Even Students are What They Eat

Abstract

NO TEACHER should be required to teach a child who did not bring his brain to school; she cannot teach the animal limbic system. Every morning each pupil should report what his breakfast contained. If he had no protein and ate mainly carbohydrates, he should be sent home. This quote comes from Feed Your Kids Right, by Dr. Lendon Smith. As if to support Dr. Smith's contention, the November 1999 Nutrition Action Newsletter, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, reported, cereal eaters get more vitamins, minerals, and fiber. They eat less fat. They're less depressed, less stressed, and even smarter than people who skip The more you look at the breakfasts people eat outside the home, the better cereal looks, claims the report. Even those low-fiber 'candy cereals' are relatively low in calories (about 120 per serving) and fat (assuming you eat them with 1% or skim milk). According to the 2002 School Breakfast Scorecard, published by the Food Research and Action Center, 36 states either have their own legislative requirements related to the School Breakfast Program or provide state funds for school breakfasts. In addition, says the report, almost all states use direct certification to some degree, a federal option that allows states to make students automatically eligible for free school meals if their families participate in the Food Stamp Program or the TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) program. West Virginia requires all schools to participate, while in Washington all schools with more than 40% of their students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches must offer breakfast. Kentucky and Utah do not require schools to have breakfast programs, but they do require schools without them to report why. Kentucky also requires districts to arrange bus schedules so that all buses arrive with sufficient time for schools to serve breakfast prior to the school day. Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Illinois provide state funding for universal access to free breakfasts in certain schools, without regard to an individual student's family income. North Carolina does so for kindergarten only. In 2002 Maryland lawmakers decided to remove the sunset provision in the state's highly successful in-the-classroom universal breakfast program. However, the Food Research and Action Center estimates that state school breakfast programs fail to reach almost 1.9 million children who are eligible for free or reduced-price breakfasts. Other programs also target low-income students. The U.S. Department of Agriculture supports programs such as the National School Lunch Program and the Special Milk Program. As important as these programs are, however, recent discussions have been less concerned with who is participating or with the numbers served than with what is being served and the nutritional habits of all children. Now that a growing number of districts have contracted with soft drink companies as a way of increasing district and school revenues, more attention is being paid to whether the revenues are worth the tradeoff in nutrition when schools provide greater access to sugary drinks and snack products. Add to this the practice of contracting with Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and other food providers as districts work to meet student demand and to widen their menu selections, and one has to wonder whether these practices might be working at cross-purposes with efforts to improve student learning. Clippings of news from across the country indicate that attention to nutrition is growing. For example, in October of 2002 in Washington, D.C., a partnership of more than 30 national education, fitness, nutrition, and health organizations held a Healthy Schools Summit: Taking Action for Children's Nutrition & Fitness. The summit brought together over 500 professionals from 49 states, representing areas of education, health, physical activity, nutrition, and school food service. …