By Dan Glickman and Ann M. Veneman
The legislative events of last week had to surprise parents and educators who struggle to provide children with sound nutritional choices in a world often inhospitable to healthy behavior. Last Thursday night, lawmakers stripped the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) ability to limit starchy vegetables -- including potatoes -- in new school nutrition guidelines, and prevented the agency from increasing the amount of tomato paste required to classify as a vegetable. This goes beyond pizza. It undoes Congress' own mandate of less than a year ago. Under the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, USDA was required to promulgate new school lunch guidelines, and ensure that what we serve our kids is in line with national dietary guidelines. The bill passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and marked the first opportunity in 15 years to significantly improve the quality and nutritional value of cafeteria meals.
Until last week, the rulemaking at USDA, prescribed by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, was steadily and properly unfolding. USDA, following the normal regulatory process, provided an ample platform for feedback. It received 130,000 comments on the Institute of Medicine-based nutritional guidelines -- comments that spanned a spectrum of interests and perspectives. USDA was in the process of reviewing the comments and of promulgating a final rule when the Congress went around the process, using the 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill as a vehicle to undermine their earlier provision on healthier meals in schools. As former USDA Secretaries, we find this action very disappointing; we trust it will be self-defeating, as well. Good policy making should be guided by sound science and shaped by the views of a broad base of public input. In this case involving the health and well being of school kids, the normal procedures seem to have been replaced by the desire to preserve the status quo in the meals programs.
Good nutrition lies at the very core of our values and our productivity as a nation. Today, one in three American children is obese or overweight. By 2030, a staggering 50 percent of American adults are predicted to be obese. As a result, chronic obesity-related diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma, are at an all time high -- and the cost to our health care system has reached a crushing $147 billion a year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found that current generations of teenagers are at increased risk of developing heart disease. Of thousands surveyed, not one child could fully meet the American Heart Association's standards for "ideal cardiovascular health," and only 20 percent could meet two to three of the five requirements. Without a comprehensive change in policy and the steadfast support of policymakers, America's health will continue to decline.
But that's not all. As Americans grow more obese, we jeopardize our economic well-being and our competitiveness as a nation. Not only does obesity dramatically inflate health care costs, recent studies have shown that it accounts for $73.1 billion dollars each year in lost productivity at work.
All members of Congress should want to see American kids eat better and live healthy, productive lives. In the United States, childhood obesity constitutes an epidemic, with serious and growing long-term consequences, for individuals and the nation as a whole. We support USDA as it moves forward to implement the remainder of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act and to make important changes to school food standards. We are confident that USDA will continue to use science-based standards to inform their deliberations and maintain a transparent, democratic regulatory process.
But Congress also plays a critical role in helping American kids eat better and live healthy, productive lives. After all, Congress passed the bill mandating that USDA improve school meal programs in the first place. As the process moves forward, we urge Congress to stand firm in encouraging healthy meals for all our children.
Dan Glickman served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001. Ann M. Veneman served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 2001 until 2005. Together they co-chair the Bipartisan Policy Center's Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative.
Walter Willett, M.D., DrPH, MPH: Food Fight: Pizza and Spuds Win, School Kids Lose
Paul Schwennesen: Children On Farms: A Conceit Over Fatalities
Obesity and Overweight for Professionals: Childhood | DNPAO | CDC
Childhood obesity - MayoClinic.com
Preventing Obesity in Children, Causes of Child Obesity, and More
No, Congress did not declare pizza a vegetable - The Washington ...
Pizza A Vegetable? 11 Other Things That Aren't Either (PHOTOS)
Pizza is a vegetable... because it is covered in tomato paste | Mail ...
I believe alot of the obesity problem in our kids isn't so much as what they eat nowadays tho-it's their level of activity. When I was a kid we were active from sunup to sundown. We played outside all the time. Nowadays kids sit in front of the computer and game for hours, or sit in front of the tv for hours or sit and text their friends for hours. Kids need to be more active. Period.
It will change as soon as designing nutrition guidelines for Americans is taken out of the hands of an organization designed to promote US agriculture and into the hands of a group designed to address issues of human health, such as the CDC.
This is a structural issue that won't change until Congress changes it.
Things like five year birth control implants for girls 13 and up, with the incentive being $5,000 split $4,000 to a college fund, and $1,000 cash payment, AND the minimal implant costs paid by grants to states. Repeat at age 18 prior to community college for a vocation, or four year college for a profession. Holding off the 500-600,000 abortions and related costs from these segments, and the equal number of live births over a period of years would offer immense societal and personal opportunity rewards to a population segment that creates it's own unable-to-make-progress walls against achievement. Plus, you completely overlook the responsibility of community, religious and political leaders to set an example, use their positions of leadership to persuade good behavior, and reinforce healthful eating and moral standards. That IS their job, right? .
If "being taken care of" is the goal, they are well on their way. But, I wonder if one day they will wake up and wonmder if it was worth it? Being the "new economic slaves" and all?
Why, how totally cynical of me.
That and they seem to think that the meaning of liberty is the right to die miserably from a lack of reasonable regulation.
But I suppose those frozen junk food manufactures would consider it an infringement of their liberty not to get all that lucrative government money from schools.
getmoneyout.com
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/support-rep-ted-deutchs-occupied-amendment-order-end-corporate-personhood-and-restore-civil-rights/5xFXKzL4
They are two sides of the same coin.
The baby must be BORN - but after that, there are a good number of congress people who don't care at all.
"If they don't have any insurance, just let 'em die." I think I heard that recently in a debate... And there was no age limit imposed.