Federal Plan to Limit Potatoes on School Menus Whips Up Supporters of this 'Gateway Vegetable'

Maine—Around here, you can find "Maine Potato Candy"—mashed potatoes rolled in coconut and dipped in chocolate—and potato donuts. A popular county fair offers wrestling matches in a vat of potatoes. In a state where spuds are the top agricultural product, locals can't get enough of them, even at schools.

"We've got to have potatoes—our children are used to potatoes,"says Louise Bray, food-service director for Caribou, Maine, public schools. She regularly serves hash browns for breakfast, plus mashed potatoes, "Maine fries,"a baked potato bar and potato puffs for lunch.

But now the federal government wants to all but toss tubers out of school.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is proposing to eliminate the "white potato"—defined as any variety but the sweet potato—from federally subsidized school breakfasts and to limit them sharply at lunch.

Messing with a stalwart like the spud doesn't go well with the potato industry, school cafeteria directors and legislators from potato-growing regions. They're fighting to see that in schools, no potato is left behind.

As part of the effort, spud sellers are promoting potatoes as a "true gateway vegetable"that could lead kids to broccoli.

At a March Senate hearing on the USDA budget, Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) hoisted a standard-fare brown-skinned spud in one hand and, in the other, a head of iceberg lettuce, which hasn't come under explicit federal scrutiny. One medium white potato contains nearly twice the vitamin C "as this entire head,"she said, asking: "So my question, Mr. Secretary, is what does the department have against potatoes?"