CA Editorial: One School's Victory
Over the Battle of the Bulge
June 29, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle
For more articles like this
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https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Students at Aptos Middle School in San Francisco are not exactly
celebrating that their school has been purged of unhealthy
foods.
"Students eat junk food because that's what they like," says
13-year-old Cristy Cobb, an eighth-grader. "I kind of want chips
sometimes for lunch." Christine Revelo, a sixth-grader, says she
used to buy a soda every other day at school. But those halcyon
days are over. In February the school underwent a food
revolution.
The main target: The school's snack bar, known in San Francisco
as "beaneries." Aptos' beanery traditionally sold items like
mega-cheeseburgers, oversized pizzas, Slim Jims and Hostess
cupcakes. "I'd see kids coming in with $2 and buying a 20-ounce
caffeinated soda and a giant bag of chips every day," said Aptos
Principal Linal Ishibashi. "I almost felt like a criminal
selling this stuff to them."
Now students can select from a menu with items like Rosie's
steaming chicken vegetable soup (made by Rose Ghiotto, the
veteran cook-manager of the cafeteria), fresh pasta and sushi.
The school's two vending machines have been emptied of sodas,
and filled with bottled water. Instead of whole pizzas, pizza is
sold by the slice, along with a salad.
But gradually, students are accepting the regime change. "Kids
complained at first, but then we polled them about what they'd
like to to see as healthy options," said Dr. Mel Heymann, an
Aptos parent. He's also a professor of pediatrics and chief of
gastroenterology and nutrition at UCSF. "We have not seen kids
bringing in their own junk food or quarts of soda. It has worked
out really well."
And Ishibashi says there have been other unexpected benefits.
Teachers say they've noticed fewer discipline problems after the
lunch period, less littering. Sales of bottled water from
vending machines now exceed previous sales of soda. And profits
at the beanery have also increased since the sale of healthier
foods began.
Except for handful of sites, all other schools in San Francisco
have "beaneries" that still sell foods high in fat and sugar.
But the changes at Aptos are expected to be the first stage in a
proposed transformation of what kids can eat at schools
throughout San Francisco. In January, the school board passed a
resolution calling for a phasing out of sales of unhealthy food
items,
beginning this fall.
If San Francisco implements the recommendations of an advisory
committee established by the district this spring - in part
based on Aptos' experience - it would arguably offer the most
nutritious food of any school district nationwide.
The committee, made up of parents and health professionals, is
recommending that no candy or soda be sold on any campus, even
to raise funds for school clubs and activities. Its most radical
proposal is that any packaged snack food sold at a school will
have to contain a minimum of 5 percent of eight essential
nutrients, including protein, calcium, iron, vitamins A and B,
niacin and thiamin. In addition, the committee is urging the
district to find ways to provide more nutrition education to
students and to beef up PE classes.
At the urging of school officials, the group finished its
proposals weeks ago, but the district has yet to take any
action. Now that schools have closed for the summer, with each
passing day the challenge of transforming the district's food
programs this fall - as called for in the board resolution -
becomes more difficult. We urge Superintendent Arlene Ackerman
and the school board to quickly approve and then implement the
committee's well-considered proposals.
It makes sense for San Francisco to take the lead in promoting
healthier eating habits in our schools. Children also have a
right to benefit from a new "California cuisine" based in the
schools. Schools alone won't solve the problem of childhood
obesity. But the least they can do is teach children, and by
extension their parents, about healthier alternatives.
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CA Editorial:
Fast Food is King at Arroyo High
June 29, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle
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visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
If You're a student at Arroyo High School in San Lorenzo, and
you must have a Whopper, french fries and a Coke for lunch, you
won't have to go far to satisfy your fast-food cravings.
That's because there's a Burger King right on campus, just
outside the door to the school cafeteria, staffed by student
workers dressed in neat red uniforms and caps. The franchise
holder? The school district itself. Even the garbage cans carry
the Burger King logo.
Each day hundreds of students in this community tucked between
San Leandro and Hayward rush to the order windows to satisfy
their fast-food fix. "I don't think it's healthy, but I eat it
because it tastes good," ninth-grader Chris Cook said as he
clutched his lunch in a brown Burger King bag.
As one student muscled her way through the crowd on her way off
campus, she berated her fellow students. "This food is so bad
for you," she proclaimed.
Everyone ignored her as they pressed toward the Burger King
window dispensing Chicken Tenders, "Chick 'n Crisp" sandwiches,
Hershey's Sundae Pie and other familiar fast-food items. Right
next to the Burger King is a door leading to the school's
"Healthy Express" counter, where students can buy salads and
fresh sandwiches. Of the two, Burger King is winning, hands
down. In a recent visit, not a single student lined up at the
"Healthy Express" counter.
We sympathize with the plight of school officials trying to
accommodate the tastes of picky students. But no district should
be peddling food that could contribute to the crisis of obesity
afflicting young people in California and the nation.
Schools should be educating young people about healthy
lifestyles and diets - not pandering to tastes cultivated by
sophisticated marketing, busy parents and adolescents who don't
understand or don't care about the long-term consequences of
their decisions.
"Burger King has, in effect, bought the school's implicit
approval of its product," says Allan Kanner, a Berkeley
psychologist and author of the forthcoming "Psychology and
Consumer Culture," to be published by the American Psychological
Association this fall. "It sends a message to children about
what schools think is OK for them to be eating, and undercuts
the message it should be sending about good health and good
eating."
Some of the state's largest school districts, including Oakland,
San Francisco and Los Angeles, are moving in the opposite
direction. And in a huge victory for anti-junk food forces, just
this week New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced
that beginning this fall vending machines in 1, 200 public
schools will no longer sell soda and other favorites like
chewing gum, candy corn and licorice. Fat, sugar and salt will
be trimmed from the 800, 000 lunches and breakfasts served in
its school cafeterias. "Everyone acknowledged we can't continue
to have this flood of junk foods, processed food in our
schools," the district's director of nutrition services
explained.
But at Arroyo High, principal Richard Lloyd says the
campus-based Burger King is a win-win situation. "It's been a
great money-generator for the district, the service is quick and
reliable, the kids like it, and for some it's their major meal
of the day," he said.
When he came to the school as a journalism teacher two decades
ago, all he heard were the usual complaints from students about
inedible cafeteria food. These days, he hears little whining,
which he takes as a sign that they're happier eaters.
But are they healthier? Not if the statistics on overweight and
obese children are anything to go by, and the alarms sounded by
the U.S. surgeon general and the head of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The adults who run the food program at Arroyo High concede that
Burger King may not offer the healthiest fare. They point out
that the school is encircled by every imaginable fast-food
outlet, from McDonald's and Wendy's to Jack in the Box and
Casper's Hot Dogs. They say having a Burger King on campus helps
keep kids on campus - and leaves open the possibility that the
students might be tempted by healthier items at the "Healthy
Express" counter.
Child nutrition director Jo Ann Smith says the district enhanced
the Burger King menu by offering a "veggie burger combo." And as
long as students don't overindulge their fast-food habit, she
says, the health effects are likely to be minimal. "If all the
kids ate were hamburgers with extra cheese and mayonnaise and a
double of order of fries every day of the week, that wouldn't be
good," she said. "But moderation is OK. We are trying to meet
all their needs."
But the strategy has yet to pay off for students like Cameron
Camacho, a ninth-grader, who says he's never ventured through
the "Healthy Express" door, even though it's just yards from the
Burger King. The days he doesn't eat a Burger King lunch, he
opts instead for a candy bar washed down by a soda.
So much for "moderation."
For the more nutritious offerings, a mere 50 kids - out of a
student body of 1,800 - buy fresh sandwiches, and only 25 buy
the salads. Even fewer have dared to try the veggie burger.
And if Arroyo High really wants its kids to buy healthier foods,
it is further undercutting its efforts by also running two snack
bars near the Burger King, crammed with favorites like nachos
with cheese sauce, pretzels and Dorito chips. The healthier
offerings seem lost amid the piles of food with minimal
nutritional value.
The presence of Burger King at schools like Arroyo High and its
sister school San Lorenzo High makes them distinctive enough to
attract attention from reporters as far afield as Japan. But in
most other respects its food operations are similar to thousands
of other schools in California.
Schools shouldn't be the place where kids can indulge their
fast-food and sugar addictions without limits. Nor should
companies with products of dubious nutritional value be allowed
to market them to captive, and vulnerable, consumers. While at
school, it's kids' minds that should be growing, not their
waistlines.
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