[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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