Date: 2004-03-24
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me such time as I may consume. as long as I do not go on and on. Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the majority for working with us and for bringing this bill to the floor today. I want to thank the chairman. the gentleman from Ohio . and the gentleman from Delaware . the. chairman of the subcommittee. for their efforts. as well as the ranking member of the subcommittee. the gentlewoman from California . for her participation and effort in arriving at this compromise. which I think is a very good bill on child nutrition. I also want to thank the American School Food Service Association for all of their years of effort to improve the quality of this program. to expand its coverage of this program. and for continuously looking after the nutritional state of our schoolchildren. especially since we now so clearly understand the link between nutrition and school performance among children. Over 27 million schoolchildren take adyantage of the school meals program every day. More than 2 million children receive meals during the summer. and the Child and Adult Care Food program provides over 1.5 million meals to children in child care programs. The Women. Infants and Children program provides information on healthy eating and nutritious.foods for nearly 7.5 million poor women and their children. Clearly. families still struggle to provide their children with healthy meals. and the need for quality nutrition continues to exist in this country. Mr. Speaker. H.R. 3873 acknowledges these needs. and it contains significant program improvements to allow more and more lowincome children to access these programs in schools. afterschool programs. child care centers. and through the Women. Infants and Children program. These policies reflect common sense in these programs. If a child is deemed. to be eligible for both the Federal assistance programs. they should be eligible for free and reducedprice meals. The bill removes barriers for migrant children and homeless and runaway youth by making them automatically eligible for school meal programs. It continues a provision to allow children in lowincome and military families to participate in these programs. While many of us would have liked to go further to eliminate the reducedprice category of meals so that more children could eat for free. this bill makes headway in assuring that children who are eligible for these programs are. in fact. receiving the meals. These program improvements are laudable. and I support the bill for all of these reasons. I am. however. disappointed that at a time when the trends in childhood obesity rates reveal a disturbing health crisis. we did not take the opportunity presented to us to improve the quality of foods available to children in the school meals program. Obesity rates have doubled for children and tripled for adolescents in just for over the last two decades. More children are experiencing adults health problems such as high blood cholesterol. high blood pressure. Type II diabetes. all of which is contributed to the threefold increase in annual hospital costs for obesityrelated diseases in children over the past 20 years. This Nation can no longer ignore the cost of this problem to our children and to the health care system in this country. We can all agree that there are no simple solutions to the issue of childhood obesity. The local wellness policy that will now be required of schools is a good start. as is a new emphasis on physical activity. However. this is not an adequate response to the health problems facing millions of children and youth. The Federal Government can and should address the nutritional quality offood available in schools. Without Federal guidelines on this issue. the overall quality of the school meal programs is significantly undermined and children will continue to be surrounded by unhealthy food choices in schools. I will continue to press for action on this area. and I hope that the chairman will join me. as will the members of the committee. This is a significant reauthorization. It is a substantial improvement in the existing programs and I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.