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They can't be serious with this ^ish
With Classroom Breakfasts, a Concern That Some Children Eat Twice
Published: April 19, 2012
It is an innovative, intuitive and increasingly common way to ensure that food reaches the mouths of hungry children from low-income families: give out free breakfast in the classroom at the start of each school day.
The results, seen at urban districts across the country, are striking. Without the stigma of a trip to the cafeteria, the number of students in Newark who eat breakfast in school has tripled. Absenteeism has fallen in Los Angeles, and officials in Chicago say children from low-income families are eating healthier meals, more often.
But New York City, a leader in public health reform, has balked at expanding the approach in its own schools, and City Hall is citing a surprising concern: that all those classroom Cheerios and cheese sticks could lead to more obesity.
Some children, it turns out, may be double-dipping.
The city?s health department hit the pause button after a study found that the Breakfast in the Classroom program, now used in 381 of the city?s 1,750 schools, was problematic because some children might be ?inadvertently taking in excess calories by eating in multiple locations? ? in other words, having a meal at home, or snacking on the way to school, then eating again in school.
But this week, the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, pushed back against those claims, joining children?s advocacy groups in demanding that New York follow other cities in making in-classroom breakfast available at many more schools with children from low-income families. They say hunger and poor nutrition are serious problems in a city where more than a quarter of residents under 18 are below the poverty line.
The breakfast battle echoes a national debate over the nutritional content of free and reduced-price school meals, a favored cause of the first lady, Michelle Obama. And the standoff leaves New York City?s policymakers in an uneasy place: trying to tackle children?s hunger while combating what has seemingly become a national epidemic of childhood obesity.
?They are both incredibly important, and so you have to constantly be in search of solutions where you can succeed in both, without disadvantaging the other,? said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. She noted that about 40 percent of New York?s elementary- and middle-school students were considered overweight or obese.
Outside Public School 180 in Harlem, one of the schools that offer breakfast in classrooms, several parents expressed surprise on Thursday that their children might be eating two morning meals. Abraham El Bey said his son, Noah, 8, usually eats breakfast at home, but Noah immediately volunteered that he ate breakfast at school, too.
?You can?t tell a kid, ?No, you can?t have it,? ? Mr. El Bey said with a shrug. ?They need the fuel. I?m in favor of a child being able to eat in school.?
But Anne Morrison, whose son, Jude, 5, attends the same school, said she had adjusted what she fed him at home, knowing he would eat again at school.
?At school, it?s usually a muffin, a cheese stick and juice,? she said, adding, ?I?m not so happy about the juice.?
New York offers breakfast at all its school cafeterias, but children generally have to show up before school starts to eat, and some are embarrassed to come forward for the free meal. When breakfast is served in the classroom, educators say, there is less stigma attached to it, and many more children accept it.
The concept of serving breakfast in the classroom, rather than in the cafeteria before the start of the school day, has gained traction in the past decade among educators and nutrition experts. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced New York City?s version of the program in 2008, as one of a series of measures intended to help poorer New Yorkers weather the impact of the then-new recession.
The Education Department assigned a staff member to coordinate the program and promote its benefits to principals around the city. The city chose the initial schools based on interest from a principal and a high percentage of students who qualified for free and reduced-price meals. Breakfasts can include yogurt, honey graham crackers and cinnamon-raisin bagels.
Since then, however, the coordinator has moved to a new position and the post has remained unfilled. There are no current plans to expand the program to additional schools.
Last year, when the City Council asked why the program had stalled, city officials cited the obesity risks uncovered by the health department study, which looked at the experience of elementary school students in 2010. More students were eating breakfast under the program, the study concluded, but about 21 percent of students were possibly eating two breakfasts.
In a letter to the city mailed this week, Ms. Quinn attacked the study?s methodology, saying it counted small items, like a slice of toast or a piece of a candy, as a wholly additional breakfast, and noted that it advocated further evaluation, not a halt to the program?s expansion. ?While the prevention of obesity and diet-related disease is extremely important, it cannot be achieved at the expense of hungry children,? Ms. Quinn wrote.
Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, described the report in blunter terms. ?It?s like you?re studying chemotherapy, and your only research question is whether it produces nausea, not whether it prevents recurrence of cancer,? said Mr. Berg, who dismissed the findings as ?cockamamie.?
Ms. Gibbs, the deputy mayor, defended the study and its methodology, saying that it had used nationally accepted research methods and that no other group had produced a comparable analysis. ?Nobody else, quite frankly, has the quality of information that we produced,? she said. She said the city was continuing to monitor the current program.
Other cities that have adopted the approach do not report major issues with obesity. To prevent double-dipping, the Newark public schools, which rolled out citywide classroom breakfasts in 2005, have a large outreach effort to ensure parents know about the free breakfasts and what will be on the menu.
J. Michael Murphy, a psychology professor at Harvard Medical School who has studied free classroom breakfasts, said that he considered obesity to be only a minor concern with such programs. But he conceded that well-meaning policymakers, trying to feed as many children as possible, could face a dilemma.
?What are you going to do?? Dr. Murphy asked. ?Have a scale and say you can?t have the free breakfast because you?re already overweight??
Re: They can't be serious with this ^ish
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Actually, in my kids' experience, when you have a school that provides free lunch, they pressure the kids into eating. At their old school, they would make them go through the breakfast line even though they said they'd eaten. I actually had to send a letter to the school to let them know I'd fed their little asses and to stop forcing graham crackers on them.
This school doesn't make them go through the line anyway, thank God.
No seriously, thank God. The stuff they feed them is fuuking ridiculous. When they were eating breakfast, I'd tell pete that he needed to choose the healthier option, since there were always two options. That kid came home more often than I can count confused and worried I'd be cranky at him because there really wasn't a healthier option.
I mean poptarts? Come on.
A couple times he was yelled at by a lunch lady because his sister wanted the poptarts or whatever bullshiit they were serving and he was threatening to rat her out to me. "Well, sometimes you should let your sister pick what she wants to eat." So I had to send another letter telling them that I wasn't letting my kid eat sugar smacks for breakfast.
I mean seriously, the kid was in the 1st or 2nd grade. You think it's a brilliant idea to shove their behinds full of sugar and send them off to class? Please. You can't do that kind of crap and then complain that they won't shut up during spelling.
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Or feed them a decent breakfast.
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They give fing pop tarts for breakfast???????? Good lord who decides these things?
Yup. Pete would come home all downtrodden and confess that he had to choose between strawberry FROSTED poptarts and graham crackers that came with an icing packet. Or pre syruped french toast. Or sugar smacks/frosted flakes. This comes with his choice of milk, chocolate milk, or vanilla milk. Or juice.
We had a couple discussions on how he should try to pick the healthier option but that he wouldn't die and I wouldn't murder him in his sleep if it was a lesser of two evils sort of thing.
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As an obese person, I can guarantee it wasn't healthy snacks that got me this way!
Give the kids a piece of fruit and some string cheese and call it a day.
now i want poptarts. thanks, HAB.
It's a public service.
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i'm not near pop-tarts.
I do get the concern that some people have though in regards to kids having 2 breakfasts - especially given that something like 40% of us end up obese. Couldn't they find another way to de-stigmatize the breakfast program without having everyone participate?
Although, if they had GOOD, nutritious food, AND physical activity in school daily, the 2 breakfasts wouldn't be an issue. Couldnt they just have fruit, boiled eggs and cheese or something for breaky?
That is the point. Make THAT change. Don't just dump the program.
This reminds me of the "carrots make me fat" MM meme.
A coworker went to a WW meeting once where a big debate ensued over the points content of strawberries, until one wise woman stood up and said, "ladies, we did not get here by eating our fruits and veggies!"
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that my kids eat 2 breakfasts most days. They're 4 and 7, and their Chicago public school provides breakfast.
DS #1 is a Hobbitt and can eat 2 breakfasts 2 hours apart (7 and 9). He tends not to be a early morning eater, so breakfast #1 is small. Kid is skinny as a rail and wears slim pants.
DS#2 is a nibbler, so I'm guessing he doesn't eat much at school. I know he doesn't eat much at lunch--too much going on and he's too excited. He's my chunkster, but eats less than his brother.
Our school doesn't serve Pop Tarts or sugared cereal. They have a hot option (eggs, oatmeal) and a cold option (Cheerios and fruit). I'm pretty sure the kids aren't forced to take it. I believe that about 2/3 of the kids quialify for free or reduced price hot lunch.
My kids, 3 and 5, also eat two breakfasts. They have oatmeal or cereal when they first get up and then a protein loaded breakfast (some combination of eggs, sausage, fruit, toast, etc.) about 2 hours later. My son is very active and has always needed to eat every 2 - 3 hours. One of my big worries about him starting kindergarten in September is that he won't get that second breakfast anymore.
That said, I do not think something like that should be forced on kids. My daughter could easily drop one of those breakfasts without a problem. I would also not be happy about pop tarts or the like as a breakfast option.
We used to have breakfast in the classroom, but the schedule changed this year and now breakfast is in the cafeteria.
However, it is still free for everyone and to strike a balance between stigma and forcing food we force all students to sit in the cafeteria for 10 minutes after their bus comes and they can eat or not eat. We still had a few parents complain about the forced socialized sitting and sent note to have kids go right outside. Fine.
Sadly schools that force kids to go through the line and take food are doing it for the money. Most times the funding for free breakfast for everyone is contingent on participation. If the numbers of students eating (or taking food and throwing it away) drops too low then the funding dries up.
Our breakfast is grain (usually cereal or bagel), fruit (juice or whole), and milk (only plain for breakfast, choices for lunch). There is cream cheese for the bagels, sometimes cheese sticks or yogurt.
The breakfast also includes a snack to be saved for snack time, but it's not strictly enforced saving.
We also this year got a fruit and veggie grant that allows for free whole fruit in the office for anyone to take, classes take a count of who wants an apple at snack or you can drop in and take one. Once a week there is a special whole fruit or veggie served as a class snack with an informational sheet about the produce for the teacher to share with the class. This is usually a more exotic fruit or veggie, where as the office fruit is apple, orange, pear, or banana.
This will be my kid in a few years.
They need to worry less about how many times a kid eats and more about how healthy the food is.
My daycare serves CRAP for breakfast. Absolute junk. The healthiest the kids get are Fruit Loops and canned fruit. And they are part of the school lunch program.
Dude, tons of adults eat 2 breakfasts - even if one of them is more like a mid-morning snack. Why should we expect growing children to eat once at the buttcrack of dawn and then have to wait until lunchtime to eat anything else? I'm 30 and I'd cry if I had to do that.
Like the pp said, make the school breakfast consist of fruit, hard-boiled eggs, and string cheese. If schools want to offer a grain option, oatmeal or whole-wheat English muffins or toast could work too. No need for IHOP-sized portions here.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DJust to be clear, from reading the article, it appears they aren't trying to avoid serving breakfast at all but don't want to implement a program that would serve breakfast in the classroom.
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Provided its a healthy breakfast, I support that 100%. Given that the area they are talking about has a very high poverty rate.
If it's an area with a high poverty rate, I don't buy the stigma argument.
Also, the way most schools have it set up, you don't actually know who has paid for breakfast and who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. Stepping forward to eat breakfast just means you . . . you know, were hungry and wanted to get your grub on. It's not as if the breakfast is limited to poor kids.
The buses all take the kids early enough for breakfast so it's not as if showing up early automatically tags you as a low income kid. In fact, I'd argue that just living in a certain area means everyone knows you're low income and in fact, not being low income would make you the outlier.
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My kid eats 2 breakfasts each day.
I feed her milk and a banana at 6:45 and they get snack/breakfast at 8:30ish. She then eats lunch 4 hours later.
That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I'm not even in school and I still eat two breakfasts. That's the way people should eat, instead of one big meal, have a couple of smaller meals.
This is such a STUPID article I don't even know where to start hence my initial for the love of all that is holy remark. Hey is that offensive?
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