Over 200 DC schools will feature fresh strawberries and salad greens in their school lunches on May 23rd – all from local farms!  The D.C. Farm to School Network is also helping 50 schools set up hands-on educational tables in their cafeterias to remind students where food comes from and to get students excited about eating healthy, local food.

Henderson:Preparing meals is not a core competency for schools

In a chilling rebuke, Chancellor Kaya Henderson has disavowed the ambitious plans for improved D.C. school food set forth by DCPS food services Director Jeffrey Mills and instead has ordered her staff to proceed immediately with a new contract to outsource cafeteria operations and try to stem the mounting deficits attributed to the system’s current vendor, Chartwells.

In a letter to D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), Henderson distanced herself from some 1,500 pages of documents Mills’ staff had recently sent the Council detailing how Chartwells has helped run up some $14 million in red ink over the past year. Meanwhile, Henderson and her key management staff have refused to hear Mills’ proposal to ditch Chartwells and bring much of the system’s food service operations in-house.

Mills sent the proposal, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, to Cheh. But Henderson withdrew it, saying “the views in the PowerPoint do not reflect the direction that DCPS food services is moving in….”

Henderson told Cheh that “some of my staff members may not necessarily agree with my decision” and that she was sending a revised response to questions generated by Cheh. Echoing former Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s decision to hire Chartwells four years ago, Henderson wrote that “food service (like facilities maintenance and construction) is not a core competence of ours,” adding that “the option of bringing food service back in house is premature at this point.”

Henderson is scheduled to appear for questioning before the Council today, and Cheh, author of the city’s Healthy Schools Act, plans to ask the chancellor a number of food-related questions. School officials have yet to explain whether annual deficit spending–now averaging more than $12 per year–is supporting better food, high labor costs, waste and inefficiency, corporate profits for Chartwells, or some combination of all of the above.

The emerging schism between Henderson and Mills casts a pall over a food service operation that otherwise was thought to be showing great progress since Mills was hired two years ago. Mills had forced Chartwells to completely revamp its menus, removing things like Pop-Tarts, chicken nuggets and strawberry milk in favor of low-sugar cereals, fresh vegetables and more lunch items prepared from scratch by school kitchen staff. But while Chartwells ostensibly was hired to gain control of budget shortfalls in school food service, the deficits according to Mills have only gotten worse.

For instance, in 2007-2008, the last year DCPS self-operated food service, the average loss per school totaled $80,000. That jumped to $115,447 the first year Chartwells took over, and in subsequent years has run around $90,000 per school.

The total food service deficit for the current school year is expected to reach $14.35 million, or more than double the red ink DCPS cafeterias generated in 2004, when the schools ran their own food service.

According to Mills’ staff, Chartwells’ average cost per meal is $4.21, compared to $3.06 for D.C. Central Kitchen, which prepares meals for seven schools under a pilot program, and $2.87 per meal for Revolution Foods, which caters to another seven schools. Officials said Chartwells runs up the cost with numerous contractor fees, and by paying inflated prices for many supplies and ingredients. Mills’ plan to sever ties with Chartwells called for eliminating food service deficits by 2016.

Chartwells also collects millions of dollars in rebates from its suppliers. Under federal law, Chartwells is supposed to pass those rebates on to the schools, but officials said they still aren’t sure they are receiving all of the funds to which they are entitled.

Chartwells has a “cost reimbursable” contract with the schools, meaning it is reimbursed for all of its expenses, as well as being paid an annual management fee and a small fee for each meal it services. Under its contract with the schools, Chartwells is supposed to hold deficit spending to no more than $6 million annually or forfeit its management fee. But according to one official, Chartwells has forfeited its management fee every year the contract has been in place while deficits have ballooned out of control.

Mills, whose background was in developing restaurant concepts in New York prior to being hired as food services director for the schools here, has chafed under the Chartwells contract, hoping eventually to build a system in which the schools produced their own meals from whole ingredients. In anticipation of such a system, the Healthy School Act called on the city to provide a central kitchen and food processing facility that has yet to materialize.

According to Mills, only 8 of the nation’s 135 largest school districts outsource their cafeteria operations to large food service companies such as Chartwells, Sodexo and Aramark. Neighboring Fairfax County, for instance, runs its own food service without creating deficits. But the food served there also is regarded a far inferior to the meals children in D.C. receive.

But in light of the school chancellor’s latest move, Mills’ vision for meals cooked fresh by local chefs may be a long way off.

Chartwells gets big rebates serving meals like this

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

When  I first started writing about the food being served in my daughter’s elementary school cafeteria, I figured there had to be a reason children  were being fed Apple Jacks cereal, strawberry milk, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins for breakfast.

I was  right. The manufacturers of those sugar-laden products pay hefty rebates–some call them “kickbacks”–to giant food service companies as an inducement to purchase their highly processed goods. But  I have now learned it’s not just the lousy food that’s  fueled by rebates. Just about everything that goes into running a public  school cafeteria comes with a rebate check that helps make sure the industrial version of food wins out.

In what may be the first ever detailed  look into how industry rebates dominate school food service, documents I  obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that more than  100 companies paid rebates in recent years to the food service  management company hired by D.C. Public Schools–Chartwells–for  everything from breakfast cereal, hamburger patties and canned green  beans to paper cups, armored car services and drug counseling for  employees.

Far and away the biggest contributor to the rebate  dollars collected by Chartwells was a company I had never heard of, but  one that apparently plays an oversized roll in feeding our city’s  children–Performance Food Group. According to an itemization released by D.C. Public Schools, Performance Food Group  paid more than $400,000 in rebates for goods and services supplied to  the city’s schools over the last three years.

Based in Richmond,  Va., Performance Food Group claims to be “one of the nation’s largest  foodservice distributors” with multiple brands and more than 1,000  products aimed not only at schools and restaurants but “every kind of  eatery from coast to coast.” The company has operations in 29 states,  “from our distribution warehouses in Tennessee, to our seafood facility  in Miami, to our cheese processing facility in Minnesota.” It employees  10,000 workers just to transport all of its goods, and its trucks  “log  millions of miles each year,” according to the company’s website.

Second  on the list of biggest rebate providers in D.C. schools is General  Mills, the cereal maker, at $41,218, followed by Kraft, supplier of  mayonnaise and salad dressings at $36,165, and Country Pure  Foods-Ardmore Farms, manufacturer of fruit juices, at $34.991. The list  includes many of the nation’s top industrial food processors, such as  Kellogg’s ($20,717), ConAgra ($25,030) and Tyson ($15,792), as well as  frozen pizza giant Schwan’s ($24.561) and muffin maker Otis Spunkmeyer  ($21,377).

Manufacturers pay rebates based on large volume  purchases–literally, cash for placing an order. Rebates are said to be worth billions of dollars to the nation’s  food industry, although manufacturers as well as the food service companies who feed millions of the nation’s school children every day–Chartwells, Sodexo and Aramark–treat them as a closely-guarded secret.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that food service companies engaged in “cost reimbursable” contracts with schools credit any rebates they receive to their school clients. For more than a year, attorneys for D.C. Public Schools refused  to make public an itemized list of rebates collected by Chartwells, claiming the information constituted “trade secrets.” The schools were
overruled by Mayor Vincent Gray’s legal counsel after I filed an administrative appeal.

John Carroll, an assistant New York State attorney general investigating rebating practices there, has said rebates pose “an inherent conflict of interest” in school feeding programs because they favor highly processed industrial foods. In cases where schools pay a food service company a flat rate to provide meals, the companies are not required to disclose the rebates they collect. In  those cases, Carroll recently told a U.S. Senate Panel, rebates tend to drive up the cost of food, cheating children out of nutrition they might otherwise have on their lunch trays.

Carroll  also described cases where rebates discouraged the use of local farm products in school meals. Produce vendors can’t afford to pay a rebate for local apples. But in at least one case, a produce distributor raised the prices of his goods so that he could pay a rebate to a food service  company.

A Homeland Security sub-committee in the U.S. Senate is  investigating possible rebate fraud in contracts across the entire federal  government.

Here in the District of Columbia, children were being  fed meals manufactured in a suburban factory until Chartwells in the fall of  2009 introduced something it called “fresh cooked.” As I discovered while spending a week in the kitchen at my daughter’s elementary school, what that entailed was reheating pre-fabricated meal components such as  chicken nuggets and tater tots. For breakfast, children were often consuming up to 15 teasoons of sugar in the form of processed cereals, flavored milk, cookies and muffins.

Around that same time, D.C. Public Schools hired a new food services director, Jeffrey Mills, who scoured the entire Chartwells menu item-by-item, removing the flavored milk and processed treats and replacing many of the familiar re-heated lunch items. Funds allocated by a “Healthy Schools Act” approved by the D.C. Council helped pay for fresh local fruits and vegetables. But Mills  said he sometimes encountered stiff resistance from the local Chartwells manager because the products Mills wanted to serve were not on Chartwell “preferred” product list.

According to Carroll, site managers for food service companies face punishment from their employers  if they deviate from products that pay the biggest rebates. Rebates  are extremely lucrative, since they generate revenue that requires  virtually no labor. Some products trigger rebates of up to 50 percent  of their listed value. And while USDA regulations require that rebates  be credited to schools with “cost reimbursable” contracts, it is  believed that the big food service companies have found ways to profit  from them nonetheless.

For instance, it is speculated that manufacturers offer stepped-up rebates for very large purchase orders.  Thus, while a single school district may only be entitled to 10 percent  worth of rebates on its share of breakfast cereal, an order for cereal covering multiple school districts might trigger a rebate of, say, 20  percent. The food service company would simply pocket the difference.

Chartwells  manages food service in more than 500 school districts across the  country. The products it uses are supplied by a sister company called Foodbuy, whose employees concern themselves entirely with writing huge contracts  with food manufacturers and collecting the rebates on behalf of their  parent company, Compass Group, based in Great Britain. Compass group,  which owns numerous food service operations in this country–including Chartwells, Bon Appetit, Restaurant Associates, and Wolfgang Puck Catering–claimed  some $22 billion in sales in its most recent annual report.

In  July of last year, I disclosed that Chartwells had collected more than  $1 million in rebates and discounts during its first 18 months of operation  in D.C. schools.  Subsequently, the schools acknowledged that they had  been waiting nine months for Chartwells to make good on a request to  produce an itemized accounting of where those rebates came from.

I  can now pass along a list of most of the companies involved, compiled  from hundreds of data entries contained in the documents obtained from  D.C. Public Schools, representing rebates reported by Chartwells since  fall 2008. Some of the companies cited in the documents could not be  positively identified.

$ 415,051.41 Performance Food Group: food and food service products

$ 41,218.07   General Mills: breakfast cereals

$ 36,165.78   Kraft General Foods: salad dressings, condiments

$ 34,991.20  Country Pure Foods-Ardmore Farms: fruit juices

$ 32,839.50 Jenny-O Turkey Store: processed turkey products

$ 29,075.44  Allen Canning: canned vegetables

$ 25,030.91   ConAgra: prepared foods

$ 24,561.45   Schwan’s: frozen pizza

$ 21,377.88 Otis Spunkmeyer: muffins

$ 20,717.38  Kellogg’s: breakfast cereal

$ 20,628.47 Ecolab: kitchen sanitation services

$ 19,002.03  Pilgrim’s: chicken products

$ 15,792.67 Tyson: chicken products

$  13,682.74  Keany Produce: fruits and vegetables

$  16,583.00 Ford Motor Co.: vehicles

$ 15,011.72  Supply America: food service supplies and equipment

$ 14,324.32   Frito Lay:  chips and snacks

$ 13,974.08  JAFCO Foods: breaded chicken

$    9,959.46  Butensky Services: refrigeration repair

$   9,830.65  Simplot Food Group: frozen potato products

$   9,509.46  Smithfield Packing: ham, hot dogs

$   9,153.11  Pactiv: plastic food packaging

$   8,226,89 Atlantic Mills: kitchen wipes, aprons

$   8,056.00  VF Solutions: uniforms

$   7,344.53   Heinz: ketchup

$   7,308.33   Dunbar Armored: armored car services

$    6,727.56 Pinnacle Foods: syrup, pickles, barbecue sauce

$    6,591.27   Unilever Food Solutions: dressings, sauces, seasonings

$    6,578.11  Michael Foods: frozen egg products

$    6,193.99   Coca-Cola: soft drinks, bottled water

$    5,953.75  Automotive Rentals: vehicle rental

$    5,680.97 Great Lakes Cheese: cheese products

$    5,195.30  Mission Foods/Gruma: tortillas

$    5,152.21  Office Max: office products

$    4,718.02  McCormick & Co.: spices

$    4,678.79  Cadbury: chocolate

$    4,388.70 Cargill Meat Solutions: processed beef

$    4,368.03 National Paper & Plastic: plastic cutlery, disposables

$    3,679.00  Network: undetermined

$    3,571.05   Osborne Co.: undetermined

$    3,239.65  Sara Lee Bakery: bread, baked goods

$    3,200.00  Rush Truck Center: trucks

$    2,882.68   Produce Source Partners: produce, cut fruits and vegetables

$    2,604.29  Nestle: frozen prepared foods

$    2,587.67   REMA Foods: canned, frozen and packaged commodity foods

$    2,516.04   Georgia Pacific-Dixie Foodservice: disposable cups, plates

$    2,571.30  Tropical Paradise Inc.: frozen fruit slush

$    1,992.46  Dr. Pepper/7-Up: soft drinks, bottled water, Snapple

$    1,970.99  Advanced Food Company: Philly steakds, bugers, fajita strips

$    1,917.71   Schreiber Foods: processed cheese

$    1,770.04  Hormel: processed meats

$   1,604.00  MegaMex Foods: salsa, canned jalapeno peppers, refried beans

$    1,317.36   Lamb Weston: potato products

$    1,305.25  Campbell’s Foodservice: Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, Giant Goldfish Grahams

$    1,274.61  Anchor Packaging: plastic food containers

$    1,219.00  Fabri-kal Corp.:  plastic food containers

$    1,250.20  Iceland Seafood Corp.: frozen fish

$    1,210.00  Sara Lee Meats—Jimmy Dean: breakfast sausage

$    1,112.30  Rich Products: frozen foods

$       963.95  WinCup: Styrofoam cups

$       913.80  Colavita: olive oil

$       853.41   Masterfoods—Uncle Ben’s: instant rice

$       810.25   Ventura Foods-Sunnyland: oils, shortenings, pan coatings

$        683.94  Verizon Wireless: communications

$        579.46  First Advantage Occupational Health Services: drug screening, substance abuse assistance

$        564.24  Schwan’s Bakery: undetermined

$        539.80  Goodman Foods: undetermined

$        531.57   Gehl’s Guernsey Farms: cheese sauces

$       494.54   Bon Chef: food presentation equipment

$       401.65    Jet Plastica: plastic cutlery, straws

$       400.80  Smucker’s: jams, jellies

$       400.00  Mickey Truck Bodies: specialty delivery trucks

$       398.00    Ken’s Foods Inc.: salad dressings

$       368.75    Wholesome & Hearty Food: vegetarian burgers

$       314.89    Handi Foil: disposable aluminum containers

DC Farm to School Week — which celebrates healthier food options inside the schools — begins next Monday, Oct 3. But this week you can celebrate the gardens that are helping to teach kids how our food grows just outside of their classrooms, in their very own schoolyards. Yep, it’s DC School Garden Week. Come check out some of the most impressive school gardens around by joining a school garden tour this Saturday, October 1.

It all starts at 8am with a free breakfast and tour at Watkins Elementary (420 12th St., SE, Washington, DC 20003). After biking — or catching the van if you’re not up for biking* — to 10 other local schools, the group will finish at Tubman Elementary with a recap of the tour over a free lunch (thanks to Chipotle). Come meet the hard-working and inspiring people involved in sustaining these gardens, and ask questions.

Where: Meet at Watkins Elementary

When: Saturday, October 1 from 8am-1pm

Cost: None

RSVP: tours@dcschoolgardenweek.com. Please indicate whether you’d like to participate in the van or bike tour.

More details can be found here.

*If you don’t have a bike, but would like to participate in the tour, let us know- we’ll hook you up with a bike courtesy of Capital Bikeshare!

The D.C. Farm to School Network is pleased to announce that the third annual D.C. Farm to School Week will take place October 3-7, 2011 in schools across Washington, DC!  The week will get students excited about local food and where it comes from.  Schools will feature seasonal, local foods in their school meals, and engage students in hands-on food education.

Get your school involved! Learn how at www.dcfarmtoschoolweek.org, where you’ll find tools, resources and instructions for registering your school.  The D.C. Farm to School Network will help every step of the way.

Sponsor the event! We’re looking for organizations and individuals interested to help make D.C. Farm to School Week a success.  Read our Sponsor Packet to learn more.

Cleveland Elementary students visit Common Good City Farm

The event will kick-off the first ever National Farm to School Month in October, celebrated by schools all over the country.  Last year, over 150 schools served up seasonal specialties such as honey-braised local apple and collard green salad, and Asian slaw with local cabbage during D.C. Farm to School Week.  And dozens of schools coordinated farm field trips and chef demonstrations to engage students in the farm-to-table process.  Let’s make this year’s event even better!

For more information, visit www.dcfarmtoschoolweek.org or email Andrea Northup, D.C. Farm to School Network Manager at the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture, at andrea[at]dcfarmtoschool[dot]org.  This event is brought to you by the D.C. Farm to School Network and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education Department of Wellness & Nutrition Services, in conjunction with schools and other community partners.  And remember, D.C. School Garden Week will take place Sept. 26 – Oct. 1!

 By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

When I worked in Berkeley’s central school kitchen a year ago one of the things that impressed me most was something I’d never heard of before: breakfast served in the classroom. 

Every morning at the crack of dawn we’d start loading plastic bins. The meals were so simple: a loaf of banana bread, a bag of kid-size apples, cartons of plain milk. Sometimes there might be yogurt, or packets of Nature’s Path organic cereal. At Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, the bins were rolled out on shelves to the front of the “dining commons” where students soon arrived in pairs to carry them to their classrooms. 

It couldn’t have been easier. Yet participation was nearly 100 percent, and because of a quirky California real estate tax law, breakfast in Berkeley generated “meals for the needy” funds on top of federal subsidy dollars, helping to pay for a scratch-cooked lunch.

When I left Berkeley, I wondered why every school district hadn’t thought of breakfast in the classroom. But now many of them are. In fact, this may be the hottest new trend in school food. 

“Breakfast is such a winner on so many levels. But it’s a federal program that’s underutilized,” said Madeleine Levin, a senior policy analyst with the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which advocates on food access issues in schools. Most schools offer breakfast, but fewer than half of all children eligible for a free or reduced-price breakfast actually eat one. Last year 1.97 billion breakfasts were served in the federally-subsidized meal program nationwide, fewer than half the number of lunches–5.28 billion. 

FRAC last year was one of several groups–including the National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation, the National Education Association Health Information Network, and the School Nutrition Foundation–that partnered to help start classroom breakfast programs in five school districts: Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, Prince George’s County, Md., and Orange County, Fla. They received $3 million from the Walmart Foundation, about $2 million of which went to the schools, mostly to pay for equipment, such as refrigerators and coolers. 

“Some principals felt uncomfortable changing their routines, as did some teachers and food service directors. We were able to address those groups at the school level to show them how this can work, how there can be a constructive process to plan and implement a program that benefits everyone,” said Levin. “The power of the funding was to meld the partnership together.” 

According to Levin, it doesn’t take much to start a classroom breakfast program. Yet research demonstrates that when children gather around breakfast in a familiar classroom setting, readiness to learn increases while tardiness and discipline problems decline. Eating breakfast also fights obesity. “It will benefit them for the rest of their life,” says Levin. “It’s proven in research to have a real impact.” 

Here in the District of Columbia, there’s been a marked increase in the number of children eating breakfast since breakfast in the classroom was implemented a year ago. Breakfast is served free to any D.C. Public Schools student who wants it. In 37 elementary schools where breakfast is served in all classrooms, participation stands at 78 percent, an increase of 26 percent from the year before. Meanwhile, in elementary schools that serve breakfast only in the cafeteria participation is just 10 percent. 

D.C. Hunger Solutions has been working closely with local schools to make the new breakfast program a success.

Levin doesn’t advocate breakfast in the classroom as a money maker, but school food consultant Kate Adamick does. Especially in districts with large numbers of needy students, federal subsidy dollars can more than pay for breakfast, meaning extra cash to help support the entire meal program. In “severe need” schools, the federal reimbursement rate is $1.76, compared to the usual $1.48. 

Adamick says the break-even point for schools typically occurs when at least 50 percent of the student body qualifies for a free or reduced-price meal.  ”For districts that exceed 60 percent free and reduced, breakfast in the classroom programs generally result in significantly increased net revenue for school districts,” Adamick said. “The higher the level of free and reduced kids, the higher the net revenue generated.” 

Schools can increase the profitability of breakfast by cooking more from scratch, Adamick says. “The good news is that simple scratch-cooked breakfast meals are often much less expensive than the highly processed products that are currently served in most schools,  which helps keep the costs in line and lowers the free and reduced levels necessary for a financially viable breakfast in the classroom program. ” 

The USDA’s proposed new meal guidelines could upend that math, however. By requiring more whole fruit, whole grains and adding a 1-ounce serving of meat (or meat alternate), the guidelines would add a whopping 51 cents to the cost of serving breakfast. Some school administrators say they may have to drop breakfast altogether. 

Parents often express concerns that eating breakfast in the classroom will eat into the time children have available to learn. But teachers and school administrators say children are more focused when breakfast is served in the classroom, and eating a meal together creates a family atmosphere. At a school I visited in Boulder–Columbine Elementary–the beginning of the school day was moved up–from 8:30 to 8:15–to make room for breakfast in the classroom. 

I watched the kitchen manager, Margaret Traverton, load bins with apples, breakfast bars, and milk, then wheel the bins around the school on a cart, dropping them outside classroom doors. I went back a few minutes later to watch the children unload the bins and arrange breakfast at their desks. Assigning kids tasks–like unloading bins, or collecting trash–gives them a sense of responsibility, and takes some of the load off the teachers. 

Chicago instituted breakfast in the classroom in all of its schools this year, sparking loud complaints. But Levin attributes the discontent there to requiring that breakfast be served in classrooms in even the most affluent schools, where many children may not need it. ”The concerns are coming from a small group of parents,” said Levin. “In other districts where they’ve gone district-wide it’s worked really well—Houston and Newark, for instance. 

Here in D.C., schools where less than 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price meals can opt not to serve breakfast in classrooms. It’s offered in the cafeteria instead. 

Levin says many other school districts are exploring the breakfast-in-the-classroom option. FRAC has received more than 100 inquiries just from its website. But the next frontier is getting older kids interested in eating breakfast. At one high school here in D.C., I met with students who would rather grab a bag of chips at a corner convenience store than eat a breakfast for free at school. 

“If you talk to marketing people they’ll tell you that making something free doesn’t necessarily make it attractive,” said Levin. “It’s not cool. Or to use a more modern term, it’s not ‘fresh.’ They’d rather hang out in the hallway with friends.” 

In D.C. last year, middle school participation in breakfast was just 21 percent. It was even less among kids in high school: only 11 percent. 

So how do we make breakfast “fresh?” 

This article originally appeared at the Beyond Breakfast blog.

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook 

D.C. Public Schools officials apparently have no intention of reinstating chocolate milk in local cafeterias despite a recent grilling by D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown and the pleadings of a first-grader who polled his fellow students. 

In an e-mail to Brown dated June 22, newly-confirmed schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson says the decision to remove chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk from schools was part of an ongoing effort to make school food healthier, that the sugar in flavored milk puts many students at risk of obesity and heart disease, and that not serving more expensive flavored milk frees money that can be used to improve the the quality of meals served. 

During recent confirmation hearings before the council, Brown tried to get Henderson to commit to bringing flavored milk back to city lunch lines based on findings of a 7-year-old student at Lafayette Elementary School that 58 percent of his school mates do not drink milk. “Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate,” Brown said. The boy questioned why chocolate milk had been removed when schools continue to serve fruit juice that contains as much sugar as flavored milk, but not the protein. 

In her e-mail to Brown, Henderson noted that Los Angeles schools, the second-largest school district in the country, recently opted to remove chocolate milk and that other school districts appear poised to do so as well. As for juice, Henderson said the sugar in fruit juice occurs naturally, unlike that added to flavored milk, and that juice is only served once per week in D.C. schools as a replacement for whole fruit. 

A debate over the chocolate milk issue played out recently in Washington Post reporter Mike DeBonis’ column after I broke the news in this blog about Kwame Brown’s interrogation of Henderson. The father of the Lafayette Elementary student, Chris Murphy, wrote DeBonis insisting that his son “is not a dairy lobbyist.” But a copy of the boy’s testimony has since been widely circulated by the National Dairy Council as evidence that kids prefer chocolate milk to plain milk and risk not getting enough calcium to build healthy bones without it. 

Chocolate milk has become a flash-point issue in the battle to improve the quality of food served in the nation’s schools. The dairy industry spends tens of millions of dollars promoting chocolate milk as an alternative to soda and other soft drinks. While sales of plain milk have plummeted in recent decades , sales of flavored milk have tripled. But some health experts have become concerned about chocolate milk’s roll in promoting children’s consumption of sugar and say that kids can get the calcium they need from a range of other foods. 

My reporting of D.C. school food indicated that as recently as a year ago, children were being offered the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar with breakfasts in which chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk were served alongside Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, Otis Spunkmeyer and fruit juice. Under the aggressive approach taken by food services Director Jeffrey Mills, schools have removed not only flavored milk, but also sugary cereals and processed foods.

Henderson says the response to D.C. schools removing flavored milk “has been positive.” 

Here is the full text of Henderson’s e-mail to Brown: 

Chairman Brown– 

In response to the discussion that arose during my confirmation hearing, I would like to share information with you about our decision to eliminate flavored milk from our menus.  

The decision to stop serving flavored milk in DC Public Schools (DCPS) was made in support of our goal to serve healthy, natural foods to our students that are additive, artificial flavoring and coloring-free.  This change was implemented, beginning last summer, in conjunction with new DCPS nutrition standards.  Our new standards require that all menu items and competitive foods comply with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) standards, the federal HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold Standard, and with our own district-specific standards which regulate/restrict sugar content in our meals.  

Flavored milk contains significantly higher amounts of sugar and sodium than plain milk.   An 8-ounce carton of flavored milk contains 14 grams (approximately 3 ½ teaspoons and 64 calories) of added sugar per serving.   The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of an individual’s discretionary calories come from added sugar.   For young girls ages 9-13, for example, 8 ounces of flavored milk would constitute nearly a whole day’s added sugar allowance.  Considering the fact that DCPS offers three meals a day, it is feasible that some students would choose to consume three cartons of flavored milk, thereby exceeding their recommended daily sugar intake by 128 calories.   Other American Heart Association research cautions that the average child consume over 20 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, a habit that undoubtedly contributes to heart disease and obesity-related illnesses.  

 To the point that some have made about the amount of sugar in fruit juices, we mention that the sugar in juice occurs naturally, that all of the juice we serve is 100% juice, and we only serve it once per week as a replacement for fruit.   Additionally, the amount of protein in milk does not vary between flavored and unflavored; some milk products have added milk solids (protein), but this additive is not unique to flavored milk.  

DCPS currently serves only skim or 1% plain milk.   Despite removing flavored milk and making significant menu changes, we are on track to serve nearly 2.5 million more meals this school year than last, meaning 2.5 million more milks have been purchased.  Flavored milk also costs approximately $.05 more per carton than plain milk; and so, the additional volume comes at a cost savings to the District, allowing us to funnel more resources into buying more high-quality, healthy foods for our children.  

Our Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) has been tracking district policies around flavored milk across the country.  Just last week, Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, stopped serving flavored milk, and according to indications within the school food service community, many other districts are planning to pull it in the coming school year.  

While we do not take lightly the advocacy of our students, we also know that the District ranks 9th among all states with high overweight and obesity rates among adolescents ages 10-17 (DC DOH 2010 Obesity Report).  It is also important to note that the majority of feedback we have received from the DCPS community regarding the decision to eliminate flavored milk has been positive.  Spurred in part by the Council’s own nationally-recognized Healthy Schools Act legislation, we at DCPS have been working aggressively to develop nutritional health and fitness initiatives and approaches to help combat this challenge.  Through this and other changes, DCPS hopes to give students the gift of a healthy palate and an active mind.   

Sincerely,

 Kaya Henderson

aka The Slow Cook 

The National Dairy Council is circulating the testimony of a first-grader at Lafayette Elementary School who told the D.C. Council kids aren’t drinking milk as much since chocolate milk was removed from the menu. 

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown last week grilled schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on the subject during her confirmation hearings, trying to get Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk in school cafeterias based on the 7-year-old boy’s “research.” 

The boy’s father, Chris Murphy, told Washington Post columnist Mike DeBonis that his son, Aidan Cohn Murphy, “is not a dairy lobbyist.” But yesterday I was on the receiving end of a mass e-mail sent by Greg Miller, vice-president of science and research at the National Dairy Council, linking to Aidan’s testimony with the words, “This kid did his homework.” 

Did he really? 

Kwame Brown said he was impressed by the sleuthing Aidan had conducted, including a poll of 410 of his school mates to find that 58 percent are not drinking milk. (Apparently 42 percent are drinking plain milk, a lot more than are eating the green beans.) But a closer look shows that on several key points, Aidan got it wrong. 

“We use to have chocolate milk in D.C. public schools,” Aidan said in written testimony he submitted to the Council June 11. “But then you passed a law that said that no kids in D.C. Public Schools could buy chocolate milk. They could buy only white milk.” 

False. Apparently Chairman Brown thought Aidan was referring to the “Healthy Schools Act” the Council approved last year. But the act did not address flavored milk, nor does any other D.C. law. Removing flavored milk–which had included chocolate and even more sugary strawberry milk–was a decision made independently by school officials as part of an overhaul of school menus to make them healthier. 

The chocolate milk from Cloverland Dairy the schools had been serving contained 14 grams of added sugar in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, or 3.5 teaspoons. “We’d like to teach students that sugar doesn’t need to be added to a natural food to make it ‘taste good,’ ” school food services spokeswoman Paula Reichel told the Post. 

Aidan says that according to his survey, kids now substitute water for milk more than anything else. Many parents think that’s a good idea. They don’t believe milk is necessary. But Aidan went on to say that kids are substituting fruit juice for milk, and that would not be accurate. In D.C. elementary schools, children are required to take all of the offered food items at any meal. Milk is always offered. If juice is on the menu, they would be required to take that as well, not in place of milk. Juice typically is offered at breakfast, not so much at lunch. And at affluent schools like the one Aidan attends, breakfast participation traditionally is very low. 

In proposed new meal guidelines, the USDA would make it more difficult for schools to substitute juice for whole fruit. 

Aidan says Fairfax County also removed chocolate milk from the menu, but then brought it back with a “healthier kind of sugar.” The truth is, sugar is sugar. There is no real difference between cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup as far as your body is concerned, except that the corn syrup may contain a higher percentage of fructose. Both are equally bad. In fact, Robert Lustig, a specialist in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar “poison.” The American Heart Association has linked it to risk factors for cardio-vascular disease in children. According to the heart association’s guidelines, millions of children drink too much flavored milk. 

Aidan said that as part of his research he interviewed a doctor who told him chocolate milk is “medium healthy” and “better than drinking soda.” The policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics is that flavored milk served in schools can be a “healthful alternative” to sodas and other soft drinks. But D.C. schools have not allowed the sale of sodas or soft drinks since 2006. They are not available for sale in D.C. elementary schools, although some kids bring them from  home. 

According to this doctor, the calcium and protein in milk “are good–but the sugar is not good.” 

Aidan quotes a recent Washington Post article in which a USDA spokesman says the agency would rather have kids drink milk with added sugar than no milk at all. But there’s something Aidan needs to know: the USDA’s job is to promote dairy products. In fact, the USDA oversees the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which collects money from dairies by congressional fiat in order to spend millions of dollars promoting the “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” campaign. 

The USDA designates milk as its own food group in the school meals program, and requires that it be offered at every meal. No other agricultural product receives such preferential treatment from the federal government. Still, sales of plain milk are only half what they were after World War II, while sales of flavored milk have tripled in since the 1970s. Chocolate milk is the dairy industry’s way of competing with Coke and Pepsi. Big Dairy is desperate to keep kids drinking chocolate milk. 

In other words, Aidan, there’s very little difference between the dairy industry and the USDA when it comes to peddling chocolate milk to children. 

Aidan, you should be listening to your doctor and your other schoolmates and just drink water if you don’t like plain milk. Kids are not suffering a “calcium crisis,” as the dairy industry would have you believe.  

We know you and your friends love sugary chocolate milk. But you need to make the healthier choice and learn to like plain milk. What you should be lobbying the D.C. Council for is extra money the schools can use to install electric milk dispenser so kids can have fun pouring themselves glasses of cold, delicious white milk instead of the stuff they serve you in those miserable little cartons.

aka The Slow Cook

Suddenly a debate over chocolate milk in school is heating up in the pages of The Washington Post. Or should I say our hometown paper has finally noticed there’s a food revolution going on in D.C. school cafeterias now that a first-grader has polled his fellow students and found–shock!–they are not drinking as much milk as some people think they ought to since chocolate and strawberry milk were taken off the menu a year ago. 

Post columnist Mike DeBonis sounds downright sympathetic to the plight of these elementary schoolers in affluent Chevy Chase, 58 percent of whom (according to a 7-year-old’s poll of about 100 school mates) are not drinking milk. But here’s the good news: Apparently, 42 percent of the kids are drinking milk, and that’s a lot more than are eating the green beans. 

Notice, this dispute centers on something kids love–sugary milk. Nobody is conducting any surveys to see how many kids are shunning the vegetables or whole grains the USDA says kids need more of to avoid becoming obese. Having spent the last year and a half monitoring what kids eat in my daughter’s elementary school here in the District, I’m here to deliver some bad news: obscene quantities of vegetables and whole grains are being thrown in the trash every day. In fact, I recently visited an elementary school cafeteria on Capitol Hill on a day green beans were on the menu. I did not see a single child in the lunch room eating them. But they were all eating the hamburger. (Quite a few were drinking plain milk.) 

There is no real secret to all of this. If we allowed kids to write the school menu, it would follow approximately these lines: Chicken nuggets, Tater Tots, pizza, hamburgers, French fries, chicken nuggets, pizza, french fries, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, chocolate milk. Those are all things kids love. 

 Now, what are the adults serving instead? Bone-in chicken, whole grain buns, green beans, whole grain pasta, sauteed squash, roasted sweet potatoes, Caesar salad, bone-in chicken, plain milk. Which would you choose as the healthier menu? Would it surprise you to learn that the kids don’t eat it? Why do you think that is? But note, also, there are no adults in the cafeteria talking to the kids about the food. Nobody is marketing the new menu to the children who are supposed to eat it. In other words, the adults really aren’t following through to make this food revolution a success. 

The real issue is not the sugar in chocolate milk. We already know kids love sugar. Look at the article I posted yesterday on the sodas and other sugary foods elementary school children bring to school from home. The problem is what chocolate milk stands for. More than any other item on the school menu, chocolate milk embodies our failure to pay attention to the way kids are eating, our surrender to a toxic food culture that embraces industrially processed convenience foods because they are easy shortcuts. 

We teach children to expect sugar in their food, then we’re surprised we have an obesity epidemic?

Yes, chocolate milk pretty much sums up our failure as adults to engage children in the more difficult act of eating thoughtfully, our willingness too often to just let kids eat what they want. Getting children to eat more green beans and less candy is hard work. But nobody said it would be easy. 

It’s high time we had this discussion. Hooray for first-graders researching the food question. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to bring back chocolate milk. It means parents (and maybe the Washington Post, too) need to pay more attention. If we want kids to drink more milk–and not everyone thinks that’s necessary–then let’s get kids to like plain milk. 

Heck, while we’re at it, we could pony up some more money for electric milk dispensers in the schools–cool machines like the ones I’ve seen in use in Berkeley and Boulder and other progressive school districts–so kids can help themselves to as much cold, delicious, organic plain milk as they like. 

There you go, Council Chairman Brown. Why not do a little research into how we might fund milk dispensers in D.C. schools so kids don’t have to drink the stuff in those cheap little cartons. I’m sure they would love pouring their own milk. And maybe if you offered kids really good plain milk, they would drink more of it. But that’s not going to happen as long as chocolate milk is an option. 

Yes, getting kids to eat more healthfully means getting more involved–with our time and with our wallets. But as my wife likes to say, this is a process, not an event. This revolution is just beginning, and there’s lots more work ahead. Think about that before you try to undo the progress that’s already been made.

Just say no to chocolate milk

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

D.C.Council Chairman Kwame Brown says he’s in possession of “research” conducted by a first-grade pupil that convinces him schools in the nation’s capitol should bring back chocolate milk.

Brown made the remarks in an animated exchange last week with Kaya Henderson during hearings to consider her confirmation as schools chancellor. Saying a sleuthing first-grader had conducted  “a study” concluding that kids just won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate–information Brown said he confirmed talking to children at two recent elementary school promotion ceremonies–Brown pressed Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk, which school officials removed from the menu a year ago as part of a push to make cafeteria food healthier.

Brown said he was impressed by the nutritional information on flavored milk the first-grader had amassed. More likely, Brown was tagged by the long arm of the dairy industry, which relentlessly pursues efforts to keep flavored milk in schools to offset decades of decline in sales of plain milk. As one of a few major school districts to ditch chocolate milk, the District of Columbia has become a crown jewel for activists aiming to topple flavored milk’s rule in the nation’s lunch rooms. Brown parroted the dairy industry line that kids won’t drink milk unless it’s tarted up with sugar, and will collapse in a heap of osteoperosis and rickets without it.

Henderson says dairy lobbyists have been pressuring her as well.

So how does a six-year-old dicatate school food policy in the nation’s capitol? Here’s the transcript from last Thursday’s hearing:

Brown: This is from our youth hearing, a first-grader, and he made sense.  And I want him to know to get his question in. We have the Healthy Schools Act. And we all know we want everyone to eat healthy. And I’m all supportive of that. But he had a survey of about I think 100 and something students that he had spoken with and I did my own independent survey of a couple of graduation ceremonies I attended and I come to find out that most students agree. They want to know why they can’t have chocolate milk in the schools. They said they’re getting juices that have more sugar than chocolate milk that has protein and less sugar. And their question to you was to say that it’s not because it’s not part of the Healthy [Schools] Act but because the schools just don’t offer it. And it’s wrong that the schools don’t give them a choice to have chocolate milk anymore.  And I want to know can you commit to make sure that we have chocolate milk back in our elementary schools. Because they made an argument that it has protein and calcium and is better than some of the juices they’re getting inside the school now.

Henderson: I got a call from the milk producers of America telling me that research effectively says that if kids don’t drink chocolate milk, they won’t drink milk. I’m happy to work with my food services department on it.

Brown: So we’re going to get chocolate milk back into schools?

Henderson: I will work on it. I mean, here’s the thing, right? We didn’t make that decision lightly. There was a reason.

Brown: I know. I’m not saying….

Henderson: I’m willing to reopen the conversation about chocolate milk.

Brown: We reopened it already. You called and you talked to the milk people and….

Henderson: The milk people called me. That’s the lobbying people [laughs].

Brown: The first-grader came and he did the study and it said that most kids aren’t drinking milk at all now. They’re drinking more juices with more sugar and they’re more inclined at a young age to drink chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’ll talk to my people. Our priority is to have our kids drinking milk.

Brown: Chocolate milk?

Henderson: Why do you all try to get me to get up here and….

Brown: This is an interview, right? We asked you a question and we want to know what you’re committing to.

Henderson: Until I talk to my food service experts, I can’t make that commitment.

Brown: Is anyone here from….

Henderson: No, food services is not here.

Brown: Chocolate milk. Kids won’t drink milk unless it’s chocolate. We want our youth to know when they come to testify, they sit all day long, and he put an incredible amount of work into some of this research and I went to two elementary schools and spoke at their promotional exercises— graduations—and I asked them about chocolate milk and, yes, they want chocolate milk.

Henderson: I’m on it Mr. Chairman.

Brown. Thank you.

Brown’s remarks came as members of the school board in Los Angeles–the nation’s second-largest school district–were voting to eliminate chocolate, strawberry and other flavored milk as part of that city’s battle against childhood obesity. Schools in Berkeley, Boulder, Minneapolis and elsewhere also have sworn off flavored milk because of the added sugar it contains. D.C. school officials made the move with little fanfare nearly a year ago after appointing a new food services director who has aggressively redesigned the menu, removing many of the processed and sugary items that had been served daily to the district’s 45,000 students. Nearby Fairfax County, Va., also removed chocolate milk, but then reinstated it to quell protests.

Elected last November as chairman of the D.C. Council, the city’s law-making body, Brown created controversy when it was revealed that he had leased not one but two fully-loaded Lincoln Navigators at a cost to the District of nearly $2,000 a month. He had returned the first car because he didn’t like the color of the interior–he wanted black-on-black.

A report by the Institute of Medicine last year found that most Americans do not lack calcium or Vitamin D, refuting claims by the dairy industry that children suffer from a “calcium crisis.” School food guru Ann Cooper, who refers to flavored milk as “soda in drag,” has recently said, “we don’t have a calcium crisis, we have an obesity crisis.” In fact, kids in D.C. rank eighth in the nation for being overweight or obese.

The average eight-ounce carton of chocolate milk contains 14 grams–or 3.5 teaspoons–of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The American Heart Association has warned that children on average now consume an astonishing 21 percent of their daily calories in the form of sugar, and as a result exhibit common markers for heart disease, such as low HDL cholesterol, elevated triglycerides and high LDL cholesterol. Robert Ludwig, an expert in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar “poison” because of its link to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease risk. Ludwig cites a worldwide epidemc of obese infants and fatty liver disorder in children.

No less an authority than Walter Willet, head of the nutrition department at Harvard University, has warned that children should not be served flavored milk in school and that milk itself “is not an essential nutrient.”

As for sugar in fruit juices, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times last week also wondered why chocolate milk has been getting all the attention, when fruit juice contains as much sugar. The sugar in juice occurs naturally. Still, proposed USDA guidelines [PDF] for school meals would sharply curtial schools’ ability to substitute  juice for whole fruit.

Milk is not categorized as a protein in the federally-subsidized school meals program. Because of the dairy industry’s special relationship with the USDA, milk comprises its own food group and must be offered with all meals. Protein in school meals comes from other designated sources, such as meat, poultry and fish. Most schools elect to offer milk as an optional meal selection, but D.C. Public Schools officials, in an effort to speed up food lines,  this year required all elementary school students to take milk with their meals. The schools have not released data indicating how much milk children are drinking.

The dairy industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting chocolate milk while trying to scare parents, politicians and food service directors into believing that children won’t grow healthy bones if they do not have access to milk with added sugar and flavorings. The slick industry campaign, including a “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!” promotion, pays for “studies” that bolster the industry cause, then dresses them up with statements cherry-picked from various health and medical groups to create an impression of widespread approval for kids drinking sugary milk products as much as they like.

Dairy interests have vigorously promoted one “study” in particular purporting to show that milk consumption plummets when flavored milk is removed from school. But that was the product of a marketing research firm hired by by the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which refuses to make the “study” available for public inspection.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been monitoring what kids in the nation’s capitol eat in the cafeteria every day and I can attest that they still drink plain milk. Sure, they’d drink more if it were chocolate or strawberry. But we already know kids love sugar. They’d eat lollipops instead of lunch if we let them–and some do. Only a year ago, they were pouring  strawberry milk over Apple Jacks cereal as part of a breakfast that included Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. Kids as young as five were regularly being served the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar before classes even started. All that is gone in favor of plain milk, cereal containing no more than five grams of sugar, string cheese and yogurt.

Still, just in the last week I saw children at my daughter’s elementary school unpacking bottles of Sprite and Pepsi and containers of Kool Aide from lunch boxes they brought from home. I’ve seen kids eat bags of home-brought Oreo cookies, giant cupcakes, huge Hershey’s chocolate bars and packages of  Skittles. I recently witnessed one high-schooler make a lunch out of a 24-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of Lifesaver candies.

Conducting my own unscientific survey for this article, I asked my 11-year-old daughter for her opinion. She said all schools should be made of chocolate and jelly beans, security guards should be replaced with giant Gummi Bears, and classes should be held at the Dave & Buster’s arcade at the White Flint Mall. Her nine-year-old cousin, meanwhile, said half of all school hours should be spent in recess, the other half at lunch.

Schools are not free choice zones. Last we checked, adults–not children–were still responsible for making important policy decisions involving curricula, teacher hiring, standards and a host of other vital school issues–including nutrition and meal service. Local elected leaders are expected to act like grownups and look out for the welfare of minors, not pander to six-year-olds and the dairy lobby.

You can watch video of the Council hearing here. Fast-forward to 2:23.30 to view the discussion concerning chocolate milk in schools.