Kids suffer from potato overload

No one would think that serving our children a variety of vegetables would mean french fries one day, a baked potato the next, and tater tots the third. Yet, that has been the case in too many of our school meals. Seventy-five percent of students who eat vegetables as participants in the National School Lunch Program eat potatoes and other starchy vegetables. These options contain limited nutrients relative to their calories and have been linked to excess weight gain when consumed regularly. Common sense tells us that a little change would be a good thing.

Last year, in passing the bipartisan Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, Congress recognized that it could help address this problem by ensuring that schools are offering healthy foods and sought to empower parents by making sure that the foods available to children in school are healthy. Over the course of the last 15 years, we’ve watched our nation’s children increasingly suffer from diseases that used to affect only adults, like diabetes and high blood pressure. And the tripling of childhood obesity rates put our children at risk for other serious health issues, such as heart disease, cancer and stroke.

{mosads}This legislation directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to revise outdated nutrition standards for school meals, ensuring children get the variety of nutrients they need within a reasonable number of calories. Thousands of schools have taken the initiative to improve their nutrition standards ahead of USDA’s official guidance. Their success proves that these changes can be made within the limits of current budgets, despite the difficult economic times. 

The USDA’s proposed guidelines, which are based on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, will help make sure that common-sense standards are applied to our National School Lunch Program. The proposal increases the overall amount and variety of fruits and vegetables children are served during school hours. 

In response to these small, science-based changes, the potato industry has called for an all-out food fight. They are trying to unravel the proposed guidelines and muscle other vegetables like broccoli and carrots off the lunch tray. Unfortunately, they have also engaged some members in the House and Senate to help them weaken the standards.  

Earlier this year, the House Appropriations Committee sought to block USDA efforts to implement the updated nutrition guidelines in their entirety. This fall, the Senate, which had unanimously approved the law requiring updated standards, will have to decide if it will stand by its decision or reverse course.  

The proposed USDA standards would ensure that children get the full range of nutrients they need to help them stay healthy and prevent obesity. The USDA isn’t trying to kick potatoes out of the cafeteria; the proposed changes simply limit these starches to a reasonable two servings per week, instead of allowing potatoes to be the every-day vegetable. Moderation is particularly important given a recent Harvard study identifying a link between eating potatoes and obesity, whether they are fried, baked, boiled or mashed.  

This issue is about responsible, science-based decision-making. Poor nutrition can have a significant impact on children’s academic success; research shows that students who do not have reliable, healthy meals in kindergarten are noticeably behind their peers in reading and math by the third grade.  

The reality is that our nation’s children are in crisis, with a full one-third overweight or obese. There is no single magic bullet to combat this problem. We need to make a series of responsible, sensible changes that will improve our children’s health. The updated school meal standards proposed by the USDA are one of the most important weapons in our arsenal. Congress, the White House and the food industry should join in allowing the USDA to finalize its common-sense improvements and keep our children healthy. 

Kessler is a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and has served as the dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco.