I FEEL as if summer just started, but already I'm reading about back-to-school sales and getting kids ready for another school year. While I doubt that many grade-school students feel the same way, I'm looking forward to the start of school this year. This fall, Congress is scheduled to take up two school nutrition bills. With Barack Obama in the White House, change could be coming to the NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM. And change is long overdue.

The National School Lunch Act of 1946 was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman with noble-sounding intentions. It guaranteed a hot lunch to every schoolkid who couldn't afford one. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency that oversees the program, approximately 30.5 million students receive free or reduced-price lunches each school day. But what was supposed to be a way of ensuring needy kids get enough to eat so they can pay attention in class has become a national disgrace.

The food served in most school cafeterias is industrial-grade slop that contributes to the epidemic in childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Sixteen percent of children ages 2 to 19 are now obese, a problem that opens the door to a host of health problems. About half of children between the ages of 8 and 15 already have high cholesterol, high blood pressure or other risk factors for heart disease. Meanwhile, the school-lunch program props up an agricultural industry that's sickening us and sickening the planet in the form of chemical- and petroleum-dependent farming practices.

Making sure kids don't go hungry sounds like a high-minded idea, but the lunch program was really established as a way to support already heavily subsidized farms by passing off their surpluses to schools. In effect, schools became the garbage cans for what the market didn't want. The program benefits agribusiness, not kids.

Calling what we serve kids "food" is a bit of stretch. Very little actual cooking goes on in school cafeterias. Foodlike substances arrive frozen in boxes and bags and then are reheated and reconstituted for lunchtime. It's cheaper and labor saving for sure, but the end result isn't very appealing. The USDA requires that each lunch contain approximately 600 calories and that no more than 30 percent of those calories come from fat, but most schools barely meet those requirements. Those standards can be met by averaging them over time, so it's possible to serve chili dogs and Tater Tots one day and a salad and fruit cup the next day. Cheap, processed food still dominates school lunch menus.

While there are individual Bay Area schools that are improving what they serve children (Sunnyvale and Palo Alto schools have made significant improvements), this kind of bottom-up reform is the exception to the norm. But a change from the top would have a dramatic impact. That's where the Obamas come in.

Michelle Obama has gladdened the hearts of Alice Waters–loving, Michael Pollan–quoting foodies everywhere with her involvement in the White House garden. Many in the so-called good-food movement see her as an ally and are looking for her to be a champion for school lunch reform because her focus at the garden has been involving children in gardening and cooking. Many food policy analysts are watching to see what role she and the president will play when the Child Nutrition Act comes up for Congressional reauthorization next month. This is the opportunity for Congress to right the many wrongs in the way we feed our kids at school.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is on the right track. The group supports increasing the number of vegetarian and vegan meals served in school cafeterias because current menus are too high in saturated fat and cholesterol and deficient in fiber, fresh produce and grains. Check them out at www.healthyschoollunches.org. The website includes an online petition urging Congress to adopt a healthier school lunch policy that provides for vegetarian-based meals.

Reforming school lunches will be very challenging, especially in California. For one thing, schools are broke, and spending more on fresh, higher-quality food instead of frozen commodity foodstuffs is going to be difficult. Of course, schools shouldn't bear all the blame for fat and unhealthy kids. Parents are the single most important factor in what a child eats. If parents eat at McDonald's and guzzle 2-liter bottles of Coke at the dinner table, kids will, too. But schools are supposed to educate children in many subjects, and one of those subjects should be what constitutes a healthy meal. Sadly, that lesson is seldom taught

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