Does Canada need a national school food program

VANCOUVER, Canada — When you think of breakfast and lunch programs at public schools, it usually brings to mind kids and youth whose parents can't afford to keep their pantries stocked with enough food for three meals a day.

But when Amanda Sheedy talks about the need for a national food program in Canada, she's not as concerned about poor kids' food insecurity as she is about every child's. If they're bringing tater tots and white bread peanut butter and jam sandwiches from home for lunch, they have worse problems than depending on subsidized food.

Sheedy, program manager at Food Secure Canada, said in a phone interview that the country faces "a health crisis that has a lot to do with food. [Canadians] still haven't managed to come up with a comprehensive way to address the growing obesity crisis, and we think that school food programs are a great way to tackle it."

Childhood obesity rates are on the rise. Almost one-third of Canadian children are overweight or obese, asdetermined by Health Canada using the Body Mass Index, a somewhat controversial measure since using height and weight to calculate body fat can mistake healthy tissue as fat.

Nonetheless, it's a status quo that a coalition of health and food-related organizations including Food Secure Canada want to change. Their joint initiative, "Raising the Bar on Student Food Programs," is calling on Health Canada to set national school food guidelines, and more daringly, to fund school food programs.

Raising the Bar hasn't got an ideal food program in mind yet. But possibilities include a mid-day meal offered to all children that would cover at least three of the four food groups recognized by our national food guide.

Once the coalition has settled on the program design it feels would do the best job of getting