My Letter to Our Child Nutritional Services Director re: Cheerios Breakfast Pilot

I just sent this thank- you note to SBISD's Child Nutritional Services Director for giving Sherwood Elementary the opportunity to pilot out a low-sugar only breakfast cereal menu for a week. Of course because it's written by me, who can never follow just one agenda at a time, it turned into a vision statement of what I hope to accomplish with the newly formed D-SHAC School Food Reform Sub-Committee and an attempt to mitigate any damage to a productive partnership I caused in past meetings by being demanding and unappreciative.

Thanks for approving and implementing the Cheerios breakfast pilot at Sherwood. I know you took a risk to overall participation to see if a few kids could adopt better eating habits. I realize the obstacles to continued school food improvements are many and I’m glad SBISD is committed to knocking them down one at a time.

I know kids don’t want lower sugar cereal for breakfast or lower sugar beverages at lunch, or eggs for breakfast. For them to have a chance at not being one in 3 overweight young adults, they need those changes. My concern isn’t that students can’t find wholesome options on the SBISD menu. It’s that in the presence of so many less-wholesome choices, many of them never choose the foods that won’t eventually harm their health. If I offered my kids a choice in bed-time every night, they would pick the later one most of the time. Because I know better and because their well-being is my concern, I don’t offer a potentially harmful choice on a regular basis. No one episode of staying up late will impact their performance at school, mood or health. But accumulated on a regular basis staying up late would eventually cause many problems.

Some kids do choose a sausage/bread combo for breakfast (skip fruit) and a hot bread and meat sandwich for lunch (skip fruit and veg) and a chocolate milk. Those choices once or twice a week, may not push a kid’s health into danger, but choosing it 5 days a week, week after week, year after year will. It is possible for kids to become overweight (later obese) and suffer other health issues with choices on the current menu. It’s hard to live with handing a young kid who depends on adults to stay safe and healthy that kind of health prospect.

According to the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 34% of Houston’s high schoolers are overweight or obese (2007 data).

I hope that through D-SHACs school food reform sub-committee CNS has a direction to point parent advocates so we can more effectively partner and support with CNS for future changes. I’m sure there are many changes your department would like to make but can’t due to budget, labor and other constraints. I would like to think there is a way to compel the school board to provide additional funds to CNS to implement some of these changes. Other large districts across the country have been successful in gaining funds from other sources outside of reimbursement and paid lunch revenues. What is SBISD’s path to get there?

I may be naïve in this thinking, but I believe the students in SBISD deserve all the effort our community can muster to help them avoid the life long health issues associated with eating a diet too heavily based on processed food. I realize I’m impatient with the little wins, and narrow scope of new initiatives. While I know it will take years to improve the current school food program and the palate of students, that may mean a whole generation of kids (or 2 or 3) is still susceptible to preventable damaging health issues. The trade-off of poor health for a generation of kids who depend on the school food program for their nourishment is a high price to pay for slow yet steady progress.

Again, thank you for your support of SBISD students’ health through food. - Jenna Pepper