Confessions of a ‘lunch lady’

I used to feel reassured when I saw “USDA” on food labels. Then I went to work in a school cafeteria.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture does so much vital work. It makes sure meat, poultry and eggs are safe to eat. It also administers the National School Lunch Program, which feeds more than 30 million children every year.

So far, so good, right?

But here’s where my faith is being tested. The USDA is also in charge of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, purportedly evidence-based recommendations meant to “promote health and prevent disease.” In a tragic story of unintended consequences, these standards justify school meals that are making our children unhealthy. I’m referring to carb-loaded sugary breakfasts, lunches and treats, all of which technically comply with the guidelines, yet which nonetheless feed our national crisis of child obesity — which has more than tripled since 1971.

As tens of millions of our kids return to school this month, we should focus on finally fixing this problem. The USDA has recently made several important proposals as part of a regular review of the national guidelines. We need to support them — and go farther.

The dietary guidelines, which inform school standards also set by the USDA, help explain why so many public-school students eat donuts and orange juice for breakfast, spiking their blood sugar, instead of a protein-rich meal such as scrambled eggs. Lunches may include crowd-pleasing “grab & go” Domino’s pizza, Doritos and chocolate milk. None of that violates guidelines, which bewilderingly still recommend six servings of grains per day, including three of refined grains. This chronic consumption of carbohydrates can promote obesity, and for nearly 300,000 kids already suffering from diabetes, leads to constant sugar spikes their bodies can’t handle.

Most surprisingly, current school guidelines have no limit on sugar, which every schoolchild by now knows is bad for you. The USDA has proposed a shockingly timid limit of 10 percent of calories as added sugar per meal, and even that limit wouldn’t go into effect until 2027. 

The dietary guidelines endure despite extensive research revealing that they’re based on flawed, outdated science, in a world that is coming to appreciate the nutritional value of proteins and healthy fats. The current rules recommend against whole milk, for instance, despite evidence that children who drink whole milk have a 39 percent reduced risk for being overweight or obese. Rather than having a choice of whole milk, schoolchildren can drink watery skim or low-fat milk, flavored and dosed with up to six teaspoons of added sugar.

From my first day as the “lunch lady” back in 2003, for an economically disadvantaged, mostly rural school district near Erie, Pennsylvania, I was shocked by the copious regulations — 285 pages! — governing our meal-planning. Worse than that was disturbing evidence of corporate profiteering.

Breakfast continues to infuriate me. Thanks to the dietary guidelines and all those regulations, I can’t serve eggs unless I also offer carbohydrates such as Pop Tarts (with 14 grams of added sugar). Straying from the rules could get the school district fined or even kicked out of the National School Breakfast Program.

Digging deeper made me even angrier, after I learned that school districts contract with multinational firms, including Kellogg’s and PepsiCo, as suppliers. 

Money, as usual, is at the root of this evil. On average, schools receive less than $4 per lunch from federal and state reimbursements. That pays not just for food but labor, electricity and equipment. No wonder many schools avoid fresh produce and high-quality proteins in favor of processed food with long shelf lives, like “Flamin’ Hot” baked Cheetos, with MSG and artificial flavors and colors. 

We, to my shame, sell those Cheetos on the lunch lines as an “extra” to keep other food on the trays. Unlike some of my peers, I put my foot down over Mountain Dew Kickstart (15 grams sugar, 90 mg caffeine), but I only have so much leeway.

Over the years, we’ve see-sawed between outrage, interventions and backtracking over school lunches. In 2010, President Obama allocated $4.5 billion for new nutrition standards. Eight years later, President Trump rolled them back. The Biden administration promised to roll back the rollbacks, but the pandemic then brought unexpected shortages of food and labor, solved temporarily with more packaged junk.

Through it all, our students are becoming both increasingly hungry and obese, with more obesity-related illnesses, including diabetes, sleep apnea and high blood pressure. Children from low-income households are disproportionately harmed, perhaps in part because subsidized school meals make up more of their daily calories.

The USDA is proposing some worthy updates to the dietary guidelines and school standards, including a partial ban on sugary, flavored milks, but we need to do more, including reducing the mandated amount of refined grains and not waiting five years to start reducing the amount of sugar in schools. In other words, let’s not sell our kids out to cheap junk food produced by Big Food. These children are our future.

Krista Byler is Food Service Director for the Union City Area School District in Union City, Pennsylvania.