National School Breakfast And Lunch Programs Discriminate Against Potatoes
March 8, 2012 
On Wednesday, Jan. 25, First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the release of USDA’s much-anticipated final rule updating the menu requirements for the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program.
As directed by Congress, USDA did not include maximum potato serving limits as it had originally desired in the lunch program, and removed its proposed complete prohibition of potatoes in the breakfast program. However, we at the National Potato Council voiced concern that USDA’s final rule still treats potatoes as a second-class vegetable by conveying the message that they should be treated differently due to their color (or, more appropriately, their lack of color).
Appearance Versus Substance
The new regulation requires schools to offer students five vegetable subgroups mostly founded on appearance, rather than a vegetable’s ability to deliver the nutrients that kids actually need. The categories are: dark green, red/orange, beans and peas (legumes), starchy, and a catch-all group called “other.” This “other” group consists of vegetables like asparagus, beets, and Brussels sprouts. (How beets do not fall into the red/orange category is anyone’s guess.)
For example, over the course of a week, the rule requires schools to offer students in grades 9 through 12 at least 5 cups of vegetables at lunch, and stipulates the minimum serving requirements for each of the subgroups. The red/orange category is the most favored, with a 1¼ cup minimum serving requirement. The “other” category comes in second, at ¾ of a cup. The dark green, beans and peas, and starchy categories all finish at the bottom at a half cup.
But if you think the rules for vegetables served during lunch are arbitrary, wait until you get to the breakfast program.
The regulation states that schools are now required to offer students five cups of fruit per week in the voluntary breakfast program, and allows vegetables to be substituted for the fruit requirement. What’s troubling is that the rule stipulates that the first two cups of substituted vegetables must come from any category except for starchy. Schools would still be allowed to offer potatoes at breakfast, but they would not fulfill the mandate of the rule unless two servings of other vegetables are offered first.
By any standard, the voluntary School Breakfast Program is one of the most successful of all the federal feeding programs. Serving 11.7 million kids each day, it makes it possible for all school children in the U.S. to receive a nutritious breakfast, keeping them alert and fueling their learning during the morning hours. By USDA’s own numbers, the rule drives up the cost of the program by 27¢ per meal. With schools laying off teachers and cutting back on sports and arts programs, we are concerned that schools may end their participation in the voluntary breakfast program if they determine the costs are too much to bear.
During her remarks at the press conference announcing the new rules, the First Lady said that it is the responsibility of adults to make sure that kids get basic nutrition that they need to stay healthy. We all agree with the goal, but I have to wonder how putting vegetables in arbitrary categories and directing school food service directors to make menu decisions based primarily on vegetable color over nutritional characteristics is in the best interest of children’s health.
Baked sweet potato fries and baked white potato fries both can be included in school meals on menus that meet USDA’s nutrition, caloric, fat, and sodium requirements. They also have almost identical nutrition profiles, so much so that professional nutritionists would have a hard time identifying the two based upon the data alone if the beta-carotene (the orange pigment found in sweet potatoes) numbers are hidden. If delivery of nutrition to a student is nearly identical, USDA should not promote one over the other solely based on a subjective characteristic like color, but in its new rules, it does.
While the new meal regulations represent a tremendous victory for the potato industry when compared to the imposition of the proposed absolute potato limits, we’re still concerned that the promotion of certain groups of vegetables over others for factors other than nutrition could be a tremendous burden to schools and actually serve as an impediment to improving kids’ health. We look forward to working with the dedicated school food service professionals who care about delivering healthy meals to students as they evaluate and implement the final rule.
Finally, we will continue to work with USDA and encourage them to look beyond the color of a vegetable when making decisions about nutrition.
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