Right now, Congress has the chance to play a starring role in ending childhood obesity. By passing the reauthorization of the school lunch and other child nutrition programs, which is currently languishing without a date for a vote on the Senate floor, Congress can get junk food out of schools.
The causes of children’s poor diets and obesity are clear. Our kids are fed too many calories, harmful fats, added sugars, sodium and refined grains.
{mosads}Every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review the state of the nation’s diet and issue updated dietary advice. This year’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report reads like a horror story.
On average, children are getting one-third of their calories from harmful fats and added sugars. Children’s diets contribute to costly, debilitating and deadly diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Obesity alone costs about $150 billion a year, about half of which is paid by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid.
Many of the biggest problem foods in children’s diets are commonplace at school; cookies, snack cakes, and sports drinks found in school vending machines and pizza and chicken nuggets that are ubiquitous in a la carte lines in school cafeterias. The child nutrition reauthorization could help improve about 30 to 50 percent of children’s calorie intake, which kids typically eat at school on school days.
Though a third of children are overweight or obese, the Dietary Guidelines expert committee concluded children’s diets are deficient in key nutrients and lacking healthy fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat milk.
Paradoxically, kids today are overweight, but undernourished. The child nutrition programs are essential sources of good nutrition for children, especially low-income children.
The committee concluded that addressing nutrition and obesity must start with kids. They reasoned that prevention of obesity is essential, given the high failure rate of treating and maintaining weight loss. Also, dietary habits in youth set the stage for eating patterns and choices in adulthood.
While nutrition science grows stronger every five years, little is done to help children eat well. Congress has the chance to change that. They have two weeks to pass the child nutrition bill, before Congress goes home for summer recess and kids go back to school.
Last week the House Education and Labor Committee marked up its version of the child nutrition bill, the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act (H.R. 5504). The Senate Agriculture Committee has already unanimously passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307). The bills would remove junk food from school vending machines, increase school lunch reimbursements, provide more training to help schools serve healthier meals and strengthen school nutrition and physical activity wellness policies. The next key step is for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to assign a time for the full Senate to vote on the bill.
Unlike the many controversial issues in Washington, child nutrition is bipartisan, won’t add to the deficit and is popular with voters. It should take no more than a day of the Senate’s time. That’s all our kids need, just a day to help change their nutrition story and start them on a lifetime of eating healthfully.
Margo Wootan is the director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit health organization based in Washington, D.C.