[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 126 (Monday, September 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10644-S10645]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHILD NUTRITION REAUTHORIZATION ACT
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise today to give my full support for
the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act. This important legislation
authorizes and allows for continued funding for important child
nutrition programs for the next 5 years, until the year 2003.
I want to commend Agriculture Committee Chairman Lugar and our
ranking member, Senator Harkin, and my colleagues on the Senate
Agriculture Committee for working cooperatively in what I believe is a
very excellent bipartisan spirit to unanimously pass this bill out of
committee. I also want to thank my Senate colleagues for passing this
vital legislation unanimously on the floor this past week. Clearly,
this legislation demonstrates our commitment to feeding our Nation's
children in an effective and cost-efficient manner.
The Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation provides funding for
the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program, for the Child and
Adult Care Food Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Women,
Infant and Children (WIC) Program, along with many other nutrition food
programs to feed our Nation's young people.
One of the provisions in this legislation that I worked on with a
particularly focused effort during this debate was a provision that
provides for a detailed research and pilot project on how school
breakfast programs impact a child's academic success and behavioral
attitudes.
This research provision is a modified version of S. 1396, the Meals
for Achievement Act, which I introduced this last November. The
research provision provides for the mandatory funding for a school
breakfast research project to further test the impacts of school
breakfast on children's academic and behavioral patterns.
This provision will require the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a
5-year school breakfast study in six different school districts
throughout the United States, involving approximately 15,000
schoolchildren.
As I have stated before, the research on the impact of children
eating school breakfast, so far, points overwhelmingly to a positive
result. Not only do our research studies so far indicate that the
academic scores in reading, writing, and math improve, but levels of
hyperactivity and tardiness are greatly reduced.
The purpose of the study contained in this legislation is to further
analyze the existing data and to provide the additional research and
data at a national level and to provide the positive impacts--to show
what the positive impacts are, in general, of eating a school
breakfast.
It is important to note that the funding for the research provision
will require no new additional expenses and maintains our balanced
budget discipline. It is not my intention that this research project
create any new Federal bureaucracy. However, once the researchers have
completed a 5-year study and find, as I believe they will, that
breakfast does indeed improve a child's academic success, we as Federal
lawmakers can work with local and State officials to create guidelines
of how school breakfasts can improve success in all of the schools
throughout our Nation.
The rationale for this provision is very simple: In order for the
United States to compete effectively in the world, we must have an
educated and productive workforce. We have far too many children who
are simply not prepared at the beginning of each schoolday to succeed
with their schoolwork.
In 1994, the Minnesota Legislature directed the Minnesota Department
of Children, Families and Learning to implement a universal breakfast
pilot program integrating breakfast into the education schedule for all
students. The evaluation of the pilot project, performed by the Center
for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of
Minnesota, showed that when all students are involved in school
breakfast, there is a general increase in learning and achievement.
Again, researchers at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital
recently completed a study on the results of a universal free breakfast
at one public school in Philadelphia and two in Baltimore. The study,
published this week in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric
Medicine, which is a journal of the American Medical Association, found
that students who ate breakfast showed great improvement in math
grades, in particular, but also in attendance and punctuality. The
researchers also observed that students displayed fewer signs of
depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, and other behavioral problems.
This study is reflected in an article in this week's Economist
Magazine, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that this article be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Economist, September 19, 1998]
Your Mother Was Right (Again)--Free Breakfasts May Be a Good way to
Help Poor Kids Do Better at School
When it was shown recently that fat people eat more than
thin people, some laughed, some jeered and some bawled their
indignation that money had been spent on discovering anything
so obvious. But if the results had been different, they would
have been very interesting: so it is not always wasteful to
do research that tells you something you thought you knew all
along. In any case, even if the results are expected, it
sometimes takes such research to get people to pay attention
to a problem.
So it is with a paper published this week in Archives of
Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Michael Murphy, a
psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston,
and his colleagues have proved that what your mama told you
all along is true: breakfast is good for you.
Dr. Murphy and his colleagues looked at a programme of free
breakfasts in three inner-city state schools--one in
Philadelphia and two in Baltimore. At these schools, 80% of
children are so poor that they are eligible for a free school
breakfast anyway; yet before the start of Dr. Murphy's
programme, only 15% were eating one. Dr. Murphy says that
this is because there is a stigma attached to showing that
you are so destitute that you have to eat free. Also, because
breakfasts are provided before school starts, they may be
over by the time the school bus arrives, making it impossible
for many pupils to benefit. Unlike free school lunches, which
have a higher consumption rate, breakfast is not part of the
normal school day.
The programme Dr. Murphy was studying provided breakfast
free of charge for everyone regardless of their means, and
changed the timing so that the meal was eaten after roll-
call. Within four months of these innovations, participation
had almost doubled, to 27%.
More significant, however, were the benefits of eating
breakfast. Before the programme started, the researchers
interviewed a sample of more than 100 school-children (the
average age was just over ten) from the three schools, and
also their parents and their teachers, to assess each child's
sense of well-being, anxiety and depression. They also
collected data on school attendance, tardiness, academic
grades and breakfast consumption. Four months later, they did
it all again (although this time they interviewed only a
subset of those previously questioned).
The researchers found that kids who started eating
significantly more breakfast (defined as an increase of at
least 20% over their previous consumption) were doing better
at school, particularly in mathematics. This result confirms
earlier studies on the benefits of breakfasting on academic
performance. But Dr. Murphy and his colleagues also found
that those children who started eating more breakfast were
significantly less likely
[[Page S10645]]
to feel anxious or depressed or to be described by their
teachers as hyperactive or disruptive, than those who
continued not to eat breakfast. Both regular and new members
of the breakfast club were also less likely to play truant or
be late for school. On the strength of these results, 20
schools in Maryland are now introducing free breakfasts for
all.
Of course, without depriving some children of the
breakfasts they were already eating--an ethically dubious
experiment--it is hard to separate cause and effect. It may
be that children who are not late are more likely to eat
breakfast anyway; skipping school presumably translates into
skipping breakfast too. This, more than eating breakfast per
se could account for the improvements in grades.
But it may not matter whether eating breakfast improves
mood and performance directly through its nutritional
effect--or indirectly, simply by getting more pupils to
arrive at school on time. Breakfast is no panacea, but it may
be a cost-effective way to help the children who most need
help. In America's inner cities, between one-third and two-
thirds of children go hungry at least some of the time.
Besides this, they frequently have to cope with difficult
family circumstances and other severe problems. Learning is
low on their list of priorities. Yet learning is perhaps
their only real ticket to a better life.
If by eating breakfast children do better, feel happier and
find it easier to learn, then increasing the take-up of
school breakfasts by making them free for all is surely a
good idea. Bring on the buttered toast.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, The Economist notes that:
The researchers found that kids who started eating
significantly more breakfast . . . were doing better at
school, particularly in mathematics. This result confirms
earlier studies on the benefits of breakfasting on academic
performance. But Dr. Murphy and his colleagues also found
that those children who started eating more breakfast were
significantly less likely to feel anxious or depressed, or to
be described by their teachers as hyperactive or disruptive .
. . less likely to play truant or be late for school. . . .
Breakfast is no panacea, but it may be a cost-effective way
to help children who most need help.
And so the provision of the Johnson school breakfast amendment, in
our overall nutrition authorization, will build on already-existing
research in individual school districts around the country and create a
more comprehensive research strategy. But I believe that the facts that
will be found are already apparent to us in the smaller research
studies that have already been conducted.
It is my hope that we will be able to build further on this
information and this broader research from this larger pilot program
contained in this legislation, to what ultimately will be a universal
free breakfast program for all schoolchildren throughout the Nation. I
think the research already is very apparent that this could be a very
cost-effective, efficient way of enhancing academic performance and
minimizing behavioral difficulties throughout all the schools in the
United States. Obviously, this program would be constructed, as I
envisioned, on a voluntary basis, from school district to school
district, so there is no federalization or mandate. Yet, there is an
opportunity for a constructive partnership to exist between the Federal
Government and its nutrition programs and our individual school
districts.
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