(meatingplace.com) -- USDA's Economic Research Service has released a study on ways to reduce the total fat content of school lunches, part of the agency's efforts to improve the National School Lunch Program as the Child Nutrition Act comes before Congress for reauthorization.

The report, "Meeting Total Fat Requirements for School Lunches," was prompted by an earlier study that showed that while most schools met requirements for vitamins, protein, calcium and iron content, only 20 percent serve lunches that met the USDA standard for total fat (constituting 30 percent or less of the calories). That study was based on a survey of 397 schools in spring 2005.

School policies and practices linked to lower fat lunches include promotion of fresh fruits and vegetables or locally-grown foods, offering low-fat dairy products and eliminating vending machines in middle and high schools. The report also recommends adopting a "nutrient content" or "enhanced food-based" meal planning method, in which meals are planned not around types of foods -- such as "meat" and "starch" and "vegetable" -- but instead around providing a certain amount of nutrition, which may be contained in any type of food that meets the requirements.

"A number of recent studies indicate that one-third of all children between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight or obese, and we must take immediate steps to improve the nutritional quality of school meals and the health of the school environment," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Read the full ERS study here (www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR87/).

The week's headlines have been full of Iraq and Afghanistan, two wars that were all too easy to enter but now seem incredibly difficult to exit. Right or wrong, these intractable engagements are being compared to Vietnam, that unhappy national ordeal synonymous with the word "quagmire."

While infinitely more acceptable in terms of violence and physical harm, the undeclared, though long-fought, "War on Fat" is yet another dangerous example of what happens when Newton's first law of motion is applied in public policy: an object set in motion tends to travel on and on.

The ERS study noted above clearly indicates that the "War on Fat" rages on nearly 30 years after anti-meat warriors joined the first battle in the early eighties. Such entrenchment is especially alarming since more and more food scientists believe it's high time to run up the white flag.

In the November 23 edition of Feedstuffs, Alan Newport has written an excellent article (i.e., "Big Fat Lie Comes Unraveled") where he reviews Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Taubes contends that most of the hard data collected since the late 19th century blames refined carbohydrates and starchy foods for weight problems and "chronic disease of civilization" (e.g., diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer), not animal fats.

Check it out. You will find Taubes research to be quite exhaustive and even painfully balanced.

So if the truth-ledger is so lopsided on this issue, how did the anti-fat bias turn into a public crusade that refuses to surrender? Enter K-ration inventor and data manipulator Ancel Keyes.

Taubes presents Keyes as a dietary scientist long on determination and persuasive power but short on professional methodology and honesty. Attempting to link the significant increase in heart disease after WWII with components of diet, Keyes selectively gathered evidence from 22 countries to confirm his hypothesis that fat was the silent killer.

More politically savvy than scientifically critical, Keyes was extremely successful in securing large grants for collaborating research, winning important friends in Washington, and undermining contrary studies and opinions. In 1977, his missionary zeal converted the powers that be when Senator George McGovern and the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition & Human Needs published "Dietary Goals for the United States."

More than three decades later, this study, along with its highly dubious assumption about dietary fat, remains the cornerstone of governmental feeding and nutrition programs.

Somebody needs to finally cancel this inglorious "War on Fat," drain the quagmire, and send misinformed troops home to healthier standards of peaceful eating.

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(AG)