Summary
The School Nutrition Program was ill conceived - it is not good in its present form.
In order to make the program work, there has to be workable solutions between the educational sector and the food itself. We need to teach kids, "what's good for them to eat," and "what's not," and allow them to make an informed decision before they head to the lunchroom. Change is good, in moderation. This was too drastic to be good. It is not good the way it is. I will fix the School Nutrition Program.

I will by appeal to T.E.A. [Texas Education Agency] to change the curriculum and add a nutritional component to the curriculum. We can help T.E.A with the curriculum change, We need to educate the kids on the basic food groups, and the food pyramid - the things we used to teach kids. We also need to coordinate the program with the physical education classes - not just go change the menu.

Program
Susan Combs, as Agriculture Commissioner, got involved in the school nutrition policy that was eventually adopted by the state. She chaired a committee to change the school lunch program. In her estimation, the Texas kids were becoming too obese and she credited a large part of that to the school lunch program. For so many Texas kids, the school meal is the one meal a day that they eat of any type of nutritional value, in her estimation.
Susan Coombs took the “cokes” and things like that out of the lunchrooms and the recess areas. She took the candy out of the vending machines, as long as the first ingredient was sugar. Now if sugar was the second, third, or fourth ingredient they were allowed to stay.
Then, in the school lunchrooms, she basically told the schools to throw away their deep fryers, we're not serving anything that is deep fried or anything like that.

Now that came as a big investment and shock to Texas school lunch and food service directors all over the state. Most of which, to this day, are still very unhappy with that. What it did more importantly was turn kids off of school lunches. I have made inquiries to local school districts and to the food service personnel. They have thrown away more edible food in the last two years, than they did the previous four or five years combined. The kids just aren't eating. The food is not appealing to them, and they are not eating.

Consequently, by the middle of the day, shortly after lunch, the kids are hungry. So how much learning are we accomplishing the time the child becomes hungry to the end of school?

Probably not much.

What is interesting, if you go watch some of these campuses, particularly your elementary and middle school campuses. Watch these kids leave school. Those that walk home usually head straight for the convenience store or the fast food place. If you watch the moms picking their kids up, they head straight for the convenience store or the fast food place. The kids are hungry.

Granted, every kid should eat a nutritious meal. However, I was under the impression, and grew up with the impression, that parenting had a lot to do with that. This is the job for the parents. In a day where government is increasingly entering our lives and dictating what you can and cannot do, I think personally that this really steps over the bounds. I, for one, have a large number of friends, that are Mexican American. One of their primary ingredients for every meal is tortillas. We know tortillas can put on the pounds if you do not eat them in moderation. It's a way of life for this culture. You cannot take that out of the equation. you can't take fried foods out of the equation because that's a part of everybody's life, healthy or not.

A long with this plan, there was no plan to tie increased physical education or exercise into the school. Or any program to work with the coaches and the food service staff and teach these kids what's healthy for them to eat and what's not. What type of exercise regime they should be in to be healthy citizens. Instead, we just went in there at the beginning of the school year and said "boom," here's a menu change.

An analogy I like to use, and many Texans can relate to this, I remember when I was a little kid and I came home from school. I put my books down and went to the cookie jar, because there were always cookies in the cookie jar. Every day I grabbed a couple of cookies and a glass of milk when I got home from school. A lot of kids do that today, every day. My kids do that. They come home and the first thing they do is get a snack, then they do their homework.

It's like taking that analogy of this kid in kindergarten or first grade who comes home every day and he sets his books down, and goes to the cookie jar, gets him a couple of cookies, pours him a little milk and that's his afternoon snack. He does that every year until he is in the 6th grade. When he comes home from school in the 6th grade, he sets his books down, he goes over to the cookie jar, and there's a padlock on the cookie jar. Nobody ever tells him why there is a padlock. His whole pattern is disrupted. His whole way of life as he has done for years is disrupted and nobody stopped to explain why. That's what this program did.
It took the traditional school menus and tossed them. I know kids who can tell you every day: Monday's pizza day, Tuesday's taco day, Wednesday's hamburger day. It's always been that way, and now it's not. They don't understand why. All they understand is they don't want to eat an apple, or fruit cocktail, or some type of boiled food product for lunch. They don't want that.

Now, I'm all for having healthy kids and increasing the longevity of life. I believe that is a parental function, in as much, as it is a school-related function. Unless you tie some type of educational component to this, other than just a menu change, it's counter-productive. It's proven in our Texas schools across the state the last two years that's its been exactly that - counter-productive.

What I would like to do is increase awareness among the kids, add that educational component, starting with kindergarten, start it with Heads Start. Teach these kids what healthy foods are. Teach them the food groups. When I was a kid we learned what the food groups were, and we learned what the different ingredients to that food pyramid were. We knew how everything interconnected to everything else concerning food. What was good for you and what wasn't. We grew up knowing that. It was out ultimate decision as to whether or not we wanted to eat that way. We need to institute a program like that in school and tie it into athletics. Tie it into P.E. Tie it into physical education. Right now so many kids don't get physical education in school. They sit in a set of bleachers for an hour for P.E. class, or some type of little activity that really doesn't burn a lot a calories. It doesn't get them physically fit unless they are in an athletic program.

More importantly, we've gotten away in school from teaching the basics of life because we're more concerned with teaching a test. And that test includes nothing about nutrition. Nothing about what's going to make that person a healthier, more productive individual.
The menu change doesn't cut it. It was a poor attempt, poor attempt, to bring recognition to a perpetual public official that needed name ID more than she needed to care about the needs of Texas.

The School Nutrition Program was ill conceived. It's a program that is not good in its present form.

In order to make the program work, there has to be workable solutions between the educational sector and the food itself. We need to teach kids, "what's good for them to eat," and "what's not," and allow them to make an informed decision before they head to the lunchroom. Change is good, in moderation. This was too drastic to be good. It's not good the way it is. It needs to be fixed.

I would fix the School Nutrition Program by appealing to T.E.A. [Texas Education Agency] to change the curriculum and add a nutritional component to the curriculum, which we could help do, to educate kids on the basic food groups, and the food pyramid - the things we used to teach kids. Coordinate this with the physical education classes - not just go change the menu.