According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17% of school kids are obese, triple the rate it was in 1980. So giving teenagers open access to junk food all day is not a good idea. So to help curb this trend the USDA is starting to regulate the food sold in schools, including vending machines.
Right now the U.S. Agriculture Department only oversees school lunches, and bars the sale of foods with poor nutritional value, such as soda. But, it does not regulate foods sold a la carte, or in school stores. This may change, however. The following is an excerpt from an article on reuters.com.
The U.S. Agriculture Department would be given the power to regulate all food sold in schools — including vending machine snacks — when Congress renews child nutrition programs, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said on Tuesday.
Chairman Tom Harkin said he hopes the committee will start work on legislation to reauthorize school lunch programs in October or November, with a goal to conclude the work by the end of the year.
“I can tell you it won’t be this month,” Harkin told reporters who asked when work would begin. He said precedence must go, for now, to his work on health care reform and on drafting the annual federal spending bills.
Agriculture Committee work on child nutrition will begin with a draft that gives the USDA the authority to oversee all food in schools, so nutrition programs are not “undermined” by junk food in vending machines, Harkin said at a confirmation hearing for the head of the USDA’s nutrition programs.
At present, USDA oversees the contents of school lunches and bars the sale of foods with minimal nutritional value, such as soda in the lunchroom. It does not control food sold in a la carte lines or school stores.
Concannon also said he wants people who rely on USDA food programs to be able to buy more food from farmers’ markets.
Food stamps, school lunch programs, and other nutritional assistance account for more than $75 billion, or two-thirds of USDA’s annual spending.
One in nine Americans uses food stamps to buy groceries, a record number due to recession and job losses, and more than 30 million children count on USDA-funded school programs for lunch.
The Obama administration, which has a goal of eliminating childhood hunger by 2015, proposed a $1 billion a year increase in child nutrition programs but has provided few details of how it would spend the money.
USDA to oversee school snack food via Reuters
