In her Food Politics blog, New York University’s Dr. Marion Nestle shares her thoughts on recent developments linking the School Nutrition Association to Big Food.
- “The School Nutrition Association (SNA) is the organization that ostensibly represents the interests of school food service personnel. I say ostensibly because the SNA has moved in a quite different direction. It now fully represents the interests of its corporate food industry donors. In the recent past, it supported federal efforts to improve the nutritional quality of school meals. Now it fights all efforts to do so.”
- “The SNA has just issued a Position Paper on school meals. It calls for more funding for school meals (good idea), but then insists on some very bad ideas:
- Stop requiring fruits and vegetables to be served with every meal.
- Don’t require so much whole grain.
- Back off on lower sodium.
- Allow any junk food to be part of the reimbursable meal.
- Allow any junk food to be sold in competition with school meals.”
- In other words, return to the junk food school environment that flourished before the Institute of Medicine wrote two reports on improving the nutritional quality of school meals, Michelle Obama instituted Let’s Move!, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 authorizing USDA to set nutritional standards, USDA wrote those standards, and most schools in the United States went right ahead and implemented them.”
- “With friends like the SNA, school food advocates don’t need enemies. Food companies pay SNA’s bills. They get what they pay for. The SNA ought to be the strongest advocate for healthier school meals. It’s a tragedy that this organization has become the leading defender of junk food.”
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