Joint Informational Hearing of the
Senate Select Committee on Family, Child and Youth Development
Senate Committee on Health and Human Services
And
Senate Committee on Education
“CHILDHOOD OBESITY AND THE ROLE OF
CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOLS”
Wednesday, January 31,
2001
1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
State Capitol, California Room 4203
Testimony of
KENNETH HECHT
Executive Director
California Food Policy Advocates
· My name is Kenneth Hecht and I am the executive director of California Food Policy Advocates. CFPA is a statewide advocacy organization focusing on public policy solutions to the nutrition problems of low-income Californians. Our real expertise – and what I want to speak to this afternoon – is with the federal food programs and the role they can play in preventing obesity as well as hunger.
· This portion of today’s hearing is entitled “Framing the Problem.” The problem – and the opportunity – I want to frame for this hearing is the difficulty in recognizing that a familiar and effective anti-hunger war horse, the federal child nutrition programs, can be harnessed to take on a second nutrition calamity -- obesity. Once that recognition occurs, however, it becomes apparent that this Legislature has an unusual opportunity to take an effectively operating set of programs, add a modest state increment to a huge federal investment, and condition the state’s funds in a way that insists on markedly improved nutrition. Given the long reach of these nutrition programs, they offer a mechanism to bring nutritious food to millions of our children to help them prevent obesity.
· A few preliminary comments: as real and as serious as the obesity epidemic is, hunger and what is now called food insecurity have not suddenly disappeared. In fact, the latest USDA survey shows that nearly 4 million Californians, many of them children, suffer from hunger or must alter and constrain their lives to avoid hunger. And these numbers have emerged in California, a state of unequalled agricultural abundance at a time of unprecedented economic prosperity.
· As this morning’s policy seminar and the previous speakers this afternoon have underscored, obesity stems from a complex set of societal decisions and factors, and the solution will undoubtedly be as complex – change needs to occur in many places and at many levels. But our intuition, only recently buttressed with a few studies, is that the same population that experiences hunger is also subject to a high risk of obesity. As Dr. Dietz has pointed out in earlier studies, strategies to cope with food insecurity, such as reliance on immediately gratifying high-calorie, high-fat, low-nutrient foods, may contribute to body fat gain, especially when this occurs on a cyclical basis in response to periodic food shortages -- for instance, when food stamps run out before the end of the month.
· I hope it does not seem simplistic to say that obesity, like hunger, will respond favorably to an increase in nutritional food and a decrease in high-calorie, low-nutrition food. Translated to the school setting, this means that our goal is to increase our children’s consumption from the federal food programs and to decrease their consumption of competitive foods both on and off the campus. Fortunately, substantial progress toward this goal can be made by increasing participation in the federal food programs. School meals that are both nutritious and appealing will provide students with healthy and inexpensive food as a compelling alternative to “competitive” foods and beverages that are unhealthy and expensive.
· There are at least five reasons why the federal child nutrition programs represent a very promising point of attack:
· Their scope – every school day, nearly 3 million California children eat breakfast and/or lunch at school. And that number could nearly double if the programs were to encompass the 5.9 million youngsters attending our schools (Participation Chart[pdf] ).
· Their importance – school breakfast and lunch together contain more than one-half the nutrition a child needs each day. And they often represent much more than that for hungry children.
· Their quality – the school meals provide good nutrition, and they are getting better. A USDA study released just three weeks ago shows that fat and saturated fat levels declined dramatically in school breakfasts and lunches during the 1990s, while varieties of food and offerings of fruits and vegetables increased significantly.
· Their clout – California already receives more than $1.6 billion annually in federal child nutrition reimbursement. And because they are entitlement programs, the federal dollars could be far greater.
· Perhaps of most importance, the child nutrition programs work. I have the privilege of introducing in this hearing a school food service manager, Nancy May, whose school district exemplifies the exciting role that a district can play in bringing sound and appealing nutrition to its students. In only three years, Nancy May has taken over as food service director of the Healdsburg Unified School District, a district that used to depend entirely on frozen, pre-packaged meals, and:
· Reopened old kitchens in three of her schools and started cooking right there in the school;
· Put students to work in gardens in every school;
· Used their harvest in her meals;
· Gone to local growers for the rest;
· Helped teachers work the gardens and other nutrition topics into the core curriculum;
· Involved the students in planning the meals;
· Cut way back on competitive foods, now sold only at the high school under her control;
· Improved nutrition quality on all the a la carte foods sold at the high school and junior high school; and
· Increased participation dramatically so she has been able – barely – to stay in the black.
The nutritional and financial magnitude of the federal child nutrition programs means that they represent a remarkable opportunity to leverage massive federal funds in a program that makes a major impact on the health of millions of California youngsters.
· There is a problem with the federal child nutrition programs: they are severely underutilized. And this waste of invaluable nutrition resources is particularly critical among low-income children.
According to California Department of Education data, for instance, less than one-third of the eligible low-income youngsters participate in the School Breakfast Program (Participation Chart [pdf] ). This means that more than 2 million needy children start school without the nutrition they must have simply to take advantage of being in school.
Similarly, more than 2 million children already officially enrolled for free school lunches currently are caught in an unnecessary nutrition gap when schools are closed and summer meal programs are inaccessible. It is no wonder they return to school far from ready to learn and that they are ravenous and make unfortunate nutrition choices in order to fill up as cheaply as possible when they do have any money.
· There are many reasons for this tragic underutilization of the child nutrition programs, and some of them can be dealt with only by Congress. But there are very specific steps, with measurable goals, that the State of California can take to improve the programs and to expand their use. These steps are designed to do one thing – to give the schools the resources they need to improve the meals and snacks they serve, to make them more nutritious and more appealing to students.
· Some of the necessary program improvements will take state funds. A thoughtful proposal, based upon the principles enunciated above, has been drafted for your consideration by a statewide coalition of over 600 individuals and agencies called California Children’s Coalition for Activity and Nutrition (CCCan). Not only are the CCCan requests for state funding modest, but they also are carefully conditioned by performance benchmarks to guarantee accountability – no performance by the schools means no reimbursement from the state.
First, as to the modesty of the state funds requested in the CCCan proposal:
· California currently contributes only $68 million (4%) to the state-federal funding for children’s meal programs. Federal funds into California are about $1.6 billion (96%). The CCCan proposal calls for $177 million more, bringing California’s portion to $245 million (13%), an 8-1 ratio. This is a pretty cost-effective public health intervention (Funding Chart [pdf]).
· As compared to the Governor’s education initiative last year, which costed out at about $6.8 billion, this seems pretty modest.
· A survey of other states, now underway in our office, shows that more than 2/3s of the 35 states surveyed provide a supplement to the federal funding, and new state-funding states are coming on line every year (State Funding Survey). It is simply necessary.
· Perhaps of most interest, we are releasing today the results from a survey, just completed by Samuels and Associates, of California school district food service funding. It underscores the difficulty in running a meal service, doing everything required by law, and breaking even. And the survey underlines how it is even harder to break even and not rely on revenues from competitive foods and to produce meals that are both nutritious and appealing. One district spent $2.50 on every meal for which the maximum available reimbursement is $2.32.
· At the same time that we have asked more of school food, we have provided less and less resources with which to do it. As Marilyn Briggs, director of the California Department of Education’s Nutrition Services Division, will show in a few minutes, state funds for school meals have not grown over the years. In fact, they have eroded drastically – by nearly 25% over the last 15 years. It is time for a raise.
· Later on this afternoon, other speakers will present a proposal hammered out by a coalition of advocates, the Strategic Alliance for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity, that calls for the rapid elimination of sodas, candy and other competitive foods. CFPA supports this proposal, but we also recognize the importance of these revenues to school district food services. If we are asking schools to abandon their cash cow – or maybe cash soda contract would be more accurate – and to offer higher cost foods requiring more labor to prepare, we must give them the means to do so.
· One way of understanding the logic behind the CCCan recommendations is to think of the arrangement as a contract with mutual promises between the parties. On one side, the Legislature will be asking school districts to promise to create a healthy environment for their students, by removing all or most sodas, candy and certain other competitive foods from the campus. Recognizing this as an important source of revenue for still-strapped food departments, the Legislature promises to replace those revenues with additional state reimbursement. But, as an added protection for the taxpayers of the state, this part of the contract comes with major strings, aimed at strong accountability.
· The conditions attached to the proposed funding are a central part of the transaction. No funding will occur until the school district reaches certain important benchmarks toward a healthy school environment.
· First, a district will be required to place sales of all competitive foods and beverages under the control of the school food service department.
· Second, a district will be required to adopt and implement a food policy controlling sales and nutrition standards for competitive foods.
· Third, a district will be required to comply with state nutrition standards for the sale of competitive foods.
· Fourth, a district will be required to provide extensive, comprehensive nutrition education throughout all the grades.
Virtually all of the funding requested by CCCan is tied to student participation rates – because that is the key goal – to expand students’ reliance upon the healthy, reimbursable school meals. Tying the funds to increased participation rewards a district for improving the appeal as well as the nutritional quality of its food service. And that is the point, too: to maximize patronage of the healthy reimbursable meals and to minimize sales of less healthy competitive foods.
Let me briefly introduce the key elements of the CCCan proposal:
· The first major element is for an additional state-funded 10 cents for every reimbursable meal or snack, to catch up with the erosion of state funding and to do the things a district has to do to operate but hasn’t been able to do these last years – but not until the district has satisfied all the conditions I mentioned earlier. The full price tag is estimated at $75 million.
· A second portion of the CCCan proposed funding goes directly and exclusively toward purchase of fresh fruit and vegetables, preferably California grown. $75 million.
· A third portion restores former state reimbursement for meals for full-pay students, those over 185% of poverty. $24 million.
· Fourth is funding to implement direct certification – to enroll all the poorest kids in the state for free meals. $500,000.
· Fifth, funds to build nutrition programs in the community, using small grants to community-based agencies just like the ones that have worked so well on the school side. $700,000
· The last element I want to pinpoint is one that seems like Mom and apple pie – well, maybe apple slices -- $500,000 of state funds for the WIC farmers’ market program. How can you argue with fresh fruits and vegetables from family farmers for pregnant and nursing moms and their infants and young children? $500,000
And remember: with all these nutrition programs, there is a long-term gusher of federal funding set loose by this proposal for state-funded pump priming. This is a sound public health intervention, with a modest state investment now to save California untold millions in health care and education costs in the future.
Thank you for your attention. I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.