Officials, legislators irked by ruling
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
While potatoes aren’t being eliminated from the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture appears to be pushing other vegetables onto children’s plates before they get a serving of Maine’s most famous crop.
In November, Congress passed language in an appropriations bill preventing the USDA from moving forward with a rule setting maximum consumption standards for any specific vegetable in federal school meal programs. However, in the final rule issued Jan. 25, the USDA worked around this action by removing the limitation on starchy vegetables, but adding a provision requiring schools to meet all other fruit and vegetable requirements before serving more than the one cup of starchy vegetables each week in order to be eligible for reimbursement by the federal government.
The USDA’s final rule requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their caloric requirements.
“These improvements to the school meal programs, largely based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, are expected to enhance the diet and health of school children, and help mitigate the childhood obesity trend,” said the USDA in its report addressing school nutrition standards.
“As required by the FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Act, we are removing the proposed rule limit on starchy vegetables, and instead requiring schools to offer at least minimum quantities of all vegetable subgroups in the National School Lunch Program over the course of the week,” read the report. “This change encourages consumption from all vegetable subgroups (dark green, red/orange, beans and peas, starchy and other), and is consistent with the Dietary Guidelines’ recommendation to increase variety in vegetable consumption.”
Tim Hobbs, director of development and grower relations for the Maine Potato Board, said USDA’s rule continues to restrict potatoes.
“It appears that USDA and the Administration didn’t seem to have much regard for what Congressional intent was as a result of the amendment that U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) authored to restrict their funding if they had gone ahead with the rule as proposed,” said Hobbs. “What they’ve done is set a minimum amount of servings for everything else, and once you meet those minimums, then you can add potatoes. It’s still quite restrictive and prescriptive. It looks like a backdoor, sidestep or dodge attempt to keep in what they wanted. It’s disappointing that they continue to want to go after potatoes, but it’s not surprising. That’s been the USDA’s attitude for a while now.
“I think our school lunch professionals do a great job without the federal government dictating every little nuance of what’s going to be on that plate,” he said. “It looks to me that the USDA tried to get as much of the original rule to carry through as they possibly could without violating what they’ve been told to do by Congress.”
U.S. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) was equally displeased by the USDA’s final decision.
“The USDA’s final rule on starchy vegetables is disappointing after Congress made it clear in November that limitations on potato consumption should be removed when they are served in a healthy manner,” she said. “Rather, the USDA chose a backdoor approach that reduces the flexibility in providing affordable and nutritional meals when our public schools already face constrained budgets.
“While I appreciate the USDA’s continued commitment to improving the health and well-being of our nation’s schoolchildren, the USDA’s initial recommendations on potatoes were not based on sound nutritional science and contradict their own 2005 and the most recent 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” Snowe said. “Limiting nutritional and cost-effective meals for our children when nine out of 10 Americans are currently not achieving the recommended vegetable and fruit consumption, denies our nation’s youth access to nutrient-rich foods.”
Though unhappy with the USDA’s decision, Congressman Mike Michaud (D-Maine) said it could have been worse.
“At least the new standards don’t remove potatoes from school lunches. Eliminating them would have denied our students a valuable source of nutrition and hurt our potato producers,” he said. “But the cost of implementing these new standards has always been a serious concern raised by our state’s school lunch programs, especially during a time of increasingly tight budgets.
“I look forward to hearing more from our potato producers and school lunch administrators on this issue,” said Michaud. “I will urge the USDA to reevaluate this new rule if they have outstanding concerns. Maine communities can’t afford unfunded mandates or government overreaches.”
The USDA’s rule will take effect with the start of the 2012-13 school year.
