The Council is currently working on influencing the following legislative issues and needs your voice in helping to advocate for them.
 

S. 990: sponsored by Sen. Stabenow (D-MI) to expand reimbursement for School Meals after school hours. This bill provides funding for meals to at-risk children who are in programs that provide care after school hours, as well as weekends or holidays during the regular school year, and to children in child care centers. Currently the after-school Supper Program is available in only 11 states. There are a growing number of children in Montana schools who receive after-school care because parents are working long and late hours. These children may go several hours without eating and need a healthy supper while at the center. Even when they go home, there is often not enough food for them to eat. S.990 would provide funding to feed the children in these programs, while improving their nutrition and health.
 

The bill has now been referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

 

S. 934: sponsored by Sen. Harkin (D-IA), to improve the nutrition and health of school children and to promote uniform nutrition standards in schools. Currently the School Lunch and Breakfast programs have to follow USDA nutrition standards in their menu planning, however, schools can sell “foods of minimal nutritional value” in vending machines. S. 934 would require the Secretary to “establish science-based nutrition standards for foods served in schools”, anywhere on the school campus, using “recommendations made by authoritative scientific organizations”, in order to remove the negative contributions of nutrients and ingredients from too many calories, poor quality fats, sodium, added sugars and other ingredients deemed harmful. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are now under review and the new standards in the Guidelines will also impact the nutrition standards for schools.

 

While food and beverages sold outside of the lunch room are a source of revenue to schools, there is much data to show that there is no drop in revenue when such items are replaced with healthy choices. Beginning this fall, the Great Falls School District has taken the landmark step to improving the presence of healthy foods by implementing campus-wide nutrition standards for all foods sold during the school day. We applaud them for this effort, but such is not the case in most of Montana, or other schools in the country. S. 934 would ensure that school campuses throughout Montana make healthy food choices while still maintaining “local control” of what is sold to their students. It would help to reinforce a consistent nutrition message throughout, including the lunch room and in health education classes.

 

Evidence between consumption of poor quality snacks and the rate of obesity, overweight, type 2 diabetes and heart disease in children is no longer in question. A recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation[1] showed that in Montana between 25 and 30% of children ages 10 – 17 are overweight or obese. A survey conducted by the Missoula City-County Health Department and the MSU College of Nursing[2]  found that 28% of third graders surveyed in Missoula were overweight or obese.

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