PRESIDENT'S LETTER

The Department of Defense and the National School Lunch Program

In 2010, more than 100 retired generals, admirals, and senior leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces issued a summary report stating that more than one in four young Americans were unfit for military duty as a result of being overweight or clinically obese (1). They made several straightforward and concrete recommendations to solve the problem of young Americans being “too fat to fight,” an epidemic regarded as a threat to national security: (a) get junk food and high-calorie beverages out of our schools; (b) increase funding for the school lunch program; and (c) support the development, testing, and deployment of proven public health interventions.

This is not the first time that the Department of Defense (DoD) has sounded an alarm about the endangered health of our nation’s youth. In fact, it was the testimony of Major General Lewis B. Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service Administration, and work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that won passage of legislation that inaugurated the national school lunch program in 1946 (2). Individual states and the USDA had first responded in the early 1930s to the growing problem of malnutrition, largely a result of food shortages and distribution problems during the Great Depression, by establishing regional school breakfast and lunch programs (3). However, these programs declined during WWII, and by 1946, the DoD reported that a shocking four in five Americans were unfit for military service, the primary cause being malnutrition. In signing the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Program legislation, President Harry Truman commented that “In the long view, no nation is healthier than its children, or more prosperous than its farmers.” America’s youth, regardless of family income, were assured at least one healthy meal a day, and farmers were guaranteed a substantial market for their commodities. Except for an austere cost-cutting downturn in funding in the 1980s (older ASPB members may recall when ketchup was declared to be a vegetable…), the program has grown steadily to the point at which it now gives 31 million children a daily meal.

Although nutrition programs for school children are available in most developed countries, food security in developing countries is another matter. In fact, two former political foes, Bob Dole and George McGovern, teamed up in a common cause to bring the idea of a school breakfast/lunch program to developing countries where, as in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, malnourishment had to be addressed as a prerequisite to effective learning. Their international school lunch program had another bonus by including girls, who were too often left out of the education loop. Widely successful in Africa, the program has spread to 41 countries worldwide and now benefits an estimated 22 million children. In fact, the program has been so successful that McGovern and Dole were awarded the 2008 World Food Prize for global commitment to the idea that educating a mind must begin with a healthy body (4).

However, there is a long way to go. In announcing the “1,000 Days: Change a Life, Change the Future” initiative, the United Nations Millennium Development Program and its partners aim to guide action to address the problem that 200 million children around the world suffer from chronic malnutrition, a situation that results in 3.5 million preventable maternal and child deaths annually as well as stunting of the growth and intellectual capacity of one-half of all children (5). Moreover, child malnutrition before the age of two is one of the world’s more serious yet avoidable problems, affecting intellectual capacity, educational performance, and human potential long before a child steps into a classroom. Although improving the health of the populations of developing countries is a long-standing mission of a great many developed nations, private foundations, in particular the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (6), have focused world attention on the premise that improving health and local agriculture go hand in hand.

What constitutes a lunch in the United States has changed radically over the decades. The USDA reports that U.S. children are overfed yet malnourished—one in four children suffer hunger—while at the same time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that as a result of obesity and poor nutrition, one in three U.S. children will develop Type II diabetes in their lifetime, one in two if they are African-American or Hispanic (7). Although a fast-food culture, our insatiable appetite for sugar, and a failure to battle these trends within the confines of a schoolyard contribute greatly to childhood obesity, the success of large-scale agriculture and the trajectory of our commodity markets indirectly contribute as well. In the 1960s, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz reconfigured price supports that, in effect, ended subsidies for idle lands and replaced them with a guarantee of a floor price—a policy that encouraged farmers to grow corn and soybeans “fencepost to fencepost,” maximizing production to create new markets (8). Since 1970, average U.S. corn yields have risen from 97 bushels per acre (6.1 metric tons per hectare) to about 165 bushels per acre (10.4 metric tons per hectare). Last year, it is estimated that the United States produced a little over 13 billion bushels (335 million metric tons) of corn (9). Where does it go? About 43% will go to animal feeds, 32% will be converted to ethanol (and animal feed by-products), 16% will be exported, 5% will be converted to high-fructose corn syrup and sweeteners, and 2% will be consumed directly by humans in products such as cereal, corn meal, and corn starch (10). That’s right: a market was created in which 2.5 times more corn goes to making corn sugar than actual corn food products.

An impending health epidemic is driving change. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have announced two programs amounting to over $70 million to prevent or treat downstream consequences of the obesity epidemic and to study community efforts to reduce incidence (11). Meanwhile, the $25 million Childhood Obesity Prevention Program at USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) aims to generate knowledge about behavioral and environmental factors that influence excessive weight gain by children and to develop means of intervention (12). The NIFA program also aims to develop effective means to increase nutritious foods, decrease high fat and high sugar intake, and alter the obesity culture. Private individuals and foundations have been doing their part as well, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, whose key missions are to improve American health and end childhood obesity (13), to British chef Jamie Oliver’s private Food Revolution campaign that offers a far-reaching educational platform that teaches good eating habits within affordable budgets (14).

Almost lost in the news of all the congressional actions this past December was the strong bipartisan support for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a program strongly championed by First Lady Michelle Obama and signed into law on December 13, 2010 (15). This legislation reinforces USDA authority to restructure and expand coverage of school breakfast, lunch, and after-school programs to provide more healthy and nutritious foods as well as to educate children about healthy food choices. Long in advance of its passing, the USDA has developed several competitive grant programs that emphasize basic research into keeping American agriculture competitive while ending world hunger, improving nutrition, ending child obesity, and improving food safety. Even special programs in foods, nutrition, and health, such as the Specialty Crop and the Organic Agricultural Research initiatives, touch on plant biology, genetics, and genomics (16).

In the long view, plant biologists are at the foundation of the food revolution. Much is already being done through basic research by ASPB members to enhance nutritional yield, vitamin quality, and even disease-mitigating traits of crop plants through advanced genetics. But so much more could be done with a reprioritization of funding. Echoing Benjamin Franklin’s adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” the $70 million that NIH now devotes to the downstream health consequences of obesity, a mere 0.25% of its research budget, added to the USDA competitive research budget could profoundly impact advances needed not only to solve our own epidemic, but also to provide the varieties and technologies that mitigate malnutrition worldwide. A significant change in the funding structure in these vital areas could come in 2011 when hearings begin on the new Farm Bill. Not to underplay the complexities inherent in the formulation of this bill, but when the dust settles, surely a path can be constructed to significantly change and support the basic and applied research and agricultural programs that encourage the local production of healthy and nutritious food crops—and make them less expensive than high-fructose corn syrup.

Nick Carpita

References

1. Mission: Readiness. Military leaders for Kids. (2010). Too fat to fight.
2. U.S. House of Representatives. (March 23–May 24, 1945). Committee on Agriculture. Hearings on H.R. 2673, H.R. 3143 (H.R. 3370 Reported). Bills relating to the school lunch program. Testimony of Major General Lewis B. Hershey. 49th Cong., 1st Sess.
3. USDA Food and Nutrition Service. (2010). National school lunch program.
4. The World Food Prize. (2008). Robert Dole, George McGovern named 2008 World Food Prize laureates.
5. U.S. Department of State. (2010). 1,000 Days: Change a life, change the future.
6. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Overweight and obesity.
8. Pollan, M. (2006). The omnivore’s dilemma. New York: Penguin Books, 52.
9. National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2010). USDA crop production 2009 summary.
10. National Corn Growers Association. (2010). U.S. corn usage by segment, 2009.
11. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2010). NIH-funded studies aim to prevent, treat childhood obesity. NIH News.
12. USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. (2010). Agriculture and food research initiative: Childhood obesity prevention.
13. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2010). Childhood obesity.
14. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
15. The White House. (2010). President Obama signs Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law.
16. USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. (2010). Food, nutrition and health overview.