An article was printed last Wednesday in The Capital Times with the headline, “Parents wonder whether Madison’s school lunches are healthy for kids.” I’m surprised anyone would even have to ask such a question, but in case they do, the answer is a resounding no.

It is beyond common knowledge that kids need a healthy, complete lunch to perform well in school. In response to a growing epidemic of malnutrition, President Harry S. Truman signed The National School Lunch Act in 1946. It was enacted as a way to prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses while also providing subsidized low-cost or free food to school-aged children. In the past 63 years, the program’s inability to put children first has not changed much.

It was not until 2003 that a quality-assurance program was set up to consistently provide ground beef lower in pathogens and fat content. The current nutritional guidelines, set up in 1995, follow the USDA’s food pyramid and require a school lunch provide a third of the daily recommended allowances for important nutrients such as protein, vitamin A and iron.

What almost any nutritionist, or even most educated consumers, will tell you, however, is the USDA pyramid is an inadequate and incorrect tool for nutritional information. The guidelines have been updated several times, but they still fail to give Americans a nutritionally sound example of a healthy diet.

Unfortunately, school districts’ reliance on the USDA pyramid is hardly its biggest problem. As Frank Kelly, director of Madison’s food services program on the east side admits, “The kids are our customers.” Following a business model, school lunch programs have to provide a product their consumers will like. Translation: Lunches of chicken nuggets, hot dogs, French fries, canned fruit and desserts win out. Kelly claims they had tried out healthier options such as meatless chili in the Madison district, but the kids wouldn’t hear of it.

Unfortunately, finicky eaters aren’t the only problem facing school lunch providers. While school lunch programs are mandated to follow federal guidelines, the programs only receive half of their funding from federal programs, while the state only contributes 2 percent. The rest is paid for by income from the lunches themselves. These programs are constantly juggling between keeping lunches affordable and trying to incorporate at least some good nutrition. But the juggling act isn’t working.

A University of Wisconsin School of Education student provided some insight unique to her experiences in the Madison school districts. According to her reports from student teaching, her lunch break — a time she felt was adequate for an average person to eat lunch — included both the students’ eating time as well as their recess period. She also explained kids usually have a choice between a fruit or a vegetable, but not both. The fruit provided is often bananas that children often throw away or peaches canned in sugary syrup.

Although The Capital Times asked the question, one needn’t look very hard for the answer — Madison’s program is not only failing to help the nearly 50 percent of district students that qualify for free or reduced school lunches, but it is also actually causing them harm. For many children, this is the biggest and most important meal of their day, as their families cannot afford to provide more adequate nutrition at home.

We are teaching generation after generation of students poor eating and lifestyle habits that they will almost surely carry with them through their adult lives. But the problem is so deeply ingrained in the educational system that simply adding an extra vegetable to the menu would be a flimsy Band-Aid on a much more serious wound.

School hours need to include enough time for children to sit down and comfortably finish their lunches without danger of restricting their already limited physical activity. Healthy habits, such as incorporating locally-grown, fresh produce into their diets needs to be addressed, if not included in the lunches themselves. Flimsy USDA guidelines need to be replaced by nutritionist-backed research. And most importantly, anemic state funding needs to be bulked up — even if by marginal amounts — to help our district facilitate these changes immediately.

Laura Brennan ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in communicative disorders.