In school cafeterias nationwide, students may soon be seeing colorful and healthier changes to their lunches with more offerings of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and menu choices that are lower in sodium, trans fat, and saturated fat. We were there at the public briefing held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. for the release the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) new report, School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children.

For the past two years, an expert Committee has been working on creating recommendations for improving the nutrition standards and requirements for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). Those programs serve over 10.1 million breakfasts and 30.6 million lunches daily with meals designed to provide a significant portion of a child’s daily caloric and nutrient needs. With the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity rising, the meals must be planned carefully to meet the nutritional needs of children while not exceeding calories. The meals also serve as a model for children to learn lifelong healthy eating habits. The current nutrition standards and requirements are based on 15-year old data from the 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Recommended Dietary Allowances set 20 years ago. Now, with the Committee’s recommendations, school meals will reflect the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and IOM’s Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs).

Key Committee Recommendations       

1)      Simplify and make menu planning more practical: A food-based approach is recommended where the type and amounts of food in the meal are specified rather than the current nutrient-standard approach where meals are planned around meeting specific nutrient requirements. However, total calories, saturated fat, trans fat and sodium will continued to be tracked. 

2)      Calorie Reduction: For the first time ever, the Committee has set maximum calorie limits according to age-grade groups.

3)      Fat Reduction: The proposed changes also focus on reducing saturated fat (no more than 10% of calories) by limiting milk choices to only lowfat and nonfat milk.

4)      Sodium Reduction: According to the committee a typical high school lunch contains around 1,600 milligrams of sodium. Recognizing the health risks associated with excessive salt intake, the goal is to achieve no more than 740 milligrams of sodium for lunches with a gradual step-wise reduction planned. The timeline for sodium reductions is over the course of 10 years to give enough time to develop new lower sodium products, reformulate recipes, train food service workers and adapt students’ taste buds to the lower sodium levels to increase acceptability.

This report, along with IOM’s 2008 report on competitive foods, Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools now covers the whole school environment and serves as a model for best food practices in school nutrition. Implementing these changes will require additional resources like time, money and support from the USDA and the school community. Engaging state agencies, professional organizations, food industry, advocacy groups, schools, parents and students will be vital for the program’s continued success. Committee Chair, Virginia Stallings, said it best when she ended the briefing by saying that an investment in child nutrition is a wise investment and one that must be made to ensure the health of our nation’s children. 

For great healthful eating and physical activity tips for kids be sure to check out our own resource, kidnetic.com.