Congress Blocks New Rules on School Lunches

The legislative push to enable school cafeterias to keep serving pizza and french fries won’t save nearly as much money as some lawmakers have suggested — if any, according to the Agriculture Department.


This week, a group of House and Senate lawmakers crafted an agriculture spending bill that barred the USDA from adopting the Obama administration’s proposal to limit the amount of tomato paste and starchy vegetables in federally funded school meals.


That proposal’s price tag — including the financial burden it would impose on strapped school districts — ranked as one of the top reasons for derailing it.


But on Wednesday, USDA officials said that scrapping the plan to limit tomato paste and starchy vegetables such as potatoes would not reap huge cost savings, and certainly not $7 billion as suggested by the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee.


The USDA’s plan to cut back on tomato paste and potatoes is part of a larger proposal to make school meals more nutritious. The USDA has estimated that revamping the entire school meals program would cost $6.8 billion over the next five years, in part because it would involve doubling the amount of fruits and vegetables served.


But barring the USDA from cutting back on tomato paste and starchy vegetables “will have little to no effect on the cost of the new standards” for school meals, said Aaron Lavallee, a USDA spokesman.


The USDA had proposed a one-cup-per-week limit on the amount of white potatoes and other starchy vegetables served to schoolchildren. The proposal also would have nixed the favorable treatment of tomato paste. Currently, one-eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as a half-cup of vegetables and thus counts as one vegetable serving. In effect, that enables food makers to market pizzas as vegetables.


The USDA wanted to bring tomato paste in line with the standards granted to fruit pastes and purees, such as applesauce.


But late Monday, lawmakers drafting a House and Senate compromise for the agriculture spending bill blocked the department from using money to carry out any of the proposed rules.


In a statement, the Agriculture Department expressed its disappointment with the decision.


“While it is unfortunate that some in Congress chose to bow to special interests, U.S.D.A. remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals that improve the health of our children,” the department said in the statement.


Food companies including ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and makers of frozen pizza like Schwan argued that the proposed rules would raise the cost of meals and require food that many children would throw away.


The companies called the Congressional response reasonable, adding that the Agriculture Department went too far in trying to improve nutrition in school lunches.


“This is an important step for the school districts, parents and taxpayers who would shoulder the burden of U.S.D.A.’s proposed $6.8 billion school meal regulation that will not increase the delivery of key nutrients,” said John Keeling, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Potato Council.


The Agriculture Department had estimated that the proposal would have cost about $6.8 billion over the next five years, adding about 14 cents a meal to the cost of a school lunch.


Corey Henry, a spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute, said the proposed rules simply did not make sense, especially when it came to pizza.


The industry backs the current rules which say that about a quarter-cup of tomato paste on a slice of pizza can count as a vegetable serving. The Agriculture Department proposal would have required that schools serve more tomato paste per piece of pizza to get a vegetable credit, an idea the industry thought would make pizza unappetizing.


The department said the change would have simply brought tomato paste in line with the way other fruit pastes and purees were credited in school meals.


Nutrition experts called the action by Congress a setback for improving the nutritional standards in school lunches and addressing childhood obesity.


“It’s a shame that Congress seems more interested in protecting industry than protecting children’s health,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit research group. “At a time when child nutrition and childhood obesity are national health concerns, Congress should be supporting U.S.D.A. and school efforts to serve healthier school meals, not undermining them.