STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN PERRYMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMERICAN SCHOOL FOOD SERVICE ASSOCIATION; ACCOMPANIED BY MISS LOUISE A. K. FROLICH, ASSISTANT FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, AMERICAN SCHOOL FOOD SERVICE ASSOCIATION, COLORADO; SAMUEL VANNEMAN, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE, AMERICAN SCHOOL FOOD SERVICE ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C., AND THE FOLLOWING PANEL: WADE BASH, STATE DIRECTOR FOOD SERVICES, OHIO; MRS. L. GENE WHITE, DIRECTOR SCHOOL FOOD SERVICES, CHINA LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, CHINA LAKE, CALIF.; MISS JOSEPHINE MARTIN, STATE DIRECTOR FOOD SERVICES, GEORGIA; JOHN STALKER, DIRECTOR FOOD SERVICES, MASSACHUSETTS; AND MISS FRANCES FISCHER, DEPARTMENT OF NUTRITION, CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, CLEVELAND, OHIO, REPRESENTING THE AMERICAN DIETETIC ASSOCIATION

Dr. PERRYMAN. Mr. Chairman, we have tried as a panel to coordinate our statements so that there would be as little repetition as possible and to time them rather carefully. I believe that they can all be given within 35 minutes if we may have your permission.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Fine, Dr. Perryman. Why don't you take charge of the panel since you put the panel together and why don't you introduce each member and then the order in which you want the statements to be made. We will put you in charge of this operation.

Dr. PERRYMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am John Perryman, executive director, American School Food Service Association. We are very grateful, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear before this subcommittee in support of H.R. 5291. Since we are recommending the most sweeping changes in school foods service in a quarter century, we must believe there is something wrong with school food service today. We do.

Much has been accomplished that is laudatory. Under the leadership of this committee, the Congress has mandated that school food service should be made available to every economically needy child in the Nation, that every parent shall be given an opportunity to indicate his need, that eligibility standards be published for the knowledge of all, that there not be a hungry child in the United States of America.

The step we have not yet taken, the giant step forward proposed by H.R. 5291, is that we as a nation think in terms of our nutritionally needy children, not just those who are economically needy. After 25 years of operation, we are reaching only about 25 million children per day. In other words, it has taken us a quarter century to reach only the halfway point of the more than 50 million school age children in the United States. The pace is not quick enough; the accomplishment is not good enough.

The economic means test imposed upon school food service, the only requirement of its kind remaining in our educational system, is a major roadblock in the path of expansion of school food services. More than that, it is an administrative nightmare. Often it is treated dishonestly by parents; it is a constant annoyance to administrators and is often

the source of wasted money by students. If we were to send our children to school with money in their pockets to pay for the day's education, it is difficult to know what use they would actually make of the money. In the same way money intended for a nutritious meal at school is many times diverted to empty calories, cigarettes, or put aside for a Saturday night date. Furthermore, the concept of secrecy for free or reduced price meals is largely fiction. Children themselves are the greatest source of information on this subject, the free meal student often gloating over his paying classmate.

H.R. 5291 concerns itself with two basic needs held in common by all children—a need for food and a need for a knowledge of food. Let us look briefly at each.

Our need for food is the most persistent. constant, never ending of all human needs. A homely example may be found in analogy to the family automobile. If the tires are balding, we make an administrative decision that they are good enough for another thousand miles. If the upholstery on the front seat is threadbare. we cover it with the souvenir blanket from the honeymoon trip to Canada which we don't use for football games anymore anyway. If the tuneup is long overdue, we give it low priority on next month's budget. But if the car runs out of gas, it simply stops: right then and there it stops. Busy intersection, deserted road, or urgent call, it stops. There is no argument, no administrative decision, no postponement, no room for reasonable compromise. It stops.

So it is with the human anatomy. With our needs for clothing, shelter, recreation, even procreation, there can be delay, decision, deference. Not with the body's need for fuel. When the source of energy is gone, the functioning ceases. The child needs to be fed at school-where he is, where he is hungry and where he is daily and hourly expending the fuel which must be replaced.

Our need for a knowledge of food is also a continuing and neverending need, in the area of knowledge which could make a major impact on the health, vigor and productivity of our Nation. I wish to emphasize the fact that in this time of engineered foods consumer education of all people to guide them through their grocery lists is going to become increasingly necessary.

Today when a fortified cupcake is a breakfast and a soy bean is a piece of bacon, every food consumer-that means every human being in the Nation-must be increasingly knowledgeable in foods he is purchasing and consuming.

If the results of a universal school food service and nutrition education program would be so fortuitous, why has such a program not been undertaken previously? Two reasons are customarily given-such a move would be a step toward socialism and the cost is to great. Let us make a frontal attack on the charge of socialism. The old laissez faire theory of economics that every man looking after his own best interests would inevitably bring about the best interests of society has already been cast aside in a thousand different projects designed for the public good. Transportation, education, national defense the list of examples is myriad. There are well-established parallels and precedents for the concept of universality. Public education itself is one such prime example. Only when we moved from the concept of paupers schools to the concept of schooling for all, did public education in this country come to age.

Social security provides another excellent example of outstanding social legislation designed to meet the human need and to compensate for a human failing. Of course, everyone should provide for his old age just as everyone should provide for his child's proper nutrition, but everyone does not.

School food service is no more socialistic than the schools in which it is served. Indeed it provides a thriving and profitable market for many facets of the food service industry. It is like many of its magnificent ancestors-a publicly supported program in the public good.

In a program of this magnitude, in my judgment, we are justified in analyzing its costs to the Nation as a whole, not solely in terms of the Federal budget. From this standpoint, we might say that the family which is now providing proper nutrition for its children would have no costs at all, the family food budget being relieved of that many meals each week. In a sense then, the only cost to the Nation would be for children not now being properly fed. We submit that the cost of their hunger is far greater than would be the cost of their nutrition. We are spending in excess of $40 billion per year on public education and I-defer to the knowledge of the chairman on this matter and would like to use his words, nearly $50 billion per year on public education below the college level in the United States.

Hungry children make poor students. Not only are we likely wasting our tax dollar on them when they are in school, but as they fall behind the achievement of their classmates, they tend to become discouraged, to join the ranks of school dropouts, and from there to find their way into penal institutions or welfare roles where they may become a drain on the public treasury for life.

Furthermore, I would point out that no one doubts the close relationship between good food and good health. The sickness bill of our Nation is already staggering and continues to skyrocket. We are spending now in excess of $60 billion per year for remedial health in this country. I would add the observation that this figure has increased 400 percent in 20 years.

Although I cannot prove this conjecture, it is my strong belief that enough to eat and a knowledge of how to eat would contribute very positively to the health of our Nation, enabling us to direct a portion of our resources into the strength, vigor and productivity of our people, rather than into medicine and hospital beds.

As a matter of fact, I would suggest a new formula, ELP-exposure, learning, productivity. Our school food service program can be a means of attracting children to school, keep them coming back, and assure their physical and mental ability to learn. As such it is a real investment in the future.

In conclusion, I would like to place in the record my judgment that we are living in extraordinary, exciting and hopeful times, living in an age determined to end war, pollution, and hunger. In the months that have ensued, since it was most recently my privilege to appear before this committee, I have had the opportunity to pursue the problems of hungry children from the Arctic Circle in Alaska to the southern reaches of Brazil; from the jungle rivers of Thailand to the Counsel Chambers of the Second World Food Congress at The Hague. One lesson was learned above all others from these experiences and conversations. There is enough food in the world today to feed the people of the world.

Probably for the first time in the 50,000-year history of mankind on earth, hunger, and starvation are no longer necessary. The fact that hunger still exists is a function, not of physical limitations but rather from a lack of comprehension that hunger is a social evil which no longer need plague mankind.

Mr. Chairman, as have other great nations before us in history, we grapple with questions of our appropriate role in world leadership. On the marque of a drive-in savings and loan office of a small southern community I recently read the following incisive words, "Our youth needs models, not critics." Our world too needs models. Let us use onehalf of 1 percent of our gross national product to build a sound program of nutrition and nutrition education for the children of our Nation. I urge this course of action both as a coldly analytical financial investment in the future as a model to all people of a valid public response to a crying and persistent personal need.

I think, Mr. Chairman, we might as well proceed in the order of our panel members listed on this paper. They have no particular significance other than as a matter of convenience perhaps. With your permission then, I shall turn to Mr. Bash.

Mr. VEYSEY. Dr. Perryman, let me thank you for your opening statement which is an excellent one, and for the comments which you have given us. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions which may be appropriate at this time.

With respect to the interesting analogy that you drew between the budgeting of costs of operation of a car and food, I don't know whether we really can stick with that all of the way down the line.

As you point out, if you have a car and you need to operate it, somewhere or other you are going to get the gasoline together. Otherwise it stops. But you point out you can defer some of the other maintenance costs. The government doesn't furnish gasoline for anybody's car except for its own own vehicles as far as I know. Yet people do get the money to operate their cars as they need and as they must. So that suggests that they get it in other ways. But I suppose if the government came up with a program to furnish gasoline for people's cars, we would indeed be called on to furnish a lot of it.

I wonder what that would do to the capability of the individual owner of the car to get the gasoline himself? What would be your comment as related to the analogy that you have drawn to the food situation?

Do we, by the process of extending ourselves further and further into the area of free or subsidized food services, reduce the capability of the individual to do for himself?

Dr. PERRYMAN. I think the question is a very penetrating one and it is one that certainly warrants our consideration. If we do too much for people, do we make them more helpless and less inclined to do for themselves? It seems to me what we are talking about here is a matter of priorities. During the depression there were interesting studies made as to the flexibilities in the family budget. Unfortunately, largely because of lack of education I would say, food items in the family budget proved to be highly flexible, much more so than family expenditures for liquor and tobacco and other items.

Only through a proper knowledge of food will food become a top priority. I feel this is an example of a massive public undertaking that lends itself logically and appropriately to public assistance, just as

does our highway building program. There was a time when the classic English economists suggested that everyone take care of the road in front of his own home so that the government would not need to take care of any roads.

It seems to me there are logical areas for public endeavor and logical areas for private endeavor. When the child is at school we feel it is logical that his physical needs for food be met at school as a part of the educational process.

Mr. VEYSEY. I am glad to see that this legislation addresses itself to the problem of education, the problem of ignorance really, with respect to nutrition, which I think can well be met through out schools. It occurs to me that probably there is existing in America today more malnutrition out of ignorance and out of willful neglect of proper procedures and standards in selection of food than there is out of true poverty. I am remembering back to my own practices in high school, where I had money to get the properly prepared meal in the cafeteria and almost never did because I would rather have a candy bar and some ice cream, than to go for the cafeteria meal. Isn't there a great deal of that taking place today and the more affluence you have the more there is?

Dr. PERRYMAN. There is, Mr. Congressman. I would agree with your observation there is more malnutrition in this country as a result of ignorance and indifference than economic need.

Mr. VEYSEY. That, I think, is very important. I have been concerned, that we have to relate these food programs to the school program. But I am also concerned that there is only a certain amount of money available and extractable from the taxpayer for purposes of education. If we charge a whole lot of other programs, food and many other things, to that amount of money, we diminish the amount of available money for educational purposes.

I agree with you, it is very difficult to keep the attention of a hungry child. That is a very real problem. But I am concerned that sometimes these problems get charged as being a cost of education and may be deducted from whatever the amount is that we are able to get for education purposes. This gives me pause to consider, because this can be an expensive program.

Dr. PERRYMAN. The paying parent now in effect is paying twice. He is going to pay for the meal of the nonpaying child and he is paying for his own child as well, and under this program, he would be relieved of that. And also, I would like again to stress the point, and we believe that this is not just the point of argument, but a very valid one, that good use is not being made of the present educational tax dollar in many instances when the child is simply not in a condition to learn.

Mr. VEYSEY. I can cite an interesting example. We live in a pretty good neighborhood and we have a near neighbor who is a Congressman. I am not going to mention a name, but his wife says, "I send the children down for that free breakfast at school because I don't like to get up in the morning."

Dr. PERRYMAN. I suspect she is not unique.

Mr. VEYSEY. I know she is not and this looms as a problem. Well, thank you for your comments. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Perryman has completed his testimony.

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