Hooray Kentucky! I wondered if my daughter's school was particularly health conscious or if that was a state thing. I've eaten lunch with my girl twice now this year (she's just started Kindergarten) and I've been rather impressed with the amount of students voluntarily eating their veggies and fruits.

Is there a good reason that young children (not teens) should only have 1%? Lowfat diets are not appropriate for growing children without weight problems.

This is actually interesting. If you look at the states with highest obesity, it's the southern states with the highest rates, and the northeast states with the lowest. In this, though, the southern states are better off than the northern states. I guess this means obesity doesn't come from school lunches.

Yay Oregon!

I agree that only 1% milk for kids in elementary school seems wrong. If anyone should be having whole milk, it's kids that age -- especially if all these other weight control measures are in place.

I went to a catholic grade school, yup brown bag every day except for once a month pizza or hot lunch, yup hot lunch was a real treat for us. Oh yeah we had milk forms where we were allowed to order milk so we wouldn't have to bring drinks, and everyone just ordered chocolate anyways. I think it was 2%.

In high school you could have whatever you wanted, either brown bag or what they served, and some days brown bag was a lot better! The food wasn't so bad until senior year when they switched from actually making the food in the kitchen most of the time to 99% processed food that tasted horrible. It was not bad when the food was made in the kitchen and they made really good pizza, chicken wings, tacos and subs, and chicken nuggets and spaghetti with garlic bread. Yeah that was the extent of our high school menu, I will never forget those giant jars of mayo.

We also had the lovely rule where we were forced to drink milk though, yup no other choices were allowed, if you wanted something else you had to pay extra to get it from the juice machine which was left turned on, and that just contained ultra sugary juice anyways. There was chocolate, whole, 2& and skim milk. Water was not allowed to be served in bottles either, and believe me some of us were begging for bottled water.

Whats wrong with 2% milk, its not as fatty as whole milk and it doesn't taste as disgusting as 1% or skim milk. I think whole milk tastes disgusting personally.

Whole milk isn't really necessary after 2 years of age.

"...if your 5 year old goes from Whole Milk to 1% Milk and typically drinks 3 cups of milk a day, he would save 150 calories a day. Although that doesn't sound like much, since you gain about a pound for every 3500 calories you consume, those extra 150 calories might cost you an extra pound in body weight every 3 weeks or so (150 calories/day x 23 days = 3450 calories = 1 pound).

Resolution
So what should you do? According to the AAP recommendations, if your toddler isn't going to continue breastfeeding, you should switch her to whole milk once she is 12 months old. Next, switch to skim or low fat milk at age 2 years.

Making the switch at an early age is much easier than doing it when your child is older, when they are more likely to notice and be resistant to switching to low fat milk."

[pediatrics.about.com]

@fluiddruid: Probably to compensate for the amount of fat they'll be taking in outside of school cafeterias.

On the type of milk thing, the reason for low fat milk isn't necessarily due to wanting a low fat diet, but rather an attempt to change habits. What you drink as a kid is what you will drink as an adult. I was only ever given 2% and to this day anything else just seems wrong.

If my high school had taken away Coke there would have been a riot. For exhausted teenagers who had little or no access to coffee, caffine was the only way to stay awake during class. But that was in Virginia and they still only get a D.

Who'd a thunk it? Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas rounding out the top 5.

Hooray for my home state of KY! With our low-fat, healthy lunches, no wonder I grew up to be such a scrawny runt... :)

@wallspray: True. I only gave my kids low fat, then one time when the store was out of it, so I bought whole. My five year old took a drink, spit it out, and accused me of serving him whipping cream.

True story...

CSPI can bite my butt. They are nothing more then a "Tell everyone how to live" advocacy group.

I'm surprised how we can get a 90 comment thread about a clerk Denying rights by checking for receipts at the exit door but these fake scientists are heralded as the know all be all of eating.

I loved the junk food at high school. I've been out for two years now. But when I was at Skyview High School in Nampa, Idaho the food sucked. For example lunch was about $1.50 I think and they gave me a SMALL slice of pizza which was dry and old, a SMALL milk, a roll and a fruit. The roll was the best thing. And for a second slice of pizza or lunch it was $2.50. So some times when the lunch was so bad I could not eat it. So I would go get some candy to help me make it though the day without food. The drinking fountains where gross with gum stuck in them so I did not want to drink from them so I always bought pop.

My high school couldn't provide coffee during any lunch that we got Federal subsidy for, but we could have Coke.

Thus, lunch and breakfast mon-thurs? No coffee.
Friday, the night i'd be up all night and not drinking coffee in the morning, we had coffee at breakfast.

So screwed up. Mind you, this was B- earning Connecticut. But yay on Washington and Oregon for doing so well. The school I volunteer at actually has tasty, hearty food for lunch and veggie options and all that other crunchy granola stuff we dig up here in the NW.

CSPI, just shut up already!! Who funds these media whores anyway? On another thread today I read they are going after salt, too.

@dazette: They are a valuable voice in an overly corporate-driven society. Do you really want mega-corporations to decide how you live instead?

Oh wait. The corporations really do have the final say-so--c.f. the piece about milk labeling in PA. You win.

Yay! My state gets an 'F'. My highschool (yes I'm still in highschool, I'm a senior this year.) Has outsourced our lunches (I wonder if they're allowed to do that) to a company called Aramark awhile back. A switch made after the school cafeteria closed several times due to failed health inspections.

While the lunches are still cheaper than what you could get at any actual fast food place or food court the prices nearly doubled that year (and theft quadrupled). Now we are served almost nothing but cheese burgers, pizza, and potato chips, but no soda (that's fattening). Oh and there are some salads for the off chance that some vegetarian decides to buy lunch, but those are only while supplies last (about 10 pre-made and that's it).

So yeah that 'F' is probably well deserved.

@Adam291: Based on what I know from spending time with my in-laws in Kentucky, it's that the southern states with traditionally unhealthy food cultures are the most self-conscious about their reputations and the most interested in turning things around. At least that's how my husband explained to me the state law requiring every eating establishment to have a publicly-accessible restroom: the idea is to banish the stigma of the outhouse, which lingered longer in Kentucky than in some other states.

*****

Of all the commenters I've seen on Consumerist, the CSPI-bashers are the only ones that make me want to yell "Ah, shaddup!" like Bill O'Reilly. I'm not actually saying it, but I'm tempted to. I mean, what are these people afraid of? It's just information. So, fine, they'll pry your Monster Thickburger from your cold, dead hands. The rest of us appreciate a counterweight to the torrents of corporate-sponsored disinformation out there.

Kentucky is doing something right.

To people complaining about the milk rule: please, you don't think kids are eating a ton of fat otherwise? Those couple of grams of fat per day aren't going to stunt their brain growth or whatever. The obesity crisis doesn't just apply to adults, you know.

@dazette, CS Diego, Chili_Dog:

This might sound CRAZY, but one can take information from multiple sources, and draw their OWN conclusion! Just so you know, you don't have to pick a side, because being extreme in any way is probably not the answer.

My state got a B+, but my Bay Area school probably should've gotten an F. In the late nineties, the following were available simultaneously at lunch 1) Regular school sandwich lunch 2) Regular school hot lunch. 3) Pizza Hut 4) McDonald's (double cheeseburger + fries meal) 5) Chinese food (huge container of sweet and sour pork, fried rice, etc). 5) A "super-sized" meal featuring an enormous hamburger patty (well over 1/2 pound) and heap of fries. And of course, the snack bar was always open for business during lunchtime, featuring nachos, chilli cheese fries, cookies, chips, corndogs, hot dogs, tacos, burritos, pizza, churros ... Did I mention I had a huge weight problem in high school? :) Forget the college "freshman 10" -- the pounds just fell off me after I got my high school diploma!

@phantomfly: It's not "complaining" about the milk rule. It's more like "wondering" about the milk rule. Jeez, why must a simple question, or people asking themselves if that's the right call or not, be met with such a pricky response?

Someone else above mentioned it wasn't necessary after 2 years of age. That answered my question about the matter, and quite simply.

Personally, i eat 2 slices of pizza, a chocolate chip cookie, vanilla milk (probably whole), and an apple (gotta keep my figure) every weekday for my school lunch. astonishingly enough, im not morbidly obese. this is most likely caused by constant exercise, like biking the 4 or 5 miles into school in the morning. in the dark. uphill. both ways. braving traffic and crazy rednecks who try to run me down. maybe if we instilled the value of exercise in kids, we wouldnt be a nation of goodyear blimps

I started sending bag lunches with our kids after two incidents about two weeks apart with the school lunch program.

One day they had some off brand hot pockets that had batman on the wrapper. My older kid refused to eat his after seeing the sell by date on it was four years expired.

The following week they served them fritos with chicken gravy. WTF kind of unhealthy white trash crap is that? There is no way that was conforming to any USDA standards.

F*ck me. We (Nevada) got a B+?!? You've got to be joking. Cheeseburgers, tacos, pizza, slushies, chips (baked, granted), hot pretzels, chicken nuggets. Those are still the staples since the recent "health initiative". The salads are made with iceberg lettuce. The only other vegetables they get are carrots only worthy of becoming missiles. The one thing I see Nevada doing right is clearing the vending machines of soda and replacing it with all water and flavored (sugarless) water.

I mean, sure, I understand that it's difficult; they feel like they can only sell/provide what the children will eat. At the same time, they're selling foods that essentially train the students to be junk food addicts.

And then, surprise, they grow up making poor food choices.

As a sophmore my school serves this...

Pizza hut every other day, with french fries and Choc milk. Almost most of the stuff is frozen at one point. We have pop machines, juice, snack, milk and tea machines. We have a lot of beverages available. They also sell chips ranging from doritos to hot cheetos and funyens(Sp?) And popcorn.

We also have open lunch and about half the school always leaves and eats outside.

I live in Kansas btw.

Water, only if it's uncarbonated? Why the hell does Kentucky have a problem with seltzer? That's weird.

It does seem to go a bit far. I mean, my middle school in Colorado sold Little Debbie snacks, which my friend and I would have with coca-cola for lunch (and yet, *that* was the year I lost a bunch of baby fat). I have more of a problem with the junk branded stuff in school, because I think there's more going on psychologically with that crap.

I went to a magnet school where a girl told on me when she saw I had a diet coke at lunch, and the principal told me I couldn't bring them any more. I should have drop-kicked her. Just sharing.

@DrGirlfriend: ??? Where do you get that? Children only need whole milk until age 2. By the elementary ages, it's perfectly appropriate to encourage a restricted fat and calorie diet.

@Imaginary_Friend:

Screw anyone who tries to take away my whole milk.

Especially with specious reasoning like that. I may as well say that we don't need social security since everyone makes $X a week, and $X*52*50 years working is a whole lot of money.

If you eat X calories and sit, doing absolutely nothing, you will gain weight at a rate directly proportionate to your caloric intake.

But wait, what about those people who can eat three pizzas at every meal and never gain an ounce? There are a lot of them.

What about those kids who are on the school sports team, or are involved in extra-curricular sports?

What about those kids who walk to school? How about the kids who take P.E. as an elective every semester (I remember the majority of the school doing that when I was going).

If everyone was average, we'd all have 1.5 penises and a vagina.

Yes, anything that gets people to think about nutrition and health is a step in the right direction. And CSPI usually does make people think. Everyone just needs to be aware of CSPI's general reputation as "junk scientists", and their known bias against meat and dairy (the director is a strict vegetarian). Most respected university nutrition departments, like Tufts, apparently often consider CSPI's recommendations to be somewhat outside the accepted norms for nutrition. So I'm just suggesting y'all be mindful of this, and do your own research.

Sophomores through Seniors at my high school (7 years ago) were allowed to leave campus, and almost all of them did. I seem to remember a guy friend bringing a cake back from the grocery store and eating that for lunch.

Then again, the offerings in the cafeteria were reheated Taco Bell burritos, iceburg lettuce (aka salad), random friend things, and what I liked to call "greasy dips". They were supposed to be criss-cut fries, except that they were so horribly greasy and sometimes undercooked that they were about the least appealing food ever. Maybe feeding those to kids would turn them off junk food for good!

@samurailynn: "random friend things"

Damn, where'd you go to school, Donner Lake?

As a teacher, I can tell you the food served plays a big role in how the students behave and perform. It has become common for money starved schools to allow soda in the cafeteria and they have outsourced the lunch lady to crap that is made in some industrial plant.
My Mom was a Kitchen Manager and during her day everyone was served vegetables every day, they kitchen made their own breads, rolls and doughs and deserts and they put real effort into keeping the lunch both tasty and fairly nutritious. Unfortunately by the end of her career, they had started transitioning to the crap they serve today. She was appalled by the quality and lack of healthy nutrition she was feeding to the kids.

Is there evidence that what you eat at school actually affects your future health? Or do they just make this up?

It's at best questionable to have laws to mandate behavior, if not doing it doesn't affect anyone else.

Agree with RVLESHRAC. Instead of monitoring kids' caloric intake like it was part of a scientific mission to Mars, how about we enact weight loss the old fashioned way, by re-instating PE and actually allowing kids to run around outside and play tag and scream at one another until it's time for their Ovaltine?

I read one or two comments decrying the lack of access to coffee by kids. W. T. F. Maybe these kids should go to bed and get 10 hours of sleep so they don't need caffeine to wake them up and later crash and burn them. The obsession of people with caffeine and coffee in particular just never ceases to baffle me.

The "List" of what they may be feeding the children in our schools might look good in some States, but what they are actually eating is a whole other story.

I occasionally go and eat lunch with my children at their school and what you mostly see is that the children are given the everything on the menu on their trays, but what most of them EAT is their desserts and the major potions of their lunches (and I assume their school breakfasts also) end up in the trash cans! It is such shameful waste.

From what I have seen at the schools the staff is busy trying to keep order and hurry the kids out of the lunch room so the next grades can get in to eat their lunch.

I know they can't supervise every child of course, but it is awful seeing so much good food just go to waste. Most kids just throw away their whole lunches.

@goodkitty: It isn't simply about weight loss. It's about behavior and setting a good example and eating healthy. In my experience, kids today NEED an example of healthy eating because many parents are too lazy or too stupid to provide that for their kids. The crap they bring is often worse than the crap in the cafeteria. Yeah... "Lunchables" a bag of Oreos and a Dew are a great, healthy alternative to real food... (end sarcasm)

@goller321:

Uhh... the cafeteria food isn't going to help. At all. Ever. Period. End of story.

@SkyeBlue:

What do you want them to do? Strap the kids to the table and shove the food down their throats? You aren't going to get them to eat what they don't want by just telling them to do so. The more you harangue a kid, the less likely they are to do what you're on them about.

Standard human behavior. Just look at the average workplace. Same reason slavery only works in the short-term. People rebel.

@goller321:

I'm also a bit sick and tired of people who think the school, nanny, or anyone else is going to raise their children for them.

I'm all for public education, but it has become day-care for ridiculously out of control children. I recall a teacher in my middle school who was fired because he defended himself when a student assaulted him. What idiocy is this? And no one need bring the "adult vs child" argument. I've seen middle-schoolers knock teachers flat, and high-schoolers who will bring a police officer to their knees.

You would not frickin' believe how healthy the school lunches are in Japan.

@RvLeshrac: Word. I used to teach in Los Angeles, and it irks me when people expect the school to be the ONLY ones responsible for every aspect of a child's development. A school is only 1/3 of the package (parents and peers being the other 2/3).

These meals are unhealthy for a reason: they are designed with the assumption that the served breakfast and/or lunch are the only meals the child will receive. Why is it the school's responsibility to make sure your child gets all the energy s/he needs for the day? Especially when most kids are coming to school with chips and soda, tossing the veggies and meat, scarfing down the dessert, then eating fast food (courtesy of mom/dad) for dinner?

At my school, we probably had 5% of parents show up for PTA meetings, but when my principal tried to ban kids bringing 24oz sodas and 99 cent bags of chips, parents came out in droves to protest. When she tried to say kids couldn't get dessert until they ate their lunches, parents threatened to sue. Parents were more concerned about their kid's 'civil rights' than thier health.

Nevermind that 90% of the kids were getting free or reduced lunch... if you can afford daily chips and soda, why is the state paying for your kids to eat for free?

@ceejeemcbeegee: In addition, schools have cut funding for PE teachers, reduced recess time to meet "No Child Left Behind" parameters, slashed intramural sports programs, and dismantled most playground equipment because it's a liability. Yeah, people have sue schools for reckless endangerment because their kid got calluses from swinging on the jungle gym.

So the kids eat fat and sugar and have no way to burn off some of that energy... except in the classroom while the teacher is trying to teach. What fun.

I live in China. My school would get a F, I guess. The lunch is outsourced to an upscale restaurant in the area, but it seems that our school lunch is the chefs' training ground- it's almost never good. Most of the time it's Chinese food (this is to be expected- I mean, it's China) and Fridays it's junk food. They never get Friday lunch wrong (I mean, how hard is it to screw up fries and hot dogs/burgers/popcorn chicken?) but the lunches the rest of the week are so greasy and... hard to describe it. The defects are easier to describe- the only time they offered pasta salad there were maggots in it, and the beef curry has... parts of unknown origin in it. It's gotten so bad that a few of the students order lunch from a nearby restaurant and have it delivered to the school gate (this is big because lunches are covered in school tuition and the nearby restaurants charge a lot).

We have GOT to do something about the Milk Mafia in this country. I can't tell you how many milk cartons get thrown away unopened in our school. Half our school is African-American, and a sizable portion are lactose-intolerant. They won't drink milk, and I wouldn't either if it caused gastric distress.

Yet schools cannot offer any other drink with the subsidized lunch - no apple juice or orange juice - it MUST be milk or the kid has to pay full price. And with a sizable portion of our school also poor, they have to take what the "free lunch" offers, and that means milk.

Even if it makes them sick.

@wallspray:

what you drink as a kid is what you drink as an adult

I drank beer as a child? :P

My mother is a dietitian for a school district and the board decided to only serving fat-free or 1% milk (down from the 2% previously served). I believe they were discarding nearly 75% of their milk initially, eventually ordering only a fraction. In her opinion, it's better to have the kids actually drinking milk with a little more fat than to have them NOT drink it at all.

I think some of these programs are just overboard because you really don't want growing kids to leave the lunch room hungry. That's the last stop for getting something healthy and many kids get very little nutritious food once they get home.