your watch to it."

Are these new lunches really that bleak?

According to the nutrition standards ( PDF) released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in January 2012, high school students must receive a minimum of 700 and a maximum of 850 calories in their lunches. (For students in middle school, the range is 600 to 700 calories). That means that, for grades 9-12, the standard lunch includes a cup of fruit, a cup of vegetables, two ounces of a grain, two ounces of meat, and a cup of milk.

"Let me just say this," Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food studies at NYU and author of What to Eat, tells The Daily Beast. "Eight-hundred fifty calories ought to be plenty-far more than enough-to tide a kid over until after school."

The government's dietary guidelines state that teenagers should consume between 1,800 calories a day for the most sedentary to 2,400 calories a day for those who are exceptionally active. If students ate three meals a day-and no snacks-with the same caloric value as their school lunches, they would even exceed their recommended intake.

Yet many students, chiefly athletes, continue to gripe about the rumblies in their tumblies. That oh-so-witty singer in the "We Are Hungry" video is, after all, a football player. Hunter Wishek claims to weigh 210 pounds and require 4,700 calories to maintain his rigorous training regimen. How could he possibly subsist on a sad 850-calorie lunch? It's that kind of question that blogs blasting "Michelle Obama's Share-the-Starvation Lunch Program" have seized on.

But the school-lunch reforms were never supposed to fuel growing gridiron boys. "It's obvious that athletes need more calories," Amie Hamlin, executive director of NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, tells The Daily Beast. "But the school lunch program isn't intended for athletes. It's intended for food-insecure households"-the ones unable or unwilling to provide balanced nutrition to their children. Besides, she says, athlete or not, it's unreasonable to think that a school lunch will sustain any student into the twilight hours of the night when a sports practice or other activity may end. If a student goes home after the bell rings, the routine-and healthy habit-is to eat a light snack. Even if they're trapped at school, athletes should be doing the same thing. If these kids are that hungry, the school should be providing it, she says. "If that's what sports' fundraising needs to include, then so be it."

Even the USDA, which enforces these new lunch regulations, endorses snack time. "It's not surprising that some youngsters will in the middle of the day be hungry," says USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, saying the administration is working to create snack programs for schools. "I remember my two boys when they came back from school they were always hungry, we always had snacks prepared for them."

There's another issue at play here, says Mandi Pek, a New York-based registered dietician and nutritionist. Kids are turning up their noses at the new, healthier food they're being given and chucking it in the trash-which could certainly explain hunger among the pickier eaters used to their chicken nuggets. "If they had more grilled chicken instead of canned pears, the students may actually eat the food that they're given," she tells The Daily Beast.

It's one thing to impose an overhauled meal system in schools, one that affects, according to the USDA, 32 million children. But the kids are mostly clueless about what they're eating. "Drastic changes should not be made without education," Pek says. Agrees Nestle: "Where are adults in these schools? Why aren't they working with the kids on issues of health and common sense?"

Beyond education-and stopping short of more major reforms-a lot of these issues could be solved through collaboration. Schools could ask, for example, what the kids want to, or will, eat, and work with them on developing a menu. It's the age-old trick, says Pek. Young kids will eat healthier foods at home when their parents involve them in the cooking. The same principle applies here. "Maybe serve a grilled chicken sandwich instead of a chicken nugget," she says. "Maybe that would be an easier transition."

But even with health professionals singing the praises of healthy, portion-controlled lunches (though perhaps their cause could benefit from an original song), the tension between them and those opposing the changes is tightening. On Thursday, congressional representatives from Iowa and Kansas responded to the outrage by introducing the No Hungry Kids Act, which would replace the current school-lunch legislation with one requiring calorie limits.

Hamlin, of the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, calls such a move outrageous. "If you have a 225 lb. high school student who should really weigh 150 lbs., and they're 75 lbs. overweight, it does take more calories to maintain that weight. Yeah, they're hungry. But do they need those extra calories in the school lunches? Is it the taxpayers' job to pay for more calories so that they can maintain that weight?"

Food for thought.

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Nutritious School Lunches, or the New Hunger Games?

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Revolt Students say they're not getting enough food. Health experts say they're wrong. Kevin Fallon reports. America, your children are hungry. And they're going to sing about it. "Give me some seconds, I, I need to get some food today," croons Callahan Grund, a 16-year-old football player from Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kan.

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School Meals Contacts | Food and Nutrition Service

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Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)

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Nutrition Standards for School Meals | Healthy Meals Resource System

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Through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by the First Lady and signed by President Obama, USDA made the first major changes in school meals in 15 years. View the regulations, supporting documents, and technical assistance materials here.

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How the quality of school lunch affects students' academic performance | Brookings

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In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The main goal of the law was to raise the minimum nutritional standards for public school lunches served as part of the National School Lunch Program. The policy discussion surrounding the new law centered on the underlying health reasons for offering more nutritious school [...]

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Starting a recycling program for your school is a no-brainer, schools have a lot of people creating a high volume of waste, a large proportion of which can be diverted from landfills. So if you school doesn't have a recycling program, what are you waiting for? Busch Systems is here to give you a step-by-step guide to implementing a successful recycling program that faculty and students will get excited for.

Step 1: Research

Check to see if there were any past recycling efforts at the school. Find out what worked and identify any obstacles that may have kept the program from running smoothly in the past. Make sure the program is in compliance with any school policies regarding waste and recycling.

Familiarize yourself with waste and recycling laws in your area to make sure your future program is within legal boundaries. Look into what kinds of waste is being produced by the school and check to see what waste streams are collected by local waste management companies. Check the frequency of pickup and the cost of diverting waste.

Additionally, check for any local, state/province, or country-wide grants that might be available and often assist in alleviating the costs of implementing a sustainability program.

Step 2: Determine Your Needs

With your research complete, the next step is figuring out what you program needs in order to be successful. Here are a few things to take into consideration:

More staff may be necessary in order for the program to run properly

A green team of student volunteers would be an excellent way to maintain the program

The amount of containers you need - don't neglect any areas where waste is generated.

Once the program needs have been determined, the next step is to take that information and come up with a proposal.

Step 3: Write a Proposal

When writing the proposal be sure to highlight the environmental and financial benefits of having a recycling program implemented at the school. Include the entire process of starting the recycling program, from the implementation of containers to the collection waste and recycling.

Step 4: Purchase Containers

Now that your awesome proposal has netted you the funds needed to start the program, it's time to buy bins! Don't jump the gun too quickly though, there are some things to take into consideration when buying recycling and waste containers:

One size does not fit all, what works in a classroom won't necessarily work in hallways or cafeterias.

Adding signage to your bins is a great way to promote your program and educate students and ensures material is sorted properly.

For younger students, bold and colorful bins are a fantastic way to get them exciting about recycling.

Buying bins manufactured in North America will lower your carbon footprint!

Trash cans should never feel lonely, a recycling bin makes a great companion

Think of the areas in your schools where collection would take place - classrooms, cafeterias, offices, hallways and outdoors. Sensitive documents need a place to go as well.

Now that the right recycling and waste bins have been chosen, the next step is implementing and monitoring your recycling program.

Step 5: Implementation & Monitoring

It's go time! Here's a checklist of what to do to make implementation as easy as possible:

Contact the waste hauler you've chose and go over the final details

Appoint your recycling program coordinator

Educate students and faculty about the program and the positive effects it will have on the environment

Set goals for your program, pass them along to students and faculty

Come up with a name for your program, create a logo.

Gather a team of eager student volunteers to get involved with the program

Use online resources, such as our Recycling How To's, for extra help during the process and to get your students interested and excited about recycling!

Once implementation is complete the final step is to monitor the program. The individual appointed as program coordinator will need to observe and give feedback on any obstacles preventing the program from working efficiently. Keep students and staff up-to-date on the program success and the positive impact their recycling efforts are having on the environment. A recycling program in elementary, middle and high schools is a great way to mold young minds into being more conscious of how their actions can impact the environment.

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It's Elementary - Starting A Recycling Program for Schools Grades K-12

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Starting a recycling program for your school is a no-brainer, schools have a lot of people creating a high volume of waste, a large proportion of which can be diverted from landfills. So if you school doesn't have a recycling program, what are you waiting for?

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Overview

When you walk into your school's cafeteria, what's your first impression? Is the space bright and clean, with walls featuring colorful healthy eating murals and student artwork? Students visit the cafeteria on a daily basis, so it is a perfect place to promote healthy choices and create an environment where students can enjoy healthy eating. Spruce up your cafeteria with murals, posters and artwork to reinforce healthy eating and daily physical activity messages.

Take Action

Transform your cafeteria by incorporating some of these healthy eating and physical activity promotion strategies:

Brainstorm a few ideas and present them to your school administration and food service manager. Speak their language! Focus the conversation on how sprucing up the cafeteria supports school wellness policies (it encourages students to eat better and move more) and may even increase the number of students eating school meals (resulting in more money for the school meal program).

Form a 'redesign' team of administrators, food service staff, teachers, parents and students to discuss cafeteria needs, develop a vision and put a plan into place for the cafeteria spruce up.

Identify a location for the mural or artwork, and areas where the cafeteria needs updating. Sometimes a cafeteria spruce up can be as simple as moving furniture around so the space feels more open and welcoming.

Get your art, photography and ceramics teachers on board. What role can they play?

Budget for resources. Host a healthy fundraiser to raise money for paint and supplies.

Conduct a student survey to learn what students would like to see in the mural and use this information to create the design. Alternatively, pick a theme and hold a poster contest where students create the design. Hold a school-wide vote!

Painting a mural is a great project for high school service learning students. Put them to work!

Tips

Instead of painting a mural on the wall itself, consider having students/artists paint pieces of the mural on separate canvases, then screw the canvases together. This makes the murals portable.

It's best to organize the day to paint over the weekend or during a school break to allow sufficient time for the mural to dry.

Ask local community leaders to be present for the event. Submit a press release to the local media to generate positive PR about your work.

Celebrate the space! After painting, host a taste test or healthy carnival to showcase your redesigned cafeteria.

Engage Volunteers

Engaging volunteers has a wide range of benefits. Volunteers can offer new perspectives and make a lasting impact and contribution through their knowledge base and support. Volunteers can provide an extra helping hand or a needed, valuable skill set. Who in your network has skills or interests that complement your needs? Brainstorm ways to engage individuals, organizations or businesses as volunteers to help. Ways to engage volunteers could include:

Have a parent volunteer connect with local hardware or paint stores to see if they would be willing to donate paint, supplies or volunteers.

Reach out to local artists or community arts organizations to see if they would volunteer to design a healthy/active cafeteria mural.

Recruit volunteers for a day of community service to paint the cafeteria mural.

Additional Resources

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action for healthy kids® fights childhood obesity

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undernourishment and physical inactivity by helping schools become healthier places so kids can live healthier lives.

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When you walk into your school's cafeteria, what's your first impression? Is the space bright and clean, with walls featuring colorful healthy eating murals and student artwork? Students visit the cafeteria on a daily basis, so it is a perfect place to promote healthy choices and create an environment where students can enjoy healthy eating.