Twenty years ago, it rarely happened. Now, it’s become an all-too-common scene: A high school student who’s fed up with a meal or the lunch line opts for the offerings of a vending machine or a la carte line.
It’s a scenario that continually motivates Ruth Litchfield, associate professor in food science and human nutrition. Litchfield is involved in two studies investigating the impact of these “competitive foods” – so named because their increasing prevalence allows them to compete with more nutritious school lunches for students’ dining dollars.
“What we’re finding very interesting is that the prevalence of these competitive foods has just skyrocketed in the past two decades,” Litchfield said. “The presence of vending machines and a la carte lines in our schools has doubled or tripled. The bottom line is that we’ve got these competitive food venues in the schools that are making it very difficult for our youth to make the better choice – the healthier choice.”
Litchfield and her colleagues have inventoried more than a dozen Iowa school districts in an effort to determine the pervasiveness and nutritional content of competitive foods. The inventoried high schools featured an average of eight vending machines, and an a la carte line could be found in each lunchroom. Moreover, almost 70 percent of a la carte offerings and nearly 80 percent of vending machine fare failed to meet the nutritional standards set by the Institute of Medicine and California Senate Bill 12 – prominent industry yardsticks for beverages and foods, respectively.
Litchfield warned that consistently eating competitive foods – which typically consist of chips, burgers, cookies, ice cream, French fries, and the like – is leading to dire consequences for both the country’s youth and its health care system.
“The long-term implications are huge,” Litchfield said. “We have five-year-olds who already have type 2 diabetes; they’re having knee replacements in their teens; they’re on hypertension medications before they’re out of high school. The burdens on our health care system are staggering – they could financially bankrupt this country. But more importantly, the quality of life for children who are overweight and obese has been compromised.”
Litchfield believes that the glaring disparity between classroom lessons and lunchroom environments needs to eliminated.
“If you think about the role of a school, it’s an educational environment,” said Litchfield. “So we’re teaching nutrition education in a classroom, yet when [students] walk down the hall, they’re not seeing what they’re being taught. We’ve really got a mixed message going on here. We’ve got the oxymoron of, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”
Litchfield noted that many schools feel financially compelled to supplement their school lunch programs through competitive food venues. She suggested that increasing the current reimbursement rate of $2.57 per meal would help schools reduce their reliance on competitive food funding.
“What [schools] are getting for a reimbursable school meal needs to change,” Litchfield said. “We have not accounted for inflation in the school meal program for at least 10 or 15 years. The State of Iowa puts in four cents per meal. [The question is:] Do we want to make this a priority at the state level?”
Litchfield is also spearheading an effort to investigate students’ perceptions and knowledge of foods – and determine whether the lunchroom environment may influence them. Preliminary findings suggest that students see healthy foods as more expensive and less tasty than their competitive food counterparts. She has also discovered that many students fail to correctly interpret the nutrition facts panel required for all food packaging.
These preliminary results have reinforced Litchfield’s view that nutrition should receive more emphasis in secondary school curriculum.
“I understand that we have a lot of [financial and curricular] pressures on our schools,” Litchfield said. “But I would encourage people to think long-term, because nutrition education is not a primary thrust in the curriculum. It’s not just the fact that we have the competitive foods; we also don’t have the nutrition education to help support what we’re trying to change in the environment.”
Still, Litchfield has many reasons for optimism – starting with the prospect that the USDA may soon enact federal nutrition guidelines for competitive foods.
“If in fact they do that, we’re a step ahead of the game,” said Litchfield. “They’re probably going to use the Institute of Medicine standards, and because we’re already looking at our schools relative to that, we’ve got a leg up [in preparing schools to meet those standards].”
Litchfield is also confident that schools themselves possess the power to improve both their lunchroom and classroom environments – and that doing so will lead to a healthier population.
“If we can do both, hopefully we can generate youth that can go on as adults and not only know what the right choices are, but also make those choices – because it’s a habit that they have learned, and they understand why they’re making those choices.”
