More chickpeas, fewer chickens: DC food emissions bill set to upgrade diets for city meal recipients

For Emilie Cassou, the meals served to students like her son at his public elementary school in the District aren’t worth the tray they’re served on.

Some might look at a typical lunch served to students and see a ham and cheese sandwich, a container of coleslaw, a fruit cup and some milk. But Cassou sees several suspected carcinogens within the deli meat, an unhealthy amount of mayonnaise, and more cow’s milk products than a child should consume at one meal.

Instead, she and her husband follow nutrition guidelines that call for fewer saturated fats, salts and sugars, as endorsed by the Mayo Clinic and other prominent health organizations. Following those recommendations, Cassou says they pack whole grains, vegetables, and pulses like lentils and peas in their son’s lunch.

Meals like those served at her child’s school, Ross Elementary in Dupont Circle, concern Cassou — not just as a nutrition-minded parent but as a sustainable food systems specialist focused on broad global issues like greenhouse gas emissions and food waste. Cassou believes that although the school does try to provide better meals, the size of the school and its kitchen limits the amount of cooking that can be done on-site.

Yet local advocates are optimistic that change is coming to meals served not just within the District’s public schools but also within its correctional facilities, as well as youth meals served through the DC Department of Parks and Recreation and anywhere else that city government serves food. That’s because of recently passed legislation, known as the Green Food Purchasing Amendment Act of 2021, which seeks to reduce food sector emissions by 25% by 2030, with benchmark emissions goals along the way.

Specifically, the bill — which advocates hail as the first of its kind in the nation — directs the DC Department of Energy and Environment to “adopt a methodology to estimate and track the greenhouse gas emissions that occur through the lifecycle of food and beverages purchased by the District,” according to a DC Council committee report on the bill.

Although there’s plenty of food consumption in the District, little food production occurs within its borders, according to the report. Still, billions of dollars are spent annually within the District’s food economy; the committee cited $8.7 billion of expenditures within the sector in 2016.

The bill, introduced by Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh, is currently undergoing congressional review and is expected to take effect Aug. 5. With its implementation subject to appropriations, Cheh — who chairs the Committee on Transportation and the Environment — is seeking to provide funding in the 2022 budget and four-year financial plan, now pending before the council.

According to Chloë Waterman, the senior program manager for Friends of the Earth’s Climate-Friendly Food Program, the bill doesn’t specify how the DC government must achieve emissions reductions.

“But we know from the dozens of private institutions that [already] have been working toward this goal … that the primary strategy for achieving these reductions is through a protein flip,” she explained.

That protein flip could be accomplished by serving beans and lentils instead of beef, pork or chicken in a chili bowl or a burrito, noted Cassou. 

While public school students within the District would likely be the largest single group to see changes to their meals, the bill would also impact anyone within the DC prison system as well as local beneficiaries of Meals on Wheels, which is administered by the DC Department of Aging and Community Living. Those within the prison system potentially would see the greatest benefit to their health, advocates believe.

Waterman said that Friends of the Earth hopes that this bill will result in food “acting as nourishment rather than punishment” for people incarcerated in the District, adding that she “would bet that DC’s jails are the worst food environments” in the city. During committee testimony, Waterman noted that the District’s Corrections Department serves 60% more meat than some dietary guidelines recommend.

Keena Blackmon, spokesperson for the DC Department of Corrections, didn’t respond to multiple voice messages and emails requesting information about the food served to people in jail.

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Getting kids to choose bulgur over burgers

Even with the legislation’s ambitious goals, it’s unclear how much of a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could be achieved. 

The DC Department of Energy and Environment doesn’t specify any food-related emissions in several charts related to 2019 emissions by sector, and Cheh’s office didn’t provide data to show what percentage of the District’s emissions actually come from the food sector.

Food systems-related emissions do account for 34% of total greenhouse gas emissions globally, although that represents a decrease in recent decades, according to the United Nations.

But if the composition of meals served by the District is changed in order to reduce emissions, one potential obstacle to meeting the goal could be overcoming the immense amount of food waste that comes from school cafeterias.

The District’s public school system is singled out in the committee report as “a significant contributor” to the local food waste stream. According to the same report, DC schools generate roughly 2,000 tons of food waste annually — which accounts for about 2.3% of the estimated 85,195 tons of food waste created each year by the city’s industrial, commercial and institutional sectors. Much of the school district’s waste comes from the lunch program. 

Advocates acknowledge that quickly changing children’s lunch menus could result in additional food waste if not thoughtfully implemented.

“We can’t shift the menus overnight and expect kids to take a tofu teriyaki when they’ve never tried it and never seen it before,” said Waterman.

Federal and academic research has shown mixed or limited results in trying to encourage students to eat healthier.

Further, food habits are hard to break, regardless of where food is consumed. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that, between 2007 and 2010, 76% of Americans failed to meet fruit consumption recommendations, while 87% didn’t meet vegetable recommendations.

“Substantial new efforts are needed to build consumer demand for fruits and vegetables through competitive pricing, placement, and promotion in child care, schools, grocery stores, communities, and worksites,” suggested the 2015 CDC study.

Still, Waterman believes such concerns could be overcome. Offering students a sample of a healthier option in the cafeteria line and marketing it “in a way that’s appealing to students” can make a difference.

“Don’t call it a healthy vegan tofu dish, call it smoky tofu teriyaki,” Waterman said with a laugh.

Cassou agrees. Characterizing a meal as vegan or healthy “sounds like a skull and crossbones” to many children and parents, she said. 

But focusing on taste-related attributes over health descriptions and only including plant-based options on a daily menu might help improve the likelihood that children not only select but eat the healthier, lower-emission foods.

Waterman suggests another way to lower that barrier to entry: teaching students where different plant-based ingredients come from, how they can be cooked, and what spices pair nicely with them. She also sees taste tests as a key method of piquing a child’s interest.

“For all students, but probably especially for students that are really reliant on school meals as a primary source of nutrition, they’re going to be unlikely to reach for a dish that they’ve never seen before, never heard before, never encountered,” Waterman explained.