Soy Lobby Reach School Lunches

Let’s suppose that you have read or heard our previous interviews with Dr. Mary Enig about the “anti-nutrients” in soy, and as a result you made a decision to avoid soy foods for yourself and your family.

Despite what you may wish, school lunches are progressing rapidly higher into higher and higher concentrations of highly refined “textured soy protein” under the mistaken notion that children will be getting “better servings of nutrients with less cholesterol and fat”.

Since the Federal government has unsurped school lunch programs the use of soy has escalated considerably and promises to become an even larger part of school food programs.

Under US Department of Agriculture guidelines, subsidized school lunch programs may be either “food-based” or “nutrient-based” according to Suzanne Rigby, director of nutrition and eduction for the American School Food Service Association (ASFSA), a non-profit group supported by the Food Industry. If the school district is under the nutrient-based, NuMenu program, it is not restricted in the amounts of soy it may use. This program, which requires the school district log recipes onto a USDA computer database, may serve “burgers” made entirely from soy if they wish.

Food-based school lunch programs are “limited” by the USDA guidelines to a maximum of 30% soy and 70% beef, for example.

Soy companies, food manufacturers and processors, and food-service directors have hired a top public relations firm to promote the use of more soy in school menus.

Norm Benedict, CEO of Norman Robert Associates a well-connected PR firm, stated that “our idea is to increase the visibility, usage and enhancement of soy products”.

The use of soy protein, the pressure groups contend, is proving to be a “cost-effective solution toward providing students with a more nutritious reduced-fat meal”.

They claim that “the soybean has come a long way since the days when it was used as an extender in meats and produced a mushy, bean-like, foul tasting product. Today most students cannot tell the difference between a 100 percent ground beef hamburger and a counterpart that contains soy.”

The ASFSA “helps” school district menu planners get together with food suppliers by providing school food service coordinators all the free information they need. For example, Kim Simpson is the food service operations coordinator for 17 school nutrition programs in Daviess County, Kentucky.

Simpson has “commodity ground beef” enhanced with texture soy protein by the manufacturer. The hamburger patties, taco meat and spaghetti sauce all come as prepared, ready-to-serve meals.

“Students are not aware of the soy in the product,” she said.

Because Daviess County schools are in the NuMenu program, they can insert 100% soy if they wish, so long as they meet “recommended daily allowances”.

Since many parents in the “old days” sent their children to school with a lunch box containing slabs of white bread coated with sugary jam and peanut butter, the modern “nutritionist” is proud to be a part of the subsidized school lunch programs.

Considering the trypsin inhibitors, phytic acid and pseudo-estrogen compounds in soy, and all the antibiotics and hormone residues in feedlot beef, we don’t see much to boast about.

The way school age children are fed makes it easy to see why the chronic syndrome statistics are so dreadfully high in this country.

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