Most schools use applications for the school breakfast and lunch programs to determine students’ income levels for the federal “Title I” program for disadvantaged students, our new report explains, but schools offering community eligibility — a new option that allows...
off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
No, Dietary Guidelines Don’t Support Adding White Potatoes to WIC
May 30, 2014
We’ve highlighted one harmful provision (school meals) in the 2015 agriculture spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee approved yesterday. Here’s another: it overrides the science-based process for deciding which foods the WIC program provides by requiring...
House Bill Would Gut New School Meal Standards, Undermining Children’s Health
May 28, 2014
The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on the fiscal year 2015 agriculture spending bill, which would establish sweeping waivers from new nutrition standards for school meals. While waiver proponents...
How Community Eligibility Is Helping West Virginia Reduce Hunger
May 27, 2014
Eligible schools across the country have until June 30 to adopt “community eligibility” for the 2014-2015 school year, enabling them to serve school meals to all students at no charge. Community eligibility became available in West Virginia a couple of years ago, and State Board of Education President Gayle Manchin recently...
White Potatoes, WIC, and Farmers’ Markets: Just the Facts
May 15, 2014
As potato industry lobbyists push Congress to override a well-established, science-based rule by dictating that WIC offer white potatoes, they claim that WIC participants can purchase white potatoes at farmers’ markets but not grocery stores. This claim is extremely misleading.
The vouchers for fruit and vegetables that WIC participants receive each month cannot be used to purchase...
Community Eligibility: A Path to Eliminating Hunger in Over 25,000 Schools
May 14, 2014
Community eligibility, a provision of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, will allow more than 25,000 schools in high-poverty neighborhoods to offer nutritious meals to all students at no charge next year, as we explain in a new paper.
School districts can offer community eligibility district-wide...
Voices Mount to Let Science Decide the WIC Potato Issue
May 13, 2014
We’ve explained why nutrition scientists, not lobbyists, should decide whether WIC should add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that it provides — and numerous editorial boards and columnists agree. Here are a few examples, the first two from major potato-growing states,...
Nutrition Experts, Not Lobbyists, Should Decide WIC Potato Issue
May 13, 2014
Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mark Udall (D-CO) essentially argued in yesterday’s USA Today that Congress should, for the first time, override the science-based process for deciding which foods the WIC program provides by requiring WIC to add white potatoes. That...
Rampell’s Right: “You Say Potato, I Say Precedent”
May 9, 2014
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell rightly decries the industry lobbying campaign to add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that the WIC program provides.
As we’ve...
Politics Wins a Round, but the WIC Potato Fight Isn’t Over
February 10, 2014
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack should reject Congress’s recent call to add white potatoes to the limited list of foods that the WIC program provides. The report accompanying the omnibus spending bill that Congress approved last month instructs the Agriculture Department (USDA) to include all kinds...