Getting Kids to Eat Healthy in School

What your kids eat at school will be front and center on Capitol Hill this summer.

On Monday, top officials visited a New Haven school to discuss what needs to change in the lunchroom.

"Take down some more of the sodium we have," Audrey Rowe, Deputy at the United States Department Of Agriculture or USDA said.

The Institute of Medicine recommends reducing sodium in our meals, reducing fat. Increasing vegetables and grain, she said.

Every five years, Congress takes another look at the act, which includes the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, which feed 31 million students a year.

This year, there's a push to make things healthier. First Lady Michelle Obama’s "Lets Move" campaign hopes to end childhood obesity within a generation.

Another part of the push is a new study in the journal Pediatrics that found a link between pesticides used on fruits and vegetables and children developing Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.

The findings haven't gone unnoticed by the USDA.

"Increasing food safety, ensuring schools have plans and health management plans so they’re ensuring that the fruits and vegetables that come into the schools do not have pesticides," Rowe said.

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Rowe had lunch with students at the Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School in New Haven, which runs its own garden and is a leading example of how to get kids on the right track.

Fifth grade teacher Kel Youngs says this is how students learn best.

"Kids should be seeing posters, reading about writing about it, doing math about it. Sometimes that’s the piece of these projects that gets dropped. We talk about food or we introduce a program and we haven't prepared the kids enough to learn about it," Youngs said.

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