Guest columnist/opinion:
Perspective: Nutrition Know-how

Rachel Kaldor is executive director of the Dairy Institute of California. She contributes this column exclusively for Cheese Market News®.

Playing for keeps:
The school nutrition challenge

The look of our nation’s school foodservice sector is changing, and fast. And that should get the attention of dairy farmers and processors. For the last several years the media has focused, over and over again, on the American obesity dilemma. It points to the bounty of food offerings and the bad food choices we make for ourselves and our children. There seems to be endless film footage of an overweight America needing to refocus its attention toward health and wellness and away from fast-food and oversized portions.

The answers to the dilemma appear to be multi-pronged: give customers more healthful choices at the grocery store and restaurant (in truth, we always had these choices, but now we have shelf-talkers to know them when we see them) and limit choices at school, so non-nutritious foods (read: calories, fat and sugar) are no longer available while kids are on campus.

For the dairy industry, the challenge is clear: How do we stay front and center in the customer arenas we have called home for decades? How do we communicate the healthfulness and nutritional value of our products to our youngest customers? How do we optimize our opportunity to win and keep those customers for life?

School milk is a bedrock business of many fluid processors. Cheese has been a major ingredient in lunch line entrees for generations. Ice cream cups have a home on the school lunch menu. And yogurt is a school breakfast and lunch mainstay. But all that is changing. New limits on calories, fat, saturated fat and sugar are being put into place in school district foodservice operations across the United States, and if dairy foods are to remain in schools, they must comply with those limits.

What began as the “food police” assault on the school lunch line and its school money-maker companion, the competitive food menu, is now the law in California. But California is not alone. Other states have made similar changes in school nutrition requirements. And going national, the new Alliance for a Healthier Generation school beverage guidelines were unveiled in May 2006.

The guidelines were the result of collaboration between the soft drink industry and the American Heart Association under the auspices of the William J. Clinton Foundation. The beverage guidelines apply in elementary through high school. Along with limits on other beverages, the guidelines limit milk offerings to 8 ounces/150 calories in elementary schools. Larger portion sizes, with the same proportion of quantity to calories, apply in middle and high schools. Expanding these requirements beyond beverages, the group soon will issue its guidelines on calorie, fat and sugar limits for competitive foods offered at all school levels.

In the midst of these changes, school foodservice directors are looking for ways to meet their menu and budgetary challenges. Their challenges may not be the same as those we face, but success for them can mean success for us. Processors and distributors will need to learn the facts about these guidelines or whatever the state/school district requirements apply to their customers. Some products we supply may require reformulation and/or repackaging. But meeting the challenge of providing products that satisfy the schools and the students will pay dividends far beyond the school cafeteria.
Just to be clear, this isn’t about whether to package school milk in paper cartons or plastic single-serve. That is the easy stuff. Those decisions will be driven by the budgetary limits of school foodservice directors.

This is about the dairy industry stepping up to the plate and meeting the school nutrition challenge head on. Meeting that challenge will bring new opportunities to provide a wide array of nutritious and satisfying dairy products, in school breakfast and lunch lines and competitive food sales. Meeting that challenge will mean winning and keeping customers for life.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.