My Critique of Michael Pollan: School Lunch

Fallacies and illogical judgments should always pave the way for a good rant. The conclusions that Pollan draws, can easily be rebuked leaving him without credibility and a vegetable short of a complete meal. For a number of years there has been a push to purchase local produce. Schools could always purchase locally by using applicable wording when submitting bids. Regardless, September of 2009 “Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new initiative to better connect children to their food and create opportunities for local farmers to provide their harvest to schools in their communities as part of USDA's "Know your farmer, know your food" initiative."

Mr. Pollan states the government dumps food on schools “that is very fatty, high in salt, highly processed.” The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is strictly regulated by USDA guidelines  specifying requirements for meals served to students. For example, under these USDA guidelines, a standard 6”sandwich from Subway, with all its’ fresh vegetables and freshly baked  bread, would not qualify for a school lunch. Some of the requirements  to meet the USDA guidelines:

§  contain no more than 30 percent of calories from fat;

§  contain no more than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat;

and provide one-third of the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs)

 for calories, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium.

Pollan’s rant is disingenuous as he states, “Most school lunch programs in America are a scandal”, “A disposal system for surplus agricultural commodities”, “School cafeterias no longer have kitchens, they have giant microwaves, so they are utterly dependent on processed foods”.

 The NSLP operates 101,000 schools providing 31 million children daily in 2010. There are programs that need to be investigated, most are decent and numerous  programs are outstanding. I would rate the government commodity program an 8 on a scale of 10. The website for commodities has a complaint section and my assumption is that it is not flooded with complaints. I am an advocate of a free market system, thus I oppose farm subsidies. That does not correlate to schools being a dumping ground for farmer’s unused products. Does Pollan think school workers would be complacent in accepting “crummy” government commodities?

 It is somewhat true that schools no longer have kitchens. Today, the prevailing concept is to build a central production site and satellite meals out to the surrounding schools. This is a strictly a financial decision as equipment and labor is drastically reduced at each school. Instead of having a fully equipped facility, the kitchen usually is outfitted with a refrigerator and freezer. Labor is reduced from a full staff to a few part-time workers. The savings on benefit packages is huge, not to mention workers compensation and hourly totals. The trade-off is the quality is not at the same level as a meal cooked on-site. There are also products which cannot be shipped as those products do not hold in transporting. The giant microwave reference is one for the ages as it is so hysterical. (see Phyllis & Lois).

For more nutritional information regarding school lunch visit the following links:

http://www.healthyschoollunches.org/background/nutrition.cfm

http://www.schoolnutrition.org/Content.aspx?id=6926