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Parents,
Officials Urged to Improve School Foods
Center for Science in the Public Interest, September 21,
2003
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Tool Kit Gives Advice for Replacing
Soda & Junk Food with Healthier Drinks & Snacks
Parents, teachers, and school administrators should work to
improve the nutritional quality of the meals, snacks, and drinks
available to students, according to the nonprofit Center for
Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). The nutrition-advocacy
group today released its School Foods Tool Kit—a comprehensive
manual that provides practical advice for improving school
foods. Replacing soda and junk foods with healthful drinks and
snacks, says the group, can help combat the skyrocketing rates
of obesity in children and teens.
CSPI also announced its list of Better Snacks & Worst Snacks for
school vending machines. CSPI’s worst snacks are Chips Ahoy!,
Oreo, and other fatty cookies; chocolate whole or two percent
milk; Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other sodas; Frutopia, FruitWorks,
and other “fruit” drinks; Keebler Club & Cheddar Sandwich
Crackers; Kit Kat Big Kat, Snickers, and other candy bars;
Hostess HOHOs; and Starburst Fruit Chews and other sugary
candies. CSPI’s better snacks are applesauce cups (unsweetened);
bottled water; Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bars Oats ‘n Honey;
orange juice (100 percent); Chex Mix Traditional; Dole or Del
Monte Fruit Cups; low-fat or fat-free milk; and raisins and
other unsweetened dried fruit.
CSPI’s School Foods Tool Kit recommends that communities set
nutritional standards for snacks sold outside the official
school meal program. Such standards might ban soda, limit
portion sizes, and require snacks to have 10 percent or less of
calories from saturated plus trans fat, and have 35 percent or
less of its weight from added sugars.
“It’s important for parents to feed kids well at home, but
parents also need to worry about the six hours a day their kids
are in school,” said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G.
Wootan. “Regrettably, many of our schools are trying to bridge
budget gaps at the expense of our children’s health. If parents
organize, apply pressure, and work with school-food decision
makers, they will be able to worry less about what their kids
are eating at school.”
Despite rising public concern over obesity and poor nutrition,
school officials often won’t curb soda and junk food sales in
schools for fear of losing desperately needed revenue. But
CSPI’s School Foods Tool Kit provides many examples of how some
schools have raised as much revenue—and sometimes more—by
selling more healthful options.
Unlike the foods in vending machines, school lunches have
actually been improving over the last ten years, as their fat,
cholesterol, and sodium have decreased, while fruits and
vegetables have become more plentiful. CSPI says that one easy
way for schools to improve meals further is by having cafeterias
switch from whole or two percent milk to one percent or fat-free
milk.
“Kids who buy a school lunch are at least getting a good balance
of nutrients, whereas kids spending their lunch money in the
vending machine might get Doritos and a Coke,” Wootan said.
Some of the CSPI’s recommendations for parents in the School
Foods Tool Kit include:
Visit the school at lunch time. See the cafeteria and the foods
offered as part of the school lunch program—but also find out
what’s available in vending machines.
If you don’t like what you see, ask the principal or the school
food service director about healthier options. Ask members of
the PTA, community health councils, the media, and others groups
to do the same.
Urge governors, state legislators, city councilors, and school
board officials to work to enact legislation to improve the
nutritional quality of drinks and snacks sold in vending
machines.
Rates of obesity have doubled in children and tripled in
adolescents over the last two decades. That is already fueling a
rise in type 2 diabetes, and 60 percent of overweight five- to
10-year-olds already have high cholesterol or some other risk
factor for heart disease.
Although some food industry groups try to put most of the blame
for childhood obesity on physical inactivity as opposed to poor
nutrition, CSPI says that it would take 75 minutes of biking for
a young person to burn off the calories in a 20-ounce bottle of
soda.
Parents or school administrators can purchase the School
Foods Tool Kit by sending a $10 check made payable to CSPI to
School Foods Tool Kit, CSPI, 1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW #300,
Washington, DC 20009. A free version is available at
www.cspinet.org/schoolfoods.
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