Soy foodmakers want school-lunch market

[Guest guest]

Soy foodmakers want school-lunch market

Rick Karlin - Albany Times Union

 

Ask Albany High School freshman John Duquette if he'd like to wash down his

chicken patty with a glass of soy milk and he chuckles, " Yeah, right. "

 

But soy milk and meatless burgers are edging closer to school lunchrooms.

 

It is not shifting student tastes but soy industry lobbying and a sustained push

by activists that are putting pressure on school menus. Together, they are

waging the equivalent of a culinary holy war against the use of dairy and meat

products.

 

The pressure is having some effect. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is

preparing regulations that will make it easier for schools to be reimbursed for

soy burgers or similar foods.

 

Many school hamburgers have some soy or other filler, but the new rules should

make it easier to serve burgers made only of soy or other vegetable products.

 

The soybean industry has long sought this change, hoping to make inroads into

the huge school-lunch market.

 

Other changes are evolving through the courts. The Washington-based Physicians

Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes a vegan lifestyle excluding

any animal products, sued the USDA in December seeking to alter the agency's

nutrition guidelines.

 

In part, the group claims the guidelines fail to recognize that minorities,

including Asians and African-Americans, have higher incidences of lactose

intolerance, which makes it hard to digest milk. That makes the guidelines

racially biased, the lawsuit contends.

 

While the lawsuit is still pending in federal court, it has already had some

impact, prompting an advisory panel on nutrition guidelines to recommend that

soy milk share the same space as cow's milk on the USDA's food pyramid.

 

The lawsuit is the latest volley by the physicians' group, which has pushed for

almost a decade to supplant milk and other dairy products with vegetable foods.

 

Critics say the organization has a political, rather than nutritional goal.

 

" They have this agenda that no one should eat animal products, and they are not

even doctors, " said B eth Meyer, spokeswoman for the American Dairy Association

and Dairy Council.

 

Dairy interests, though, have their own strategies for keeping milk in the

forefront. For instance, dairy producers are trying to ban the term " soy milk, "

claiming it should instead be given the less-appetizing name of " soy-based

beverage. "

 

Caught in the middle of these bureaucratic battles are those who plan, prepare

and eat school lunches.

 

Worried about the epidemic levels of obesity among children, school food-service

directors have long tried to cut down on the fat content of meals. They say they

would like to offer more items like veggie burgers and soy milk if students

would eat them.

 

" You can't just put out food that they don't like, " said Tom Cook, food service

director at Quality Food Management, a company that provides meals for several

New York schools.

 

With the exception of a handful of students who are vegetarians or vegans, most

kids are wary of anything that's the least bit unusual-looking on their lunch

trays, said Cook.

 

He even has trouble getting students to consume food that requires a knife and

fork.

 

" They need to be able to grip it with their fingers, " Cook said. He figures that

the craving for pizza, burgers and bite-sized chicken nuggets is a byproduct of

a fast-food culture in which children rarely sit down with their families for a

full-course meal.

 

And while soy burgers may soon be reimbursable, they won't be free. By contrast,

most schools get at least some free beef, courtesy of government programs to

purchase food surpluses.

 

" I guess that the meat lobby in this country is going to be a little more

muscular than the nonmeat lobby, " said Barry Sackin, government relations

director for the American School Food Service Association. " It's just raw

politics. "

 

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