The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity—whose members include the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Dietetic Association, the National PTA, and the American Heart Association—is calling on its members to try to persuade the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to update standards for foods sold in schools outside the federally subsidized lunch and breakfast programs.

Pointing out that while nutrition standards in the federal programs are updated periodically in accordance with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, there has been no change for 30 years in the USDA's standards for foods sold outside of school meals, the alliance says that makes for some arbitrary rules for what can and can’t be sold.

For instance, the alliance notes, current USDA standards allow sales of French fries, ice cream, candy bars, cookies, chips, snack cakes, and doughnuts, while prohibiting less ubiquitous items such as seltzer water, caramel corn, Popsicles without fruit juice, jelly beans, chewing gum, lollipops, cotton candy, and breath mints. "As a result, while children receive sound nutrition from federally reimbursed school meals, foods such as soft drinks, candy, and fried snack foods are readily available at school, undermining child health and wasting taxpayer dollars invested in the school food program."

It's not, the alliance points out, that schools are making a lot of money from the unhealthful foods they are dispensing in cafeterias or vending machines. Contracts that schools negotiate with vendors, for example, which are an attractive discretionary source of funding for administrators, generate an average of $18 per student per school year for schools and/or school districts. In an average school beverage contract, that would be approximately one-fourth of one percent of the cost of a student’s education.

Also, the alliance notes, money that flows to vending machines and cafeteria ala carte service comes out of the pockets of children; in effect, students and their parents make up with their own money for the revenue schools lose in federal payments for reimbursable meals that are not served when students opt for the alternatives.

As to how all of this affects the bottom line, the alliance reports that a recent survey of 17 school districts found that 12 had increased food revenues after improving their school food options, and four reported no change. That seems to show that, as claimed by the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that "Students will buy and consume healthful foods and beverages—and schools can make money from selling healthful options."

A recent Institute of Medicine report called for specific standards for school foods outside the federal programs, and bipartisan bills currently before Congress would "provide children with nutritious food and beverage choices at school, model healthy choices, reinforce nutrition education, and support parents’ ability to feed their children a healthy diet." The Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act calls on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to update its definition of "Foods of Minimal Nutritional Value" to conform to current nutrition science—"for the whole campus, the whole day."

The child nutrition bills, S. 771 in the Senate and H.R. 1363 in the House, can be read and tracked at website http://thomas.loc.gov.