Rep. George Miller enlisted the help of San Francisco chef Charles Phan as he proposed legislation Thursday that would spend $8 billion more on school lunches and other food programs in the next decade, opening a tug-of-war between farm subsidies and child nutrition as tight budgets force Congress to choose between the two.

"One of our goals is to adopt one school and start cooking, because what I see in the school program is so bad, it's just amazing," said Phan, the executive chef of Slanted Door and other restaurants in San Francisco and the father of three young children who attend schools in San Mateo.

Phan, who was in Washington, said he learned from experience with his local schools why much of the food served in schools is unhealthy: With about $2 to spend on a meal, bound by regulations and offered such farm surpluses as "canned cheese" at huge discounts, schools "can't do it, so they just start serving really bad food."

The enlistment of chefs is part of first lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign against childhood obesity, which is quietly transforming U.S. food policy.

The coming fight over funding nutrition programs will pit Miller, a liberal 18-term Martinez Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, against Collin Peterson, a conservative Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Agriculture Committee and is a champion of federal aid to corn, sugar, dairy, rice and other commodity crops.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a close ally of both men, will have to mediate. The three met in her office Wednesday. Because Miller's committee has yet to come up with cuts to match his proposal to spend an additional $8 billion, it would have to convince other committees, particularly Peterson's, to help fund the plan.

Doubling the money

Miller's bold opening move would nearly double the extra money for child nutrition approved in March by the Senate Agriculture Committee whose chair, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, is the daughter of a rice farmer.

Lincoln chose to add $4.5 billion for child nutrition to the Senate version of the bill by cutting money that helps farmers improve the environment, leaving crop subsidies unscathed. Miller supports Lincoln's approach but said cuts in farm subsidies are also under discussion.

Miller must find savings somewhere to get the increase he wants for school lunches. The offsetting cuts can come from anywhere, but farm subsidies are an obvious target because they enable companies to produce low-cost, high-calorie foods that are blamed in part for the nation's obesity epidemic.

The $17 billion school lunch program feeds 32 million children a day but is only one of many federal food programs that include summer and after-school meals and the Women, Infants and Children program for poor mothers.

Long-term program

Miller and other Democrats want to close all gaps in food programs for poor children so that meals are available "from birth to the end of high school." He wants more children automatically enrolled in meal programs, and his plan includes money to link local farms with schools to provide fresher food.

"This is a bill that America needs," he said. "The schools are not going to solve this problem by themselves, but they are a very, very important platform in terms of showing our children an alternative to an unhealthy eating style that afflicts many of them for many years."

Rep. Todd Platts, a Pennsylvania Republican, signed on, arguing that spending an additional $800 million a year to help reduce obesity and improve children's school performance is a drop in the bucket compared with the overall $3.6 trillion federal budget.

'Dramatic savings'

"We know there can be dramatic savings over the long term," Platts said. Obesity is a major component in the nation's health care bill.

Phan said his children, ages 8 to 11, cried when his wife tried to make them eat school lunches.

"It's always been my belief that the first thing you teach kids is how to eat, because once you get them hooked on good food, they're not going to go back," Phan said.

He pointed to San Francisco's Chinatown, where many people live in poverty but can afford to eat lots of produce.

"There's no McDonald's in Chinatown," Phan said. "Cooking a little shrimp or pork with spinach is much cheaper to do in Chinatown than if you buy a family a Happy Meal."

Other chefs at Thursday's news conference were equally ruthless about school meals.

"We pack our lunch," said Linton Hopkins, the owner of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta who has two children in public schools. He said a third of the other parents do, too.

Hopkins said he has been working with public schools for five years, planting an organic garden, introducing salad bars and "getting water in as a beverage."

He said money is the chief problem. "So many times, that becomes your prime motivator, and unfortunately as a food-service operator, you make some bad choices about where you source your food and how much nutrition you can put on a plate."

Good school food comes down to "very simple truths," Hopkins said. "It says 'made with real lemon' on our furniture polish, but then on our 'lemon drink,' it's 10 percent juice. How about we just have lemonade?"