New School Lunch Guidelines Go Into Effect
Date posted - August 17, 2012
As students head back to school this fall, they’ll notice some changes to the contents of their school lunch trays. Earlier, parents in the Sheldon Community School District received notice of the new school lunch guidelines that were set out as part of the “Healthy Kids Act” that became federal law this summer.
Sheldon Schools Superintendent Robin Spears told KIWA that the new guidelines have switched the emphasis of the lunches away from the protein portion of the meal, and more toward fruits and vegetables.
Under the new guidelines, school lunches for elementary students must be 550-650 calories, middle school students must be 600-700 calories, while lunches for high school students must be 750-850 calories. In addition, the emphasis on types of food has changed. Under the new guidelines, the meals shall consist of 2 parts vegetable, 1 part protein, 1 part starch, 1 part fruit, 1 part dairy, and will no longer contain a dessert of any kind.
Spears says the guidelines are designed to not only nourish, but also to educate the students. He says that the new guidelines will put more fruits and vegetables in front of the students, as well as educate them on portion control. He says the primary goal of the “Healthy Kids Act” is to help youngsters learn to eat in a more healthy manner, and provide them with the knowledge and tools they need to make good food choices throughout their entire lives.
38 Responses to “New School Lunch Guidelines Go Into Effect”
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Back to:New School Lunch Guidelines Go Into Effect
I feel sorry for the HS kids who have to make it through the school day on 850 calories and then go to cross country, band, football, volleyball, or any other practice. Read the article on livestrong.com
http://www.livestrong.com/article/324862-caloric-intake-for-football-players/
Kids will have to start eating a sack lunch WITH their hot lunch. And we wont even talk about higher prices and less food…
This whole so called “healthy kids act” is ALL BAD. How can a half starved child be expected to learn, participate in physical or mental after school activities or even be comfortable. A hungry child or young adult is not a happy one! WE ALL KNOW THAT. Lots of sack lunches in our children’s futures!
There is a major good in this, which is getting greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables and a reduction in dessert options. However, the calorie limitations are bogus. Trying to mandate a low-calorie diet is not the answer. Educating parents and kids is more difficult and slower to act, but ultimately a better solution. I say keep the parts of the law that encourage and require greater percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables and limiting desserts but eliminate the calorie restrictions and portion control and we’d have a better balance. Once again, we have an instance of a law made with good intentions being too strong a movement in one direction, and calls from people like you for elimination and back to the status quo rather than reform. Balance is good, and we need to get away from wild pendulum swings.
When the kids come home starving and are complaining that they only get 4 chicken nuggets…. or one hot dog, no desserts, and now they are only letting them have 2 squirts of ketchup… We feel this is totally getting out of control! I agree with the last person, how is a student supposed to concentrate while their stomach is growling and they had just had lunch? I see sack lunches coming to this house hold too!!!
So i wonder how much money schools will waste on food when every student starts bringing their own lunch from home?
Wonder if those who are making this new rule eat the 850 calories for lunch and function for the day? My guess is NOT! Our kids need to eat healthy but really? Has anyone started a letter to sign and send off yet expressing our concerns to the lawmakers?
Thank Christie Vilsack’s husband Tom Vilsack for the new USDA school lunch guidelines. Tom is the secretary of the USDA and thus responsible.
Imagine a government telling us what we can eat and what we can’t.
Well, I suppose it was better when Reagan determined that ketchup was a vegetable…
The kids got 4 chicken nuggets for dinner yesterday, needless to say that didn’t fill up a 7th and 8th grader. So after school they raided the junkfood. Obamacare at it’s finest!
If they have a decent breakfast the lunch should be sufficient until after school. Provide healthy snacks at home for after school and it shouldn’t be a problem. I agree, a healthy snack should be provided to the after school programs so they can focus and participate properly.
Um, this isn’t part of the Affordable Care Act. You could get your facts straight. I think the problem is that the new guidelines in place are geared towards curbing obesity but do not work for active kids and growing kids…I expect this to be tweaked. Of course, I think that efforts to get schools to provide more in the way of fruits and vegetables in lunches and to encourage fresh rather than canned is a step in the right direction, but probably the only one that should have been taken at this point.
I bet the convenience store across the street sees a huge increase in candy bar sales. Are there candy vending machines in school? If not, can I put one in?
The chicken nuggets they can do without. What I read about how they are made, with chemicals so strong that they need artificial chicken flavor to kill the nasty taste. Pretty gross stuff!
850 cal is plenty for a child. The lunch there are served at school is just that lunch. The child still needs a good dinner and breakfast at home. The kids should not be hitting the junkfood when they get home. The scholl is only doing the job parents are refusing to do. WATCH WHAT YOUR CHILD EATS. Overweight children are at an all time high and someone has to do somethng. I thank the school for doing the right think.
THANKS
Sometimes the meal that the student eats at school will be their main source of nutrition- eating healthy is important BUT it is also important that the student is satisfied. It isn’t necessarily a choice that the parents have to feed them more\ healthier snacks after school as the price of groceries are going up and paychecks are not. There are children in Sheldon and surrounding communtites that truly depend on the school’s meals.
No growing child, or athlete can live on an 800-850 calorie lunch! I pay for a school lunch that will satisfy my child for the school day and he wastes half of it, so they should lower the lunch prices cause you cant tell me that vegetables cost more than the main course! He states that on the tray the large section where the main course of food WAS placed is now used for the vegetables and the vegetable section is now used for the main course plus and additional section is used for more vegetables! This is way out of control! This is due to obese children in the US, they are obese because of their up bringing or that is their normal frame and metabolism, not because of school lunches!!!!! There needs to be a petition started because grades will lower, kids will binge when they get home which is unhealthy, athletes won’t have any energy cause they have no calories to burn! This is so upsetting! What is this world coming too!
850 calories might be ok for a kindergaten age child but high school age? Apparently the people that made these laws never had teenage boys.
Looking at the lunch menus on the school website, calorie intake is 600-680! What happened to the 850 calorie menu that was stated in the article!
1st you have to know that the obesity problem in the US isn’t due to our incredibly large size and slow metabolism. Children learn what they see. If they see their parents eating chips and dip, they will. If they see their parents substituting one crap meal for a healthy meal, they will as well. IF you are only supposed to eat 3-5 ounces of chicken/beef/pork, maybe you should consider changing the quality of what you are feeding them… chicken nuggets waste the weight with the breading. Have you seen the ingredients in a hot dog? As far as I know, it has and always will be the CRAP they can’t use anywhere else. PLEASE….pay attention! There is a horrible obesity problem in the US causing more and more health care dollars (no matter how few they cut us down to) being spent on lap band surgeries than there are on many other surgeries! WAKE UP America! This isn’t coming from a right or left wing radical! It is the facts. I am saddened to think that most people couldn’t survive on a 500 calorie breakfast, 800 calorie lunch, 300 calorie snack and a meal AT THE DINNER TABLE, WITH THEIR FAMILY ranging from 800-1000 calories. Please stop pretending it isn’t a problem.
Okay children, say thank you to mrs. Obama!
I have high school boys who are in sports. They are NOT getting enough to eat at lunch!! Yesterday they each got 5 chicken nuggets! Are you kidding???? Eight to ten ounces of meat/protein is not enough in the week! Do you know how many chicken nuggets teenage boys can eat? I’m all for the fresh fruits and veggies, but the meat portion is WAY out of line. When they have football for 3 hours after school, they need something to stick with them through that!!!
So, basically, I am paying more for WAY less food and they aren’t getting enough to fill their stomachs. My kids said they were hungry an hour after lunch. That isn’t cool. I don’t want to make lunches every day, but I’m afraid that’s what they are going to want!!
My child is now taking their own lunch to school
two questions:
must the teachers eat what the students eat?
will the food police check student’s sack lunches to see if they meet USDA (Vilsack) standards?
There will be a new crime to look out for: The sneaking in of actual sustenance….McBootlegging!
This goes farther than Mr. Vilsack. The President’s wife Mrs. Obama is behind all of this. She has been on this kick before her husband got in the White House. We all need to write or call our Representatives and Senators. As for the food police, this is happening in all schools in the country. This is law and the schools have to comply with the law.
Yup, a law that your Republican representatives had to go along with at some point. Sometimes good intentions go too far. I mean, Bush wanted to lower taxes after 9/11, and that loss of revenue coupled with an economic downturn is one of the major reasons we face unprecedented deficits now.
Could have called this one IT’S BUSH’S FAULT
Nope…but let’s just say we haven’t had a good run of presidents recently. Bush was a disaster that led us to a cliff. Obama has basically only proved that presidents are unable to have a tangible effect on economic issues such as employment, and given his campaign so far, Romney is willing to lie and distort fact at every turn, which doesn’t bode well for a future under him. Factcheck.org has determined that this campaign is among the least truthful on record. Romney thinks it’s okay that he pays 13% in taxes when the average middle class American pays a higher rate. There is a problem with elected officials of all parties who pander to what they think their constituents want rather than working for the common good. There is a problem when we reduce everything to partisan talking points rather than looking for a real solution. It is how we got tax cuts with no cuts in spending while waging 2 wars with Bush, we got a continuation of those ill-advised cuts with increases in spending under Obama, and promises of more tax cuts, spending cuts that would not balance spending with revenue and would gut programs that ensure that American citizens are taken care of under a future Romney. None of these visions and practices are good for us. NOT ONE OF THEM.
I am a student at the highschool. I have marching band at 7:10 in the morning, don’t have lunch until 11:30 (which you can barely even call a lunch), then go through the rest of the day and after school head to practice. For those of you who think there is time for us to get a snack before our practices, there’s not! We get home from practice around 6:15. If you seriously think about us kids going through all this physical activity with barely any food in our system I challenge you to try it! I am not saying that they need to feed us junk food but just because we have 3 squirts of ketchup instead of 2 is not going to make us obese. It is all about our lifestyles. It is up to us if we are going to workout and eat right. If someone doesn’t want to, one meal a day at the school is not going to change their minds. It will NOT stop obesity. If someone doesn’t want to eat healthy, not feeding us at school will just make them want to go home and eat more junk! Therefore I think we should rethink what we are doing to all of us kids! Just think, the same people that are worried about kids getting 2 squirts of ketchup are going to be running our healthcare also. Scary!!!!
We need to get Obama out of office.Who knows what they will dictate to us next when they don’t have worry about reelection.
800 calories for elementary must have been a misprint. It is 650 according to the guidelines. Grocery stores better stock up on sack lunch products.
Editor’s Note: The number’s given to us by Mr. Spears reflected the High School mandate. We have since updated the story to reflect the mandates for each school level.
Orabs Care ~ Feeding Our Friends ~ is having a food drive @ Fareway today ~ For the ones concerned about children being obese ~ I would suggest getting out there and buying some healthy after school snacks for some of those kids ! Quit talking about it and do something about it instead !!!! I dont even live in Sheldon but I just donated close to $100.00 worth of food !! The look of shock on those kids faces was well worth what I spent !! You know the old saying ……Put your money where your mouth is ~
It seems, like anything involving the government, that both sides want to be heard. But let’s not let this forum to express opinions become a soapbox for blame. Let’s think about our kids and how in order for them to be effective learners, they need to be fed. Let’s not forget about the families that DO feed their kids a good breakfast, send them off to learn and be active for six hours to nine hours on 600 to 800 calories and have them come home depleted and exhausted to the point of feeling too ill to eat their well balanced home prepared dinner/supper. And those families that are not as fortunate, who depend on the free/reduced lunches to sustain them for the whole day, are their kids going home hungry? Obesity should not be a concern. There is definately some room for improvement. Let your bi-partison concern for the children be what is important here.
Way back in 1978 I ran a marathon in southern California. I missed my exit off of I-5, sped back and got a ticket for speeding, and had to run the first mile just to get to the start of the marathon, then ran and completed the 26 miles 385 yards. All I had to eat that morning was a single serving size container of honey that you would get at a restaurant. I think the kids will be fine. They will starve, but they won’t die.
I just got done eating lunch and I’m still starving!
I have to disagree with the majority here. 850 calories for lunch, combined with a healthy breakfast, snacks and a good supper is more than enough. I have children in the schools, I have children in Highschool sports. They haven’t starved or withered away yet. They have complained about the flavors of the food in the past few years but anyway. 850 calories for lunch, let’s say a good breakfast and supper with good snacks is going to put these kids well into the 2500 calorie per day mark.
For the lady who says she pays good money for school lunches. Where else can you get a full 850 calorie meal for $2.00? That is dirt cheap! How about as parents we provide good breakfasts at home full of protein, and calories to carry them through the day? If you feel they need more, pack a snack. They aren’t going to take it away.
I tried to pack lunches before, I couldn’t even begin to touch what they get for that price.
My son takes his lunch everyday. His lunch is well within the calorie restriction that the school has set, but is in items that taste good and that are going to fill him up. The school lunches do no succeed at this any longer. There is no seasoning on the vegetables. You van give the kids better food and stay within these ranges and also make it taste good. This is the key that is being missed. The little food that they are getting, doesn’t even taste good. Anyone who is argumentative, go have lunch at the school.