News

On Nutrition, Canada's Schools Are Out to Lunch

Other nations, even US, are way ahead on school meals programs.

By Colleen Kimmett, 7 Sep 2011, TheTyee.ca

Empty lunch tray

Empty helping: Canada is the only G8 country without a national school meal program.

Text size:

Rate this:

Login/Register

Related

In Canada, parents are usually the ones stuck packing their kids' lunchboxes.

However, climbing rates of childhood obesity, with one-quarter of kids overweight or obese, and rising poverty have some wondering if we shouldn't try a more strategic approach to this burgeoning public health problem.

For many, this means starting at school.

"The need for school meal programs has already been acknowledged by every province," says Bill Jeffery, director of the Canadian branch of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

In Canada, provinces provide some funding to subsidize meals and snacks -- B.C.'s Fruit and Vegetable Nutritional Program is one example -- and they regulate food and beverages sold by school vending machines, cafeterias and fundraisers.

Jeffery doesn't think the provinces are doing either job very well. "The whole point here is more kids are suffering health problems as a result of poor diet."

Poor marks for food sold at schools

In 2005, fuelled by growing concern about junk food in schools, particularly vending machines, provincial health ministers agreed to create school nutrition standards as part of the Integrated Pan-Canadian Healthy Living Strategy.

Six years later, nutritional guidelines for food and beverage sales are now in place in all provinces and the Yukon territory.

A 2007 report card issued by the CSPI rated each of the provincial guidelines against standards set by the Canada Food Guide and the U.S. Institute of Medicine. It found "weak nutrition standards that permit the sale of nutrient-poor food," wide variation between provinces, and virtually no public information about whether schools were complying or not.

Anecdotal evidence, at least, suggests that they're not.

Along with more stringent nutritional guidelines, the centre advocates for federal dollars for a "pan-Canadian" school meal program to replace what has become a patchwork of provincial subsidies, corporate donations, parental volunteer efforts, and non-profit pilot projects.

Comparatively, average support for each Canadian student is about $5.95 per year. In the U.S., federally funded school meal programs total $212 per student per year.

Nourishing the brain

A link between good nutrition and learning outcomes is well established, and for a long time school meal programs have been framed as a public health and social policy issue.

More recently, the environmental movement had shifted its attention to food as a vehicle for its priorities, helping make food a campaign issue for the first time in the last federal election.

"We have accepted that health is a public responsibility and everybody knows that food is the basis of health," says Cathleen Kneen, chair of Food Secure Canada said at the time. "If you send kids to school who haven't had food to eat that morning, how on earth do you expect them to learn?"

During that election, Kneen was one of many to point out that Canada is the only G8 country without a national school meal program.

France has a highly-regarded universal school meal program that costs about $6.40 per child per day. Half is subsidized by the government, and parents pay the rest according to household income.

Elementary school children in Japan eat lunch that is prepared and served on the premises. A typical lunch might include miso soup, tofu, milk, rice and vegetables. Parents pay about a third of the cost, and subsidies are available for low-income households.

In Sweden, a typical lunch consists of meatballs, potatoes or cabbage rolls and salad. It's free for every student -- in fact, elementary and secondary schools are forbidden to charge for meals.

But these programs have been entrenched in the culture of these countries, and the Canadian context is much different. For starters, the majority of elementary schools here don't even have kitchens or cafeteria space.

We're also a geographically and culturally diverse country, more like America than France.

Tie menus to local tastes: expert

So is the U.S. National School Lunch Program a model to follow?

In 2009, $9.8 billion fed more than 31.3 million American children, and all meals and snacks are subsidized to some extent. Families with incomes at or below 130 per cent of the poverty level pay nothing, while families with higher household incomes pay about $2.30 per lunch.

While the program has garnered a fair share of nutritional criticism, including an unfavourable comparison to prison food, research has found that a free meal at school can help break the cycle of poverty.

Nutritional standards are set to improve under President Obama's Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act signed into law last year.

"Canadians spend a lot of time flattering ourselves that we're more socially conscious and socially just than the Americans," says Jeffery. "This is one issue that they're light years ahead of us on."

Will Valley, a UBC graduate student who is trying to create school food systems within Vancouver, has some reservations about a federally-run system.

"Every locale has a different food culture," says Valley. "If the federal government wanted to interfere and say everyone eats this, everyone eats that...," he shakes his head. "I'm not sure."

"If it was money from the federal government to support regional and local food systems and autonomy, that would be great."

This story first appeared on the collaborative local news site Openfile.ca. [Tyee]

Colleen Kimmett writes about food and the environment for The Tyee and others.

10 Comments:

Login or register to post comments

  • Dan the socialist

    37 weeks ago

    Why are we so far behind? Is

    Why are we so far behind? Is this not a political issue? I do not have kids so never really followed this to much unfortunately.

    I think we should follow Sweden lead and provide meals for free. But I won't hold my breathe.

  • Fii

    37 weeks ago

    "In Canada, parents are the

    "In Canada, parents are the ones stuck packing their kids' lunchboxes."

    Um, yeah... that sounds about right. Nutrition should start AT HOME. Subsidies for low income kids, for sure. But it is not the responsibility of the public school system to feed people's children.

  • VivianLea Doubt

    37 weeks ago

    No, it is not a responsibility...

    of the public school system to feed children. But it could be, should we, the people, choose that.I for one see that it would make very good economic sense - just as we know that dollars spent on preventing the major diseases cost us less in the long run, so too would feeding children decently cost us less. It would cost the schools more, the healthcare program less...but in any case, we understand that prevention is key to the economic gain.

    But somewhat pointless to suggest that nutrition should begin at home to a minimum wage/welfare single mother. She knows that, but has no choice. In any case, although I do not single out the school system as 'responsible', I do suggest that each and every one of us IS responsible for everyone else: that is the essence of community. Unless you live in a forest and are self-sufficient in every possible way, I will be helping to pay your health care costs, ensure your street gets paved, and ensuring that assholes get to go to awards ceremonies. You, of course,are doing the same. It never fails to amaze me that people see the value of, say, replacing the roof on their house before it falls in, but cannot extend that same logic to other kinds of good and preventative maintenance of people.Yes, we are all responsible for each other in an economic sense even if some of us do not recognize that psychologically.

  • edward01ca

    37 weeks ago

    We have Neo-conservative

    governments both provincially and federally. Since all they want to do is cut services and tell people that they have to rely upon themselves, I see little chance of a free or subsidized school lunch program in our schools at all.

  • Fii

    37 weeks ago

    As you may have noted,

    As you may have noted, Vivian (or not?) I did say that schools should supply food for lower income children. And your idea of community is wonderful, but I'm afraid we have built a system that is NOT a village, and families DO seclude themselves and focus only on their own. In your ideal community everyone would have an equal say in the way children are raised. The advice of elders and people who live on the fringe, so to speak, would be respected and listened to. It isn't.

    There are a million things I would choose to do differently... Children wouldn't be raised to be self-centred and narcissistic. They would all respect animals and not fear them, and treat one another equally. They would get off the computer and play outside, they would ride bikes more instead of coveting cars by the time they are teens, they would volunteer at old age homes and listen to the stories of the elderly who sit alone and depressed in retirement homes across this country. THAT is community. I don't see it in the world we live in now. It's going to have to start with more than a public school lunch system.

  • Fii

    37 weeks ago

    And I'm pretty sure that

    And I'm pretty sure that parents pay for elementary and high school in Japan, so perhaps the lunch is included in the fee, though I'm not positive. They do in other parts of Asia, like in Korea and Taiwan.

  • VivianLea Doubt

    37 weeks ago

    Community?

    I did not intend to speak directly to you, Fii - never the less, my apologies if I was offensive. Whatever you think about the state of our 'community', we do indeed live and work and survive in the modern western world in a state of interdependence. Think of the hundreds of peoples' work involved in our simple trip to the grocery store, the gas station or a school...whether we like it or not, we depend on hundreds, if not thousands of others for everyday things we take for granted.I noted that you mentioned 'subsidies' for low income kids...I tried to make the point that this kind of spending is not a 'subsidy', just as spending on preventative medicine of all kinds is not a 'subsidy'. The more we spend on prevention (which relates primarily, though not exclusively to nutrition, excersize, and refraining from excessive pursuits of drugs and alchohol), the less we spend on treating the western diseases - many of which stem from obesity. By the way, less than 1% of our health care dollars are spent on prevention...

    But the other point I tried to make, and indeed always try to make, is that we must see clearly what we want, what is desirable in a political or cultural sense before we can change anything. If I am a pollyanna, I most assuredly am not naive, and I am not sure I have visions of an 'ideal' community, save this: that it exists to serve the needs of everyone, and takes the ideas as well as needs of everyone into account.

  • zalm

    37 weeks ago

    Wel said, both of you

    But I suspect the problem is we can't agree on is how to take everyone's needs into account. I respect the few kids I know who've taken on vegetarianism for their life-choice, but how is a school to accommodate all the choices that families make for raising their kids? Meat, non-meat, vegan, halal, peanut butter, soy milk, - never mind personal preference, you're going to get another attitude of rebellion from the kids over something that doesn't need to be so significant in a child's life.

    My school-principal neighbour insists that there's a study that shows 60% of kids eat properly at school, another 15% don't and can't afford to, while another 25% don't and can afford to. That's personal choice, even if it's only laziness on the part of the kids and parents.

    I'd not want to interfere with that. We all have difficult jobs to do - living our own lives to the best of our abilities - and don't need any additional interference from anyone else when the information to live well is so readily available around us.

    Rubbing someone's nose in their own ignorance is never a good way to teach a lesson. It only feels good. I'm with Fii. Make meals available to those who need it, organized and funded at the district level by means of federal compulsion (legislation) so that provinces can't get out of funding it. Then watch the results.

  • RickW

    37 weeks ago

    VivianLea Doubt

    Quote:
    we do indeed live and work and survive in the modern western world in a state of interdependence

    It would do some people a lot of good to recognize this simple fact of modern life.

  • VivianLea Doubt

    37 weeks ago

    indeed, interdependence..

    Yes, RickW.

    And thanks zalm, but I cannot possibly be making my point if you think "what we can't agree on is how to take everyone's needs into account" ... No, we do not agree. And politics and community and culture are bogged down - although perhaps more so in the US - because we can't agree.Never the less, we know some things: we know that children cannot afford to miss even one meal without losing glycogen stores (and their physical and mental performance affected), as their livers are much smaller than adults. That nutrition of children and learning outcomes are clearly linked. That nutritional problems in early childhood leave a deficit (physical and mental) that can never be made up. My question is (and ever thus) why not focus on what we know, which by definition doesn't require 'agreement' - it simply is.

    The way that everyone's needs get taken into consideration is by giving everyone a voice: one vote, one voice. No privileging the wealthy or relatively wealthy or the better spoken or the better dressed.

    I am uninterested in shoving anything down anyone's throat, but I note that my mom, a former primary teacher, taught physical education everyday in her classroom, as well as cooking with kids in kindergarten and grade one over 40 years ago. We've considered nutrition and exercise to be crucial components of health for a long time - why would we not ensure that the basic elements of these are available to everyone?

    • The discussion for this story is closed. No more comments can be added.