Stealing Candy From Babies in California Schools

"They are literally taking food out of the mouths of kids," Richard Zeiger, chief deputy superintendent of public instruction. (From the Los Angeles Times)

Image from Flickr, by wenews

 Eight or more California school districts have misused millions of dollars in federal funding earmarked for schools’ free and reduced lunch programs, including Los Angeles Unified School District, according to a state Senate watchdog group. State officials believe the fraudulent use of the funds may be far more widespread, according to the Los Angeles Times. Other implicated school districts include Oxnard, San Diego, Santa Ana, San Francisco and Compton.

The districts have been ordered to repay more than $170 million by the California Department of Education. LAUSD must also pay back $158 million in unrelated misappropriated funds from the six years prior to 2012. In most cases, the misused funds were diverted from food to pay for personnel, utilities and other expenses, even though federal rules require the money to be used only for food services. According to the Times, many schools tried to cut costs by shortening lunch periods, slashing cafeteria staff and serving more processed foods—all of which hindered access and availability of the program for low income students.

Some of the misappropriations were reported by whistle blowers. The reason officials believe the problem may be more widespread is that there are only 60 state examiners who must monitor nearly 3,000 districts. They still haven’t completed all the inspections required since the 2001 rules went into effect and, when they do, they often just skim over the records.

Schools and Communities Lose By Outsourcing Lunch Services

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Public schools get about $1 billion worth of free surplus fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese from the USDA each year which, instead of preparing into healthy fresh meals, they outsource to large corporate food processors like Aramark and Sodexo. The “logic” of this system is that it is supposed to save schools money on labor costs and economies of scale. In reality, schools do not save money in this scam, according to Lucy Komisar, when the fees charged by the food processors and supply costs are factored in.

Komisar notes that roughly one-fourth of the school nutrition program has been privatized and outsourced, primarily to just a few food giants, like Sodexo, Aramark, Chartwells, Tyson and Pilgrim’s. Of the $1 billion in free surplus foods given to schools each year, close to half is sent out for processing (a 50% increase since 2006) to make things like chicken nuggets, tater tots and pizza. Yet, instead of saving money, schools are paying kickbacks and other fees to these companies and getting little more than junk food in return.

Komisar points to research by Roland Zulio, from the University of Michigan, who found that the amount of money Michigan schools spent on fees and supplies for this service was roughly equal to the amount they saved on labor and food costs, yielding no net savings for the schools. If one adds in the “external” costs, like the particulate air pollution and extra carbon added to the atmosphere caused by trucking these foods long distances, or the unionized local chef jobs lost to outsourced non-union corporate assembly lines, school lunches are a serious rip-off.

In his research, Zulio specifically noted that Chartwells (though this is likely true for the other processors, as well) was able to cut costs by slashing benefits for workers, but that these savings were not passed on to schools. He also discovered a correlation between low test scores and the degree to which school lunches were privatized, speculating that perhaps the excess fat, salt and sugar were impairing student achievement. However, it is also possible that low income schools are relying more heavily on food outsourcing than affluent schools and that the low test scores are due more to students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than their school lunches.

By outsourcing their food, fresh and wholesome ingredients are transformed into foods with the “same nutritional value as junk foods,” according to a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWF). The RWJ report found that over 50% of commodity foods are sent to processors first, where fat, sugar and sodium are added before being sent back to schools. In California, the report notes, over 82% of commodity food funds are spent on meat and cheese whereas only 13% is spent on fruits and vegetables.

While the RWJ report is a little old (2008) and things may have changed slightly in California and the nation as a whole, the fact remains that the bulk of school lunches do get heavily processed and outsourced to food giants like Aramark and Sodexo, making the foods less healthy while providing schools with no economic benefit.

Let Them Eat Tomato Paste!

25 years ago Reagan declared that ketchup was a vegetable in an attempt to red wash the greasy, salty, processed foods served in school cafeterias. Today, in spite of Michelle Obama’s duplicitous attempt to nip the obesity epidemic in the bud (see here and here), we are seeing the same game replayed, with Congress approving agriculture appropriations language allowing the tomato paste on pizza to be considered a serving of vegetables under the USDA’s new school lunch guidelines.

If we really cared about our children’s health, we would do away completely with processed foods manufactured thousands of miles away and trucked across the country in a plume of carbon dioxide and particulate air pollution. We would retrain and promote the low wage factotums who presently reheat and serve these prefabricated meals into actual cooks who prepare fresh, organic, locally grown meats, cheese and produce. We would teach children to enjoy a variety of fruits and vegetables and flavors that are not dependent on high levels of salt, fat and sugar. We would bring physical education back as a daily class for kids of all ages and invest in more after school athletics and dance programs. We would ensure that all families have sufficient food to eat at home, every day of the year, and that they all have access to free or affordable health care.

In actuality, children’s health, like everything else in our society, is irrelevant except as much as it can be used to make a profit. What really matters is that processed food giants like ConAgra, Schwan Food, Nestle and Unilever continue to get access to the billions of federal tax dollars that are funneled each year into school lunch programs. Not only does this put cash directly into their pockets, but it helps shape children’s eating habits and preferences so that they will continue to purchase large quantities of their salty, sugary, fatty products as adults.

The legislation came in response to lobbying by ConAgra and Schwan Food, one of the world’s largest producers of frozen pizzas, according to the OB Rag. It also came in the wake of a Senate amendment that blocked the USDA from limiting the quantity of potatoes served in school lunches, a rule pushed by senators in the potato states of Maine and Colorado.

Pizza and potatoes are probably the two most popular foods at school. However, there is no reason why they cannot continued to be served, but why not using fresh produce and prepared from scratch, on site, with less salt, sugar and fat? Pizzas do not have to be doughy Frisbees overflowing with commodity ground beef, sausage, pepperoni and American cheese. Likewise, there are countless delicious and healthy alternatives to tater tots, like potatoes boiled and served with butter and herbs, baked, roasted, mashed, or served sliced in salad.

None of this is happening any time soon, so if kids want healthy food at school, they will have to bring it from home. If their parents cannot afford it, they can always apply for one of the low wage scab custodian jobs that will open up after Newt Gingrich gets elected.

Corporate Swill Mills Ripping Off Schools

Last July, school cafeteria giant Sodexo agreed to pay $20 million to settle charges that it had overcharged 21 school districts and the State University of New York system. Sodexo had been receiving kickbacks from their suppliers and pocketing the profits, rather than passing the discounts on to the districts that hired them. Sodexo has a long and sordid history of ripping off school districts (see here) and an equally rotten history of ripping off and abusing their employees (see here and here).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture believes that Sodexo may not be the only food giant ripping off schools. They will begin an audit in August of school lunch providers throughout the U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut was quoted in Education Week saying, "I am concerned that these practices are prevalent in many more school districts around the country, potentially resulting in the misuse of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds intended to provide schoolchildren with access to healthy school meals."

According to Education Week, the three largest providers of school food-management services are Sodexo, Aramark, and Chartwells. Sodexo works in more than 480 school districts across the country. USDA regulations require school districts to closely monitor contracts with outside food-service providers to prevent theft, something that is often not done well (or at all). In fact, the main reason why districts contract out food services to huge corporate swill mills is to save money, a benefit that is reduced proportionately to the amount of money spent on monitoring these relationships. Furthermore, district administrators generally have better [sic] things to do than to monitor how their districts’ resources are spent (like holding their teachers accountable for test scores and graduation rates).

The cafeteria suppliers are not just ripping off school districts. They have also been ripping off the feds. A 2002 audit found that five of eight companies were taking free commodity foods from the USDA that are supposed to go toward free and reduced lunch programs and charging school districts for it.

Dairy Industry Lies to Fatten Profits (and Children)

"Bubbles" by John Isaac, 2003 (photographed by Grahamc99)

A report by the Associated Press last week said that a number of professional and medical groups, including the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), had issued a “joint statement” favoring flavored milk in the schools. Their statement supposedly asserted that “the nutritional value of flavored low-fat or skim milk outweighs the harm of the added sugar.” (See OB Rag)

In reality, no such “joint statement” was ever made. The AP was scammed by dairy industry propaganda designed to keep chocolate milk in the schools. In fact, many medical groups have come out against the practice of feeding kids sugared milk drinks precisely because the added sugar contributes to obesity and tooth decay. AHA and AAP both denied signing the joint statement.

Two of the organizations cited in the AP story (the School Nutrition Association and the American Dietetic Association) have financial links to the dairy industry and have been key players in the effort to keep chocolate milk in the schools. The School Nutrition Association includes dues-paying members from the dairy lobby, including The National Dairy Council and the Milk Processors Education Program, according to the OB Rag story.

The School Nutrition Association worked with the dairy lobby to promote a biased “study” that supposedly showed that kids would not drink milk if it wasn’t flavored. This tactic is highly reminiscent of attempts by the Tobacco industry to sow doubt about the dangers of cigarettes by co-opting scientists and producing their own “scientific” studies to counter the legitimate ones linking smoking to cancer and heart disease. Petroleum and coal companies have done the same to sow doubt about climate change. (See Merchants of Doubt, numerous articles by Robert Procter, The Republican War on Science, among other sources).