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Who really needs schooling?By Trent Loos I have actually read the entire Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs and there seems to be more of the same—a complete disconnect between the growing problem of overweight or obese Americans and truly healthy living. In case you have not seen the results, here is the summary from their work. This rule requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals; reduce the levels of sodium, saturated fat and trans fat in meals; and meet the nutrition needs of school children within their calorie requirements. These improvements to the school meal programs, largely based on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, are expected to enhance the diet and health of school children, and help mitigate the childhood obesity trend. So the USDA is supporting the changes because "these are first changes to the school lunch program in 15 years." Really? Have the nutritional requirements of our nation's youth changed in the past 15 years? The past 50 or even 100 years? Absolutely not but what has changed is the number of calories they burn. I have a great problem with trying to match the reduced calorie intake of our nation for kids of all ages in order to try to match the sedentary lifestyle we have adopted in the past couple of generations. Sadly, during the very same week that the USDA announces this "new and improved' diet for our nation's schools, another report came out: People with the lowest levels of vitamin D were more likely to report symptoms of depression, compared to people with higher blood levels of vitamin D. This relationship was strongest among people with a history of depression. In recent years, vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a host of conditions, including osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Improving calcium and vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduces all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women. As a reminder, I know that everybody wants to blame the lack of sunshine as the cause of Vitamin D deficiency but please know that cholesterol is a precursor to Vitamin D. It is currently reported that over half of all Americans are Vitamin D deficient. We need cholesterol in our bodies for many functions including the production of Vitamin D and many other hormones. It is estimated that between 12 percent and 18 percent of teenagers suffered from depression in 2011, according to the National Institute on Mental Health. This week also saw the results of another study that was completely omitted from consideration in the new USDA dietary alterations. The study consisted of over 900 men and women of ages 23 to 98 who were given a standardized battery of tests that analyze brain performance in areas that included cognition, visual and spatial memory, psychomotor performance, attention and concentration and verbal ability. What the researchers found was a significant trend in cognition scores was observed across a wide range of dairy food intake groups for all eight cognitive measures tested. The highest scores for all eight cognitive outcomes were observed for the highest dairy product consumers. True enough and while the USDA guidelines do not recommend less consumption of dairy products, you and I know both know that the less fat or flavoring we have in the milk, the lower the consumption will be. Another important point that is completely left out of the discussion, not only just about school meals but our medical advice in general today, is the fact that the high-fat, high-protein meals early in the day lead to more satiety and fewer calories consumed throughout the day. Healthy living is not acquired by simply reducing your caloric intake. It is about changing all facets of our lifestyle. The science clearly shows that for proper health, both physical and mental, we must consume a reasonable amount of fat and get adequate exercise on a regular basis. Could it be that we have reduced our fat consumption as a nation to a level so low that few of us actually have the cognitive ability to figure out how essential fat is to our brain function? Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or email Trent at trent@loostales.com.
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