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Improving Child Nutrition and Education?
The House Education and Workforce Committee backed the bill Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 (H.R. 5003), which comes with proposed changes in access to nutritious food at school that could have a negative impact on many low-income families. The biggest change being a reduction in the number of schools with a high concentration of low-income students in which the lunch program is available to all students. Other proposed changes will repeal some of the standards set for nutritional quality of the meals, in the name of reducing costs and administrative burdens. Currently, nearly all participating school districts are meeting the updated school lunch nutrition standards, providing mostly whole grains, moderate salt, more fruits and vegetables, and healthier snacks and beverages. Weakening the standards would only stand to harm children's health.
This bill is going to make it more difficult for schools to help feed children as part of the Community Eligibility Program. The Community Eligibility Program is a provision from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that allows schools and local educational agencies with high poverty rates to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. This program currently benefits 8.5 million school children in low-income neighborhoods by increasing school lunch and breakfast access in high-poverty schools and reducing the administrative burden on schools. By increasing the school meal application verification requirements from 40 percent of the student population to 60 percent, this means an increase in paperwork for schools and families, and will likely have the greatest impact on some of the most vulnerable families, such as those who are homeless, migrant, immigrant or have limited English proficiency. The added support needed to ensure that these families complete the paperwork accurately if at all often provides unnecessary hurdles to proving eligibility. Further, this version of the bill will mean that the universal school meals program will end in approximately 7,000 of the 18,000 schools currently participating, and 11,000 additional high-poverty schools not yet participating but eligible under current law, would lose the option to implement community eligibility in future years. This puts a lot of children at risk for not having access to the nutritional support they need to learn and grow.
While there are some improvements to government nutrition programs in this current version of the bill, such as increasing the school breakfast reimbursement, the harmful requirements far outweigh any positive changes. FRAC has made an analysis of just what this bill will do. An excerpt:
"The bill contains a number of damaging provisions, including: shrinking coverage of the very successful community eligibility provision; inappropriately increasing verification paperwork; diluting nutrition standards for school meals; and inadequately investing in the Summer Food Service Program and the Child and Adult Care Food Program. These requirements would reduce access to the programs, water down nutrition quality, and increase administrative burdens on both schools and families."
On a final note, bills like this that force organizations to focus their energy on preserving safety net programs detract from the advocacy work that many could be doing to confront larger systemic issues, like a low minimum wage and underemployment, that force children from low-income families to rely on these school nutrition programs in the first place. Instead of the House taking the time to strengthen programs that work well, this bill reduces access to nutritious meals, which means millions of children go without the support they need to learn, play and grow alongside their peers.
It's important to contact your Members of Congress and urge them to oppose H.R. 5003. Look up your Members of Congress here.
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WhyHunger's What Ferguson Means for the Food Justice Movement series is a bold attempt to explore the way in which police violence and institutionalized anti-black racism is deeply interconnected to food, land and Black bodies. What is the connection between the death of Black people at the hands of the state (police shootings) and the death of Black people at the hands of the corporate food system (diet-related disease/ land displacement/redlining)?
To lift up critical voices of the movement, WhyHunger's Beatriz Beckford facilitated a national call with dynamic organizers and activists across the country to gather a collective interrogation of these issues from the perspective of Black activists organizing around food justice. Issue #5 features food justice activist Tanya Fields, who is the Founder and Executive Director of The BLK ProjeK, an economic development enterprise that utilizes the good food movement to provide opportunities for marginalized women and youth of color in the Bronx. In this piece Tanya gives her perspective as a mother, and emphasizes that "radical mothering" and being unapologetic in working to build a community (safety, healthy food, quality education) that your child deserves and can thrive in, will create a more just system for all.
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"Why US-Cuba Relations Won't End Cuba's Alternative Agriculture Movement"
After Barack Obama and Raśl Castro's announcement that the US and Cuba would begin a process of political and economic "normalization" -many food sovereignty advocates worried about the implications for Cuba's sustainable agriculture sector. But while the prospects of increased trade and investment may tempt some Cuban leaders to abandon alternative agriculture, it is unlikely to sway many of the growers and activists who have been pursuing agricultural transformation on the island for over twenty years. Read more about this here.
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The Pesticide Action Network (PANNA) released a report, Kids on the Frontline, which goes into dozens of independent studies documenting links between pesticide exposure and how it harms children's health. It builds on PANNA's extensive 2012 report, A Generation in Jeopardy. The report expands on how: - Overall, childhood health problems continue to climb.
- Fast-rising childhood cancers have strong links to pesticides.
- More science links pesticides and neurodevelopmental harms.
- Rural children's "double dose" of pesticide exposure is cause for concern.
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Real Food Media is a collaborative initiative using online movies and a web-based action center along with grassroots events around the country to spread the stories of sustainable food and farming. Real Food Media released the winners of their Real Food Films Contest earlier this month.
The 2016 Grand Prize winner is Home Flavored, a haunting story of how soda companies impact the lives of Latino - and in this case, Mexican - families in the United States. Home Flavored features spoken word poet Monica Mendoza and is a powerful film about "how corporations continue to colonize the bodies of her culture." Watch the film here.
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The WhyHunger Hotline number is 1-800-5-HUNGRY. Please update your records and find outreach materials here. |
Nourishing Change is a space to share critical thoughts around the systemic change that needs to happen to end hunger and transform the emergency food system. We want to hear from you! Email us at nourish@whyhunger.org
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Nourish Network for the Right to Food
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Contributors: Betty Fermin
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