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Breakfast of Champions? Not in These Schools

Ohanian Comment: Empty calories in national curriculum mandates; empty calories in the federally subsidized Breakfast in the Classroom meal. One kills your soul, the other your arteries. And nationally, organizers of this Breakfast brag that it reduces eating time, making more time for the curriculum.

Stuff in that sugar and fat as fast as possible, kiddos. Gotta get on with that test prep curriculum.

And get this: according to an internal document. C.P.S. gets as much as $1.76 per student for a meal costing about a buck. So the district has the potential for $8.9 million of new revenue out of feeding kids cheap breakfasts.

It's bad enough that kids are being put in a ritual of unhealthy food. Because it's done by the school, it serves as a role model for good nutrition. Kids exposed to eight years of a pancake wrapped around a sausage on a stick, to be dipped into syrup and frosted flakes take this kind of eating as a given. After all, the school looks out for the child's best interest, right? A school wouldn't routinely do something that's bad for kids. Would it?

We show kids how to live by the way we live with them. Kids become lifelong readers when teachers show them enthusiasm for reading. Likewise, kids develop lifelong poor eating habits when schools stuff them with sugar, salt and fat.

Me? I advocate a slow curriculum as well as slow food. You don't think this is possible? Look at this letter that appear in Mark Bittman's New York Times blog:

Marco from Paris writes:

Here in France, public schools all provide cafeteria lunches for kids – lunches not allowed. They never see fries or hamburgers, chips or coke. Meals are typically fish/meat, vegetables, fruit, bread and cheese/yoghurt. The menus are posted on-line weeks in advance for all parents to see. Kids learn to eat and enjoy good food this way -- we’re from Canada, and appreciate this approach to school time lunch. The only problems is the 2 hour lunch breaks they all have, forcing kids into long school days (8:30 AM to 5PM sometimes).

Two hours for lunch. Kids participating in the federally sponsored Breakfast in the Classroom program have 10 minutes for a meal.

By James Warren

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new Chicago Board of Education swings into action, it should not mark the occasion with a private dinner.

The members should have breakfast together in any of several thousand elementary school classrooms. There, they will get a glimpse of the mess they have inherited. Bring antacids and a nutritionist.

A Breakfast in the Classroom program approved by their predecessors is completing its mandatory rollout. All that can be said with certitude is that it has shortened instructional time in a system with the shortest school day and year of the nation's 50 largest districts.

"It's a mess," said the principal of a North Side elementary school who declined to be identified and is not happy with a one-size-fits-all program. It's stealing teaching time and generating too much garbage, and the nutritional impact is unclear, he said.

A defensive presentation on the Chicago Public Schools Web site talks about serving "the whole child both emotionally and academically." It sounds quite holistic.

The drivers are hunger and revenue. C.P.S. has no Chicago-specific data on how many students don't eat breakfast at home, what they eat if they do and whether they take part in the new program. But, according to Kate Maehr, head of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, 37 percent of clients at 650 soup kitchens, pantries and shelters in Cook County are children.

C.P.S. was running a pre-class breakfast program in school cafeterias but says attendance was modest. The reasons cited include a stigma attached to taking part -- the notion that "only low-income students eat school breakfast," according to its Web site -- as well as kids' just preferring to play outside or not getting to school early enough.

Then there are economics. Given the differential between federal reimbursements and the cost of the meals, the breakfast plan "has the potential to create $8.9 million of new revenue," according to an internal document. C.P.S. gets as much as $1.76 per student for a meal costing about a buck.

Initial criticisms have come mostly from parents worried about allergies, with scant attention paid to the loss of instructional time. The district claims it takes away only 10 minutes, which itself means losing a full week from the woefully short year. That's poppycock, especially for younger students struggling with milk cartons and plastic packaging.

But what about what the food they're actually getting?

I brought four days' worth of hot and cold breakfasts, in their white and brown paper bags, to Linda Somers, the pediatric outpatient nutritionist at Children's Memorial Hospital. She's also the parent of a second grader at A. N. Pritzker Elementary School -- "He thinks the food there is horrible," she said -- and counsels many low-income C.P.S. students with obesity.

Her basic conclusion: "They're serving crap."

Her lengthy analysis was decidedly more nuanced, even if the absence of labels on much of the food complicated the task. In one case, she couldn't figure out what the hot meal actually was; perhaps an omelet, she said.

One classic -- a pancake wrapped around a sausage on a stick, to be dipped into syrup -- was very likely filled with saturated fat and calories, she said. A cold alternative was Rice Krispies, Cheerios and Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats -- all of which she found benign -- and skim milk.

For the four days, there was not a piece of fresh fruit, whole grains were in insufficient supply, and the orange juice was 100 percent juice but included apple and pear juice ("a money saver"), Ms. Somers said.

Graham crackers were labeled as having no trans fats, but ingredients included partially hydrogenated oils, which Ms. Somers frowns on. A fruit cup had no nutritional information, so she could only say, "It looks terrible."

Her ultimate assessment is that the breakfast offerings may exacerbate the obesity problem. "Poverty and hunger are real issues, yes," she said, "but this is not the way to fix it."

To her, everything is wrongheaded: Too many concentrated calories. Not sitting at a communal table. Being rushed to finish in 10 minutes. Not enough fresh fruit. The possibility that children have multiple breakfasts, then lunch, within two or three hours, given that lunch can come as early as 10:30 a.m. at some schools.

My first grader's school starts the program Monday. Next week's fare includes "egg & potato breakfast bowl" and "beef sausage n biscuit breakfast sandwich."

I just hope his education is nowhere as empty as the calories we'll jam down his young throat.

James Warren writes a column for the Chicago News Cooperative.

— James Warren, Chicago News Cooperative
New York Times
2011-05-22
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22cncwarren.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

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