FRAC: FRAC Statement on IOM Recommendations for Healthier School Meal Standards

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IOM Recommendations for School Meals Will Benefit Low-Income Children:
FRAC Statement on IOM Recommendations for Healthier School Meal Standards

The nation’s children, including tens of millions of low-income children, will benefit from the recommendations for school meals proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) if those recommendations are implemented. The Food Research and Action Center supports a long-overdue overhaul of school meal standards – including steps to give children more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and provide healthier options. The focus on providing high quality, nutrient-dense meals that will support good health and healthy weight is essential.

Implementation will only have the desired effect if efforts to improve meals are accompanied by efforts to expand student participation, as the IOM report itself recognizes. As the IOM says, school meals are “an increasingly important part of the safety net for food security for families with children.”

FRAC shares IOM’s concern that the changes must not reduce access to school meals; rather they should be implemented along with strategies to protect and boost participation rates. There is no point in making school meals better if children cannot access them because schools drop the program or put up other barriers. Right now, only 46 percent of low-income children who eat school lunch also eat school breakfast.

IOM is clear that these changes will have a cost. Congress and the President must ensure that money is available to improve both quality and access.

These recommendations provide an important scientific basis on which the Administration and Congress can build to meet the needs of our children, and especially low-income children, achieving the goal of healthier school meals as well as achieving President Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015.

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The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national nonprofit organization working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States.