House Education Committee Tables School Nutrition Bill

A bill to bring West Virginia’s school nutrition requirements in line with new federal guidelines has hit a snag in the House of Delegates. 

After more than two hours of public comment and testimony Thursday, the House Education Committee tabled Senate Bill 745 Friday. 

The bill creates new limitations on added ingredients in food served to West Virginia students. That includes a list of 23 food additives like aspartame and aloe vera that would be deemed unsafe and banned.

Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R-Wood, who has studied chemical engineering, told the committee Thursday the list of additives seemed arbitrary and that most of them were simply preservatives.

“I am concerned that if we act in haste, we may regret that there are products that are safe, but all of a sudden they cannot be utilized in schools in West Virginia because they are outlawed,” he said.

Fehrenbacher fell back on the old adage that “dose makes the poison,” and more than once cited the legality of alcohol as an analogy for products deemed acceptable in society with limits.

“Can I testify that I know for sure and for certain, as Del. Kump might say, that all these things have baseline maximum concentrations? No, but I don’t know that they should be reduced to zero in the materials that our schools use,” he said. “To move in that direction, I think, is prudent. To outlaw them with the passage of 745, I think, is risky, and I would urge caution.”

The bill also requires that, by 2029, no more than 5% of daily calories served in a school nutrition program may come from added sugars, a move that spiked concern for lunch room favorites such as chocolate milk.

Opponents of the added sugar restriction argued that getting children to eat with appealing flavors is more important than hitting arbitrary nutritional goals.

Michael Goran, professor of pediatrics and population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California, told the committee Thursday that chronic diseases like diabetes and fatty liver disease may take decades to develop, but begin with nutrition during childhood and adolescent years.

“This is not just a metabolic or a nutritional bill, it’s an educational bill, because, as we’ve talked about previously, nutrition affects learning,” he said. “These rapid glucose spikes and crashes that you get, especially from consuming high amounts of added sugars and liquid sugars, can disrupt learning, can impact classroom settings and contribute to difficulties in concentrating.”

Tabled bills can be brought back for consideration. But with just six more days left in the session the bill would have to pass through a second reference to the Finance committee where rules would require it be considered for two days. With a constitutional requirement that all bills be read three times in the House, the Education committee’s action Friday makes SB 745’s success not impossible but very difficult.