$500 million against obesity

Have you heard reports about how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has pledged $500 million to combat childhood obesity? Here is a link to a PBS report. With that amount of $$$, one would think PBH could or should get a slice of that to promote f/v consumption. With the Wood Johnson's foundation's focus on childhood obesity, it seems a given that its leaders would be advocates for the fruit and vegetable snack program and an alignment of school meals with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines.

From the story:

RAY SUAREZ: For more on how that money will be spent and the health problems faced by overweight children, I'm joined by the foundation's president and CEO, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey in Princeton, New Jersey.
For the record, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funds the NewsHour's Health Unit.
Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey, of all the things that face Americans and their health, why put such a large pot of money into research on this particular malady?
DR. RISA LAVIZZO-MOUREY, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Well, Ray, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the largest private foundation that is focused solely on helping Americans live healthier lives and get the health care they need. And childhood obesity is, frankly, the most urgent health problem facing our kids today.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, in what way? I mean, is this something that we now know, that fat kids become fat adults, for instance, and that's where the costs and the suffering comes?
DR. RISA LAVIZZO-MOUREY: It's a very prevalent problem: 25 million kids are overweight or obese. The rates are rising; they've quadrupled over the last four decades. And we know that the kids who have problems with being overweight or obese are much more likely to have serious medical problems.
RAY SUAREZ: Half a billion dollars over five years is an enormous amount of money. Spin out a time line for me. Help me understand how money granted by the foundation percolates through the system and ends up, at some point in the future, either with a child who never becomes obese in the first place or one who was overweight and is now thinner.
DR. RISA LAVIZZO-MOUREY: Well, we're making a long-term commitment. This is a large amount of money, but a private foundation cannot make this kind of a change, cannot reverse an epidemic of this magnitude by itself. It's going to take action at all levels: government policies, school systems getting involved, families getting involved, and communities becoming healthier places.
So let me give you a couple of examples of how that can work. What we would like to do is fund the evidence, the research that will tell policymakers what kinds of policies might make schools and communities healthier places.
So, for example, years ago, most people walked to school. Now, 90 percent of kids are driven to school, even if they live within a mile of their school. There's an idea out there called the walking school bus, where literally you have an adult who gathers kids, goes door to door, gets the kids, and walks them to school.
Well, those kinds of ideas, if they can have an impact on kids and on the long-term obesity epidemic, we want to disseminate those. But in order for those ideas to really work, there have been to be sidewalks, there have to be safe routes to schools, and we have to have traffic lights near the schools. Those are the kind of policy changes that the Institute of Medicine has recommended to be coupled with these great ideas at the community level.
So what we see our funding as doing over the next five years is funding those kinds of good ideas, seeing whether they're going to work, and then putting the policy changes that are needed to enable them and enable the communities to make those changes in place.
If you think about the example that I gave before, number of people who walk to school two generations ago or 40 years ago as compared to now, think about the kinds of foods that were being served in schools or served at home two generations ago as compared to now. We've seen the portion sizes increasing; we've seen more people eating in restaurants and the families eating in restaurants.
What that means is that kids aren't really able to create an environment and make choices that are default healthy choices. We have to create an environment that allows them to do that.

TK: I see more here about physical fitness than a focus on dietary changes. Hopefully that does not portend a lack of commitment by the foundation to change dietary patterns to reflect more f/v consumption. The Association Finder in Industry Links at right side of the blog reveals that this foundation has assets of a whopping $9.3 billion in 2005. Many of the foundation grants relate to health care and substance abuse prevention. I found only one project funded that contained the keyword of "fruit." The foundation gave $65,000 to a pilot program to increase fruit and vegetable choices through classroom nutrition education and salad bars in a low-income school in Chicago.

Changing up school meals

The Washington Post's Sally Squires has a report this morning about changes in the USDA's guidelines for school meal programs, and the extra step Sen. Tom Harkin wants to take to regulate food and beverages outside the cafeteria. The story notes that the USDA's farm bill proposal will require schools to bring their cafeteria menus into compliance with the 2005 U.S. dietary guidelines.

From the story:

The USDA is proposing to spend $6 million to provide guidance and technical assistance to school food professionals to bring cafeteria meals in line with the latest guidelines.
"This is the first time that the USDA -- and Congress -- have addressed the nutrition standards for school meals in a while," said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. "They should have done this the day that the 2005 Dietary Guidelines were issued because they knew what they were going to say . . . but they move at such a glacial pace that here it is a year and a half later, and the proposed regulations have not even come out."
Each year, the USDA provides 9 million breakfasts and 30 million lunches to students. Nearly 60 percent are served free or at a reduced price.
The 2005 update of the dietary guidelines made some of the biggest changes in recent years in urging greater consumption of whole grains, fruit, vegetables and nonfat dairy products, such as skim milk. Congress requires the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services to review the guidelines every five years.
Included in the farm bill are several large initiatives to increase schoolchildren's consumption of fruits and vegetables.
Numerous studies have shown that eating more fruit and vegetables, whether fresh, frozen, dried or canned, is linked to lower body weight, stronger bones, and lower risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Yet national surveys show that only one in five Americans consumes the two cups of fruit recommended daily. Children under age 18 consume half or less of the recommended amounts.
The USDA proposes to spend $500 million in new, mandatory funding over the next 10 years for the purchase of additional fresh fruit and vegetables in school lunch and breakfast programs. The department also wants to shift $2.75 billion over the next 10 years to increase purchases of fruit and vegetables through its commodity programs -- a move that some said has little chance of success given the strong political forces likely to oppose such a change.
"Is Congress and the USDA going to have the political will to shift commodity purchases away from foods that children should eat less of, like meat, to fruit and vegetables, which children should eat more of?" asked Wootan. "The answer is that it will be very difficult."
Another nutrition initiative would expand nationwide a pilot program to provide fruit and vegetable snacks to schoolchildren. Created by legislation introduced by Harkin in 2002, the program now provides such snacks for free to students in 17 states and on three Indian reservations. It is supported by the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity, a coalition of more than 300 organizations .

TK: The USDA has done quite a bit to advance the cause of good nutrition with its farm bill proposals, but the job isn't done. Summoning the political will in Congress and in the agency to reshape federal commodity purchases toward fruits and vegetables should be prompted by the fact children under 18 consume less than half of recommended f/v servings; it won't be that easy, though.