The do-or-die moment for school food approaches — the House is due to take up its version of the school lunch re-authorization bill, also known as the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” later this month. Of course, even if it passes, the differences between the House and Senate versions must be reconciled before the bill can become law. And if Congress is unable to act between now and December, school lunch reform will have to start from scratch come January with a new and more Republican Congress.

With the stakes so high, First Lady Michelle Obama renewed her call for passage at a speech in Louisiana the other day and in doing so, directly linked school lunch reform to her larger Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative. “It’s important to be clear,” she declared. “Unless we pass the Child Nutrition legislation that’s before Congress right now,” Let’s Move may fail.

Yet, while she mentioned the “critically needed investments” the reform bill will offer schools — though most advocates believe the bill remains woefully underfunded — she downplayed the biggest impact that passage of the school lunch reform bill may have. If the bill becomes law, then for the first time the USDA will wrest control from local school districts and their food company partners of so-called “competitive foods” in school. These are the products that schools sell to students to subsidize the costs of feeding low-income kids (since government money doesn’t cover the full cost of school meals). While most schools have restrictions on the nutritional value of the meals themselves, the “competitive foods” don’t — and that’s how food companies and cash-starved school boards sneak soda, chips, cookies, brownies, and other sugary and salty treats into school vending machines, stores and snack bars and thence into schoolkids’ daily diet.

But the reform bill would go a long way toward ending all that. The USDA would be able to set standards for these other foods — although, as good-food advocate Jill Richardson pointed out recently, it’s premature to assume that it will lead to a junk-food ban. But if nothing else, it will begin a needed debate over these foods.