School lunches are lifelines for millions of kids across the country, but those meals could soon disappear. Joining us on AM Buffalo today to talk about how to protect federal child nutrition programs nationwide is American Heart Association immediate past president Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones.
Dr. Jones says, “The pandemic really underscored the vital importance of school meal programs for all of our children. Many of our kids get half or more of their calories every single day from school meals and for too many of them it’s their only consistent source of healthy nutrition.”
During the pandemic the congress passed bipartisan policies that provided school meals for all of our children. Dr. Jones says, “Unfortunately, those programs ended on September 30th so millions of our students have fallen off a nutrition cliff and we need to urge congress to get those back in place.”
Why do we need to do this for all students? Dr. Jones says there are a couple of reasons we need to do this for all kids in school. First is the best way to reduce food and nutrition insecurity for kids who aren’t getting enough calories or healthy calories. He says this isn’t just a problem for disadvantaged environments, too many kids who come from advantaged households actually don’t eat very healthy food at all, so they need healthy nutrition at school just as much as everybody else. He says it is important that kids all receive the same meals, so we protect students and avoid that stigma of kids receiving different meals if they are on a school program.
What can we do to ensure kids get healthy meals? Dr. Jones says, “We need to urge congress act now. If we do nothing, these programs are already gone so we need congress to pass long overdue legislation that will support these federally-based programs to increase access for all of our children to all these school meals but also to enhance and strengthen the nutrition standards, the science-based nutrition standards that means they will eat more fruits and vegetables and avoid those foods that have high salt or high sugar or high fat content that can really jeopardize their health.”
Dr. Jones says you can help us urge congress to act by texting LUNCH to 46839.
For more information on the American Heart Association go to heart.org.
