Many studies show that households who are food insecure have lower performing students, and less healthy kids. Researchers have learned that behavioral, emotional and academic problems are more prevalent in hungry children.
Now, when kids attend school in Massachusetts, they're offered breakfast and lunch, paid for by the state, which could take some pressure off low-income families facing food insecurity.
For our Hunger Awareness Week coverage, we visited JFK Middle School in Northampton to speak with the nutrition director for the district, Mistelle Hannah.
Hannah shares an office space adjacent to the area where the food is prepared. While waiting for the next middle school lunch period, she talked about a common misconception: how school lunches are funded.
Mistelle Hannah, Northampton Public Schools: We are not funded through school budgets. We are funded solely through reimbursement. And so, the more participation we have, the more money comes into our program, which then goes directly into the quality of food that we're purchasing as well as to increasing labor.
Carrie Healy: So, to increase the participation rate in the school lunch program in Northampton, she says they work hard to serve fresh, often local foods.
I definitely am making sure that those are the best decisions and choices for them, based on their age level and the calories, down to the colors of the fruits and vegetables that we're serving.
Making sure there's a good variety and a good amount of exposure to different foods, which ties right into our taste tests.
We also have a fresh fruits and vegetable program at two of our elementary schools. We also have a weekend nutrition program at one of our elementary schools — and it's about to launch at a second one — which offers two breakfasts, two lunches and two snacks to students that sign up.
On the weekends?
On the weekends. So, yes, they go home on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning — depending on their grade level — with either a bag of food items ... or a gift card to a local grocery store.
Food insecurity is when people don't have enough food to eat or don't know where their next meal will come from. Hampshire County is the least food insecure county in western Massachusetts, with 10% of children here in Hampshire County are food insecure.
I don't like the word "least," because it's not obsolete. They're there. And I think when you use those sorts of words, there's oversight and people not being taken care of appropriately when it comes to food insecurity.
And food insecurity looks different for all of us. And so, that's kind of a sad way to say that it's the "least food insecure." One would hope that nobody is, but that's not necessarily the case here.
The chopping noises that were in the background have stopped. Is that in anticipation for serving another round of lunches?
They are — yes. They're setting up the meal line right now in anticipation of getting the students served. So each grade in middle school comes through at a separate time.
I'll follow you. So what should be on trays for meal that's reimbursable from the government?
So, in general, [for] a reimbursable meal, we must offer the students a fluid milk — so that has to be an 8-ounce low-fat milk or a fat-free flavored milk. We have to offer a cup of vegetables, a cup of fruit, a two-ounce meat or meat equivalent, and two-ounce grain. And that's at this age level.
The student, in order to hit that button at that register, must have three of those components, and one must be a fruit or vegetable.
So they have the option to take more fruits and vegetables as they go down the line, because they have the potato and the meat and the stuffing and the roll.
We stood and watched the students eat school lunch. As the lunch period closed, Hannah led me over to a large trash basket — and she peered inside.
Our custodians are also really lovely about telling us when something's popular and when it's not, because when he takes the bag out, you can see right on top, like, OK, the squash, Caesar salads, the milks.
Well, it's mostly squash, though.
Somebody tossed a cake. I guess it wasn't a big hit for them.
I remember getting those when I went to school!
Yes, the guidelines did change with the Healthy Kids Act. And so it's very hard to make it work with the calories.
While I visited on a day with a very special menu — what they call the harvest dinner, which came complete with a square of yellow spice cake — Mistelle said that in all of her years of being a school nutrition director, she has never served cake before. And she added that students also had options of taking other fruits and vegetables in addition to, or instead of, the cake.
