Students looking at their cafeteria offerings find a bounty of chicken, beef and pork for lunch.
Seafood is scarce.
A federal agency says that should change.
The Government Accountability Office is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase fish in school lunches. USDA agreed with the recommendation, saying by email that the Biden administration is “committed to ensuring nutrition security for all kids” and the department encourages school officials “to offer seafood to students as a healthy protein option recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
Of all animal proteins purchased from 2014 through 2019 for the National School Lunch Program by Ag, as the department is often called, seafood made up less than 2 percent, according to a GAO report. That equals 3.4 ounces of seafood a year for each student in the program, the equivalent of about three fish sticks or a can of tuna.
This pales in comparison with the 43 chicken drumsticks, 21 beef patties, 12 slices of ham, and four eggs produced from the 14 pounds of those commodities USDA buys annually for each student in the lunch program. Designed to help low-income families, it serves about 23 million students or 41 percent of school-aged children.
GAO, a congressional watchdog that examines government programs and agencies, wants the department to help schools put more seafood on students’ lunch plates.
That’s good news to Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who along with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), requested the GAO report. Seafood “is a great source of nutrition for children,” Reed said in a telephone interview.
Good nutrition is important — making money is too.
Fishing is an important part of seaside economies in Rhode Island, Oregon and elsewhere. More seafood in school lunches “is not only healthy,” Reed added, but also will “help the local economies, particularly fishing economies, throughout the country.”
A December 2020 letter to GAO requesting the report from the two ocean-state senators focused on the economic importance, saying “the seafood industry is critical.” They cited a “need for expanded relief for the industry” because of the coronavirus pandemic. “This market evaporated, and the supply chain for fishermen and seafood processors was decimated,” they wrote. “USDA has an important role to play in supporting the seafood industry, including fishermen and processors.”
GAO did the study Reed and Merkley requested, but it shifted the focus to nutrition. Noting federal dietary guidelines, GAO said, “School-age children should consume between 4 and 10 ounces of seafood per week.”
A new letter from the senators to the USDA, urging implementation of GAO’s recommendations, expands on that point. “During the school year, participating students receive nearly two-thirds of their daily calories from school meals,” they wrote Tuesday. “The reliance on school meals mandates that the NSLP provide healthy, well balanced meals to ensure students receive the nutrients they need for a healthy diet. However, students participating in the NSLP may be missing out on the benefits of a balanced diet that includes nutritious and high-protein seafood.”
The USDA spent more than $14 billion on the federal lunch program in 2019. About $1.3 billion was direct spending on food, including seafood, that school officials can order from a department catalogue, according to GAO. Cash reimbursements to local school authorities equaled $12.9 billion. USDA-directly-purchased food was between 15 and 20 percent of the items served at school lunches.
Joe Urban, the director of food and nutrition services for the Greenville County Schools in South Carolina, welcomed the GAO report.
“I wholeheartedly support USDA promoting more seafood in school lunches,” he said in an email. “It is critical to our nation’s youth that they are provided high quality nutrition in schools, especially since about 1/2 to 2/3 of the calories they consume come from school meals. High quality, sustainably sourced seafood provides many health benefits for our children, it is a very lean protein and should be offered alongside other high quality proteins like poultry, beef, and pork.”
Urban also is the K-12 ambassador for the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, which promotes food from the sea.
Trade associations for the beef and poultry industries had no comment on the GAO report.
Jonathan Butcher, an education fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, doesn’t object to seafood, but he said that is not where USDA should focus its attention on a program with other problems, including improper payments. The food program lost $492 million in overpayments in fiscal year 2021, according to paymentaccuracy.gov, a federal website. That’s a huge drop from the nearly $1.9 billion lost in 2017.
“There’s always a limited amount of attention and resources that they can put into any program,” Butcher said.
But Linda Cornish, founder and president of the Seafood Nutrition Partnership, said it is the diet of school-age children that needs attention now.
“We as a nation should be shocked and alarmed by the huge disparity between our nation’s nutrition guidelines and policies and how it is actually implemented in our national school nutrition programs,” she said by email. “What we eat matters for our health and the health of our students. All school foodservice decision makers and providers should read this report carefully and with urgency.”