When we got the Easy Lunchbox System, we started thinking more about how our kid’s lunches were presented, and how many nutrients and calories were part of their lunch. For some reason, when we were using a host of different containers, we were fully aware of how many things were in the lunch, but didn’t often spend too much time thinking about the lunch as a collective whole. Now that we’re working on a new site feature for showcasing lunches using the Easy Lunchbox system, we’re also thinking more about the daily requirements, and how what we pack for lunch works within those recommendations.
Doing the Math
With a quick visit to our Food Guide Pyramid entry and some basic calculations, we learn that the average elementary age child needs 1,200 – 2,000 calories per day. 1,200 calories is for a fairly sedentary 4-8 year old female, and 2,000 is for a very active 9-13 year old male. For quick calculation purposes, let’s consider a moderately active child, hitting the middle of this range at 1,600 daily calories. Divide this into 3 meals and 2 snacks. The result? Three 400-calorie meals and two 200-calorie snacks each day.
Comparing with Guidelines
Now, let’s look at the current school breakfast and lunch guidelines. The current requirements state that lunch should provide 30% fat (less than 10% of that fat being saturated), and provide 1/3 of the recommended daily allowance for protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron and calcium.
Currently there are no maximum calorie limits set for a school meal, only minimum. There are no recommendations for sugar or sodium. School lunch programs were founded to combat malnutrition and ensure every child had access to enough food. In the United States, where the percentage of overweight or obese children has doubled over the past 30 years (25% of children and teens under age 19 are overweight or obese), it is alarming that there are only minimum calorie guidelines for what children are served in a school cafeteria.
Change on the Horizon?
On March 24th, 2010, a new school lunch bill passed the Senate. It’s a start, and does recommend calorie limits for breakfasts and lunch. The new proposals state that breakfast should be between 500-600 calories, depending on a child’s age. Lunch for grades K-5 has a cap of 650 calories; grades 6-8 receive lunches up to 700 calories; grades 9-12 receive the highest number of calories at 850. Learn more about the calorie proposals from the Institute of Medicine.
And Back to the Math…
With these new calorie caps in mind, let’s refer back at our archetypal elementary school-aged girl. Remember, she needs 1,600 calories per day. So, she arrives at school and enjoys a 500-calorie breakfast, and when it is time for lunch she consumes the 650-calorie lunch. Subtract these from 1,600, and she has 450 calories left to eat for the day. But it’s only noon!
This girl hasn’t consumed a single snack yet (and if your kids’ classrooms are like ours they do have either a morning or afternoon snack, packed from home). She has an evening meal coming up, too, and probably an after-school snack. So, even with the new guidelines in place, this little girl is on track to get more calories than her body needs … simply by eating the revised guideline-conforming school meal. Right now there are no calorie guidelines in place, meaning she could be consuming far more calories than what we are talking about here. She doesn’t even know it, but the system is setting her up to be overweight. Of course, she may not finish her entire lunch, or breakfast for that matter. That’s an entirely different discussion: how much food is being thrown away each day in our schools. I am comforted to know that our kids’ school does compost all the food waste from the cafeteria, but many schools are not doing this.
Parting Shot
My children are the kind of kids that eat what is put in front of them. We try to explain that they don’t have to finish everything, but they usually do. It is probably because most of our meals are small and simple, usually 2 or 3 things that are easily finished. Our family realized a long time ago that the more items we have in front of us, the more we consume. Just last night we enjoyed a meal with two items and all commented that it was nice to be able to fully enjoy those two things, and not have to sample bits of everything. The kids also have 3 things in their daily packed lunch (plus water to drink), so they are used to enjoying and finishing those 3 things each day.
So, are you scared? What do you think?
Tags: calories, guidelines, iom
More about Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 2:31 pm and filed under Dietary Guidelines, Education, Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In the Washington Post on May 5, there’s an article titled “D.C. Council approves tough school lunch, exercise standards”. (see: http://bit.ly/bZPqwB) In it there’s this snippet:
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials asked the council not to move forward with calorie limitations. Currently, USDA school-lunch standards establish minimum, but not maximum, calorie requirements. In some cases, according to city officials, Cheh’s bill capped calories at levels beneath the USDA requirements. “We will abide by the USDA standards so we don’t lose federal funding,” Cheh said, referring to the reimbursement the city receives for school lunches.
The article continues…
Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said that the USDA calorie minimums are a byproduct of a “Depression-era mentality” that schools should act as if “lunch was the only meal a child was having” for the day. But with childhood obesity rates climbing, Barnard said, health professionals and nutrition advocates are working on Capitol Hill to get federal calorie limits lowered.
I think that I am like you when I initially think about school lunch guidelines, and I am appalled at the idea of only minimum calorie guidelines. As a teacher though, I see kids whose only meals are the free breakfast and lunch that they receive at school each day. I wonder if we set maximum colorie amounts in guidelines how some of those kids will make it through the weekend from Friday lunch until Monday breakfast. Those kids need to be kept in mind when guidlines are made.
At our neighborhood elementary school (which has a wide economic range), there are 3 fruit and veggie choices every day, and students can choose as many as they want, including doubles of something they like. They are real food, steamed broccoli, orange sections, half of a banana, carrot sticks, etc., not canned pear bits in jello or some other “fake” stuff. Maybe giving those low income kids this option is the way to make the system still work for them.
I’d love to see the “free lunch” kids get a bag meal to take home over the weekend. I worry about them.