The carrot crusader

Her presence is felt there in the cafeteria, behind the scoop-shaped slap of chili mac, next to the canned corn, fruit cobbler and 1 percent milk.

Since taking control of the school nutrition program last summer, Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs has tightened even further the restrictions on what kids can eat at school.

Now she runs the strictest school lunch and snack program in the nation, one that has earned praise for its intent to fight obesity and protest over its convolutions.

How Combs got to the front of the lunch line in Texas is a mixture of politics, passion and a decided personal lack of interest in dessert.

The statistics coming into the Texas Department of Agriculture last summer from the national Centers for Disease Control were frightening.

Some 30 percent of American children -- 35 percent in Texas -- are overweight and obese.

Combs decided to take some tough steps -- ones that would suddenly turn Halloween candy and birthday party cupcakes into the edible equivalent of evildoers.

She banned 100 percent sugar candies, sodas and other "food of minimal nutritional value" from school classrooms.

Just a year before, such treats already had been banned by the Texas Education Agency from elementary school cafeterias and from secondary school cafeterias until after lunch.

But now, Combs -- in her first step since taking over the school lunch program from the education department -- was hitting kids right in their beloved classroom parties. No more Halloween candy corn, no Valentine's Day candy hearts, no winter holiday cookies.

The policy, developed with the help of school and health professionals, and the Texas PTA, went into effect last summer and drew the ire of parents.

"This isn't that effective when you look at what kids are eating anyway," says Sharon Matthews, parent of a Bell Manor Elementary student in Bedford. "We couldn't even put out candy canes at the annual party."

Other parents complained, and so did some school nurses who were worried they could no longer dispense cough drops.

Combs relaxed the party-food ban six months into the school year. Since February, schools have been allowed to serve fun food in classrooms -- but only three times a year.

The food fight isn't over. Combs plans to make school lunch programs even leaner when the new school year begins in August.

"I suspect someday someone could try to sue the schools for having an unhealthy environment," she says. "I don't want that to happen in Texas."

Susan Combs never planned to make a career out of governing the state's food crops, nor out of overseeing school lunches.

But she has always cared about nutrition and health. At age 59, Combs' 6-foot-2-inch frame is as lean as ever. It has been that way since the days she grew up attending parochial school in San Antonio and spending time at her family's Big Bend-area ranch.

"As a child I was a string bean," says Combs, obviously well-matched for her job as a tireless promoter of Texas vegetables and fruit.

As a kid, her school lunches consisted of straightforward Mexican food and other fare, including fish on Fridays. At home, she ate the sit-down, meat-potatoes-and-vegetable diet over which "amen" had been said.

"All of us were skinny kids. And we all ate all our food. We had no choices. They handed us a plate, and by golly we ate it and we were glad to have it," says Combs.

"If we ate all our vegetables, we could have two cookies after dinner," says her middle son, Blaise Duran, 25, of Austin.

Although single, he cooks for himself and always makes vegetables for dinner, even while his friends dart off to fast-food restaurants.

It's that kind of healthy habit that Combs hopes to instill in Texas schoolchildren. Early in her career, though, it didn't appear she was headed toward leading the fight against childhood obesity.

With a degree in biblical criticism from Vassar and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Combs set out on careers that required passion and perseverance. She prosecuted child abuse cases in Dallas, a job she says honed a lifetime interest in children's health.

She also served two terms as a Republican state representative from Austin. Her family's ranching background gave her the drive to run for commissioner of the Agriculture Department, which oversees aspects of ranching as well as farming. In 2002, Combs became the first woman elected to run the department.

In the first year of her new job as commissioner, school food was not part of her domain. At the time, as in almost every state in the union (except New Jersey), departments of education ran the federally funded school nutrition programs.

But by moving school food under Agriculture, it would become a pipeline for more Texas grapefruit, watermelon, oranges and vegetable crops to land in school lunch programs. Plus it made sense. The Agriculture Department already runs other federally funded nutrition programs.

This way, she could help streamline state government. She could help support Texas growers. And personally, making such a change was entirely in character. Combs has a history of making bold moves, as when she proposed planting flowers or grapes in places where traditional crops are dwindling.

President George W. Bush was Texas governor when he described her at her swearing-in ceremony this way: "This woman has so much much energy, she'd make coffee nervous."

Combs knows she has more to do to combat the weighty health consequences of an increasing trend toward youth obesity.

Come August, she'll put more restrictions on the schools. Deep-fat frying will be banned. Even oven-baked french fries won't appear on the menu as often. Milk will be low-fat.

But kids won't see many changes in the cafeteria. Most Tarrant County schools already comply with those guidelines and have for years.

One of the biggest changes will affect on-campus fund-raisers that call on students to sell cookies, candy or pizza to raise money for clubs or other causes. In elementary schools, fund-raising food sales will be banned until after school; in middle schools, they will be restricted to after mealtimes; in high schools, fund-raising foods can't be sold in the cafeteria during meals.

Vending machines will be allowed at schools that have them now but will have to offer smaller-sized and lower-fat products. A la carte menus will serve low-fat chips in smaller bags. Fats and sugars will be cut back in menus.

It is with the limiting of classroom food and the upcoming limits on fund-raiser food and vending machine fare that Texas becomes the strictest state school food program in the nation. About 20 other states have taken similar steps, but none quite so far as in Texas.

Combs also plans to distribute a cookbook for kids (due out in three months) and a CD-ROM with classroom lesson plans on nutrition.

The Agriculture Department and Texas A&M University will study kids at selected elementary schools over the next year, to monitor the weight of children eating school lunches.

Nonetheless, Combs doesn't expect a dramatic change. She knows she's fighting against strong cultural forces.

"You can't just drop one thing in the water and expect the ripples to go on forever," she says.

"The way our society is, we don't like somebody to tell us what we can't do," says Judith Crilley, vice president of the Grapevine Middle School PTA.

"But my kids have choices. The kids in the free or reduced[-price] lunch program are really at the mercy of what schools provide," Crilley says. "That's their big nutritional meal for the day."

More than 4 million Texas kids partake in school breakfast and lunch programs. Deep in the background, in the shadows beyond the steaming steel trays of the lunch counter, will be Susan Combs, the woman who wants Texans big and small to eat their vegetables before having dessert.

In a half-century of evolution, government officials have switched from wanting to fatten up kids to being horrified at how fat they've become.

Overly skinny and malnourished kids arriving from rural America to fight in World War II prompted President Harry Truman to launch the National School Lunch Program in 1946, nationalizing what some states already provided.

834 calories -- almost half the daily recommended calories for children ages 7 to 10.

100 grams of carbohydrates -- about 200 more calories from carbs than is recommended.

35 grams of fat -- about half the recommended daily intake. (Some kids ate this with garlic bread, boosting the calories to 903 and the carbs to 113 grams.)

When was the last time you had good fruit or vegetables from a cafeteria? In my experience the fruit is either canned, bruised or mushy and the vegetables are always overcooked and underseasoned. These places serve a lot of junk food because it tends to be more palatable when poorly prepared.

I am reminded of a Joel Mowbray article in National Review; he was quoting a name-redacted application for US Naturalization from an Indian immigrant. The line asking "why do you want to become a US citizen", the man honestly responded, I have always wanted to live in a country where the poor people could be fat.

One thing to watch out for is depending on the school lunch assisted/freebie program. I made a decent, if not great living, kept the kids in clothes, and oh yes, even health insurance on a bit more than 22k. The school system stayed on my butt all year to enroll mine in free lunch program because, as I found out, all sorts of federal gimme programs operate with that as the base number. More free lunches the school gives, the more "free" federal money they get.

Turn off the tube and the video games, kick the chubby little scudders outside to run around, buy real food instead of snacks with those food stamps, and childhood obesity will take care of itself. Of course that would require parents to act like parents, God forbid.

How about ditching school cafeterias altogether? I'm convinced that they exist because of an age-old superstition that a "hot meal" is nutritionally superior to a cold one. But it just isn't true.

Consider a typical school cafeteria lunch: turkey served over a mound of dressing (actually grease-soaked bread) topped with gravy (more fat); mashed potatoes made from dried potato flakes topped with more fatty gravy; carrots (cooked to mush); apple cobbler (more flour, fat, and sugar than apples); milk.

Now, consider a cold alternative consisting of similar ingredients: turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread; low-fat potato chips; raw carrot sticks; an apple; milk.

Of the two, which is superior nutritionally? I would submit that the second one is. But more significantly, the second menu could be assembled and bagged in a central location for all schools in the system, and could be served to the kids at their desks (or, weather permitting, outside). No cafeteria, no hair-netted lunch ladies.

With the capital expenditures of cafeterias eliminated, and payrolls slashed, bag lunches could be distributed "free" (yes, I know there's no such thing as a free lunch) to all students at a lower cost than is involved with providing some students with free lunches and others with reduced-price lunches. Of course, you could ditch the lunch cashier, too.

Better yet, why not privatize it. Stipulate that the businesses involved must meet certain standards for price and nutrition and then let the private sector take care of it. What kid would bother with institutional food when they could get a Subway sandwich or some good teriyaki.

I don't even think it would cost any more. Once you factor in all the subsidies, salaries and maintenance involved in keeping up a school cafeteria I'd bet it would be very competitive.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.