Opinion: What's Wrong With School Lunches?

(April 9) -- It's no secret that Americans aren't exactly healthy eaters. Some two-thirds of us are overweight or obese, a fact that will result in shortened lives for many and trillions of dollars in preventable medical expenses. Our national addiction to junk food and sedentary lifestyles is a big problem, one I would love to see solved.

So when Jamie Oliver, the British "Naked Chef" known for his fresh and simple cooking, decided to tackle America's poor eating habits for a new reality show called "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," I was inclined to cheer. His first stop? Huntington, W.Va., a stout city in one of the fattest states in the union.

But after watching the show, which airs Friday nights on ABC, I'm skeptical about how Oliver and his producers have portrayed the problem. I'm particularly disappointed in the choice to focus on Huntington's school cafeterias as ground zero in the war against obesity.

Though Oliver does take on parents too, school lunches are far healthier than most people realize, and scaring parents off from school lunches is unlikely to improve America's waistline at all.

Of course, part of the problem is that reality TV is all about drama. The producers clearly saw that sticking the easygoing Oliver into institutional food service culture was going to cause sparks.

The lunch ladies of Huntington are portrayed as stuck in their ways and inflexible, but there are reasons for this. The National School Lunch Program has some of the strictest standards in government. To be reimbursed (and trust me, few schools serve meals that won't be reimbursed), school lunches must have less than 30 percent of their calories from fat, and only 10 percent from saturated fat. They must contain at least a third of a child's recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C, calcium, iron and several other nutrients.

Oliver complains -- with reason -- that these standards are often interpreted to the letter rather than in the spirit of good nutrition, such as calling potatoes a vegetable. And there are also some outdated regulations, like a meal needing multiple starches. But at least there's reasonable portion control. And that 30 percent limit on fat keeps everyone honest.

In contrast, there are no such standards on food brought from home, and this is where Oliver's message runs into problems.

School lunch may not always be saintly, but is that slice of American cheese on Wonder Bread, bag of chips, juice box and bag of fruit-flavored Gummy Snacks brought from home any better?

School lunch menus are designed by nutritionists. Brown bag meals are not. And if families watching Oliver decide to pack a lunch because they think school lunches are bad, it's not clear they'll be giving their children anything better.

Worse, parents who do try to go healthier with soups or leftovers often run into safety problems. A recent Good Housekeeping Research Institute test of popular thermos brands found that only one kept food at a safe temperature from early morning until lunchtime.

But the larger point is that kids are in school roughly 180 days a year. If you eat breakfast and lunch at school, and get three squares a day, that means that only 360 of the 1,095 meals you'll eat per year are in the lunch ladies' hands. My guess is that the real culprits in American obesity are easier to find in the 735 nutritionally nonregulated meals kids eat elsewhere.

While Oliver spends some time in the first few episodes dealing with this, the lion's share of his time is spent berating the school cafeterias, where, unlike in many homes, there are non-fried options available. Even if kids don't always choose them.

It's a misleading portrayal of the situation -- certainly as bad as calling french fries a vegetable.


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