Regarding your May 2 article on North Carolina's school lunch program: Clearly, no one in our state - not school nutrition directors, administrators or policymakers - wants our children to eat unhealthy or unappealing food; nor does any reasonable person want to bankrupt our school systems. But the cost of doing nothing is much higher than investing a few cents per meal in our school lunch program.
The cost of poor nutrition (measured in excess weight and type II diabetes) for our children is staggering:
Excess weight is $33.33 million annually in youth medical costs
Type II diabetes is $30.43 million annually in youth medical costs
As your article pointed out, the Legislative Task Force on Childhood Obesity has proposed a comprehensive set of recommendations that include important first steps toward alleviating the financial impact of serving healthier food in our school systems. As lawmakers return to Raleigh, the N.C. Alliance for Health hopes one of the first things on their plate will be to implement the recommendations aimed at improving our school nutrition programs that will help our children be healthier.
Pam Seamans
Executive director, N.C. Alliance for Health, Raleigh
