School lunches are so bland that kids are selling salt and pepper to spice them up, a school official told lawmakers Wednesday.
This “contraband economy” is result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act Of 2010, said John Payne, a school board president in Indiana.
The 2010 bill directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create national standards for food served and sold in schools, which included limits on what could be served and how much, as well as a maximum amount of calories that can be included in school meals.
Payne, president of the Blackford County School Board in Hartford City, Ind., told House lawmakers that students in his school district have been “caught bringing in — and even selling — salt, pepper and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food.”
Payne said the USDA standards are strangling school districts by making them provide food students won’t eat in addition to increasing the cost of lunch for school districts.
“The clear solution to these problems is local leadership and flexibility,” he said in his prepared remarks before the House Subcommittee on Early Education, Elementary, and Secondary Education.
He said flexibility would allow school districts to make adjustments while still providing healthy meals for children, but without such strict standards. Payne said participation in school meal programs has fallen by a few percentage points since 2012.
A USDA report said it expects 1.4 million fewer students to be served daily nationwide in a five-year span, which coincides with the implementation of the 2010 legislation.
Lynn Harvey, of North Carolina’s school nutrition services, testified that participation in school meals has dropped 5 percent in North Carolina under the new restrictions even as enrollment has increased.
Ninety percent of North Carolina school nutrition directors said a requirement that all grains must be whole grain is the main culprit, Harvey said.
For example, Harvey said that since breakfast biscuits were switched to whole grain, participation in breakfast has dropped in 60 percent of her state’s school districts.
“No amount of training or technical assistance for schools will change students’ distaste for foods that look and taste unappealing to them,” she said.
Another problem is that a provision in the 2010 bill requiring states to review school meals programs every three years is creating an unnecessary burden, South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp testified.
Schopp said the excess regulation is creating more paperwork and less benefit to needy, hungry children.
“[T]he complex and time-consuming review requirements have not actually resulted in identifying more problems,” Schopp said. “In fact, the new monitoring requirements have created unnecessary burdens making it difficult, if not impossible, for my staff to support the intent of the program.”
Lawmakers from both parties expressed concern about the shortcomings with the current law.
“[T]he federal role in these programs may be doing more to hinder your success than help,” said subcommittee Chairman Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind. However, Rokita said no one wants regulations to be eliminated and see fried food fed to children.
The subcommittee’s top Democrat, Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, said there is a federal role in ensuring every student has access to food and that regulations protect taxpayers.
“We also have to be good stewards of tax dollars,” Fudge said.
She added there are problems with the current law. “I agree, we have some work to do.”
