How much responsibility do schools bear for addressing the obesity of their students? (continued)

Snacks Everywhere

According to a Centers for Disease Control study in 2000, roughly half of all school districts (with middle and/or high schools) had distribution contracts with soda vendors. Almost 80 percent of these districts negotiated to get a specified share of receipts. In these districts, students typically can buy sodas from vending machines, snack bars, school stores, even the cafeteria.

That soda helps wash down a multitude of junk food: 70 percent of the schools surveyed by the CDC permitted the sale of low-nutrition snacks during lunch. At the other end of the spectrum, fewer than 10 percent of the districts surveyed provided daily physical education classes or the equivalent—this despite the fact the CDC and other health authorities recommend children and teens participate in moderate to vigorous physical activity for one hour five times a week.

Not surprisingly, school officials find themselves in a tight spot. Most say they would like to do more, but there are other considerations.

First, selling sodas, snacks and foods like pizza and chicken wings is a lucrative and arguably necessary business. Revenue from such sales helps keep a lot of school food service programs in the black and in some places funds school activities and field trips that might not exist otherwise. Many fear, whether they admit it or not, that banning junk food sales would cause financial disaster.

Second, the higher academic standards and greater accountability of No Child Left Behind have compelled many districts and administrators to roll back or eliminate programs that might detract from a core curriculum.

“Schools have all sorts of mandates and elevated expectations,” says Purdue’s Templin. “Educators begin looking at what they’re expected to teach. They look at other activities like art, music, P.E. and health, and they prioritize what’s most important. That makes for a very difficult situation for people who value those curricular activities that tend to get cut or minimized, like P.E. and health.”

Besides, say many educators in moments of candor, solving student obesity is not really their job, even if they were adequately equipped or able to solve it.

“Our responsibility rests with that over which we have control,” says Mike Redburn, superintendent in Bozeman, Mont. “If anyone depends on the school to do the heavy lifting on student nutrition and health, their hopes will be unfulfilled. Families and communities must meet their responsibilities.”

School Food

Like it or not, schools must shoulder this weighty burden, if only because most children spend a good chunk of their waking hours five days a week there.

“We are responsible for these children for up to eight hours a day,” says Pat Cooper, superintendent of the 3,000-student McComb, Miss., School District. “It is educationally and ethically our duty to take care of them.”

The core issue for some in the food service field is the quality of what’s served to students during lunch.

“We are obligated to serve healthy food. Districts that don’t are simply being lazy. Whoever said it was OK for us to sell junk food?” asks Al Schieder, director of food services in the Folsom Cordova Unified Schools, a suburban K-12 district of 18,000 students northeast of Sacramento, Calif.

Beyond that, there’s this: Fat children tend to become fat adults. And fat adults cost this country more than $11 billion annually in health care, lost productivity and other expenses. Teaching good eating habits and health is an economic imperative.

“Not to mention,” says Louie, the board member in Moraga, Calif., “that fat adults have a reduced chance of becoming old adults.”

McComb’s Regimen

The good news about schools, nutrition and health is that there’s plenty of good news. An array of school districts in schools across the country have launched programs to eliminate or reduce sodas and snacks on campus, improve the nutritional quality and appeal of school lunches, bolster lessons and classes on health and increase opportunities for physical exercise.

The California legislature in 2001 established the first nutrition standards for so-called “competitive foods and beverages.” These are products not sold as part of a school meal, but separately, such as pizza or soda, in cafeterias, student stores and vending machines. Because such fare had not been regulated previously, competitive foods tended to be junk foods high in sugar and fat, boasting only minimal nutritional value compared to school meals that are subject to government regulation.

The California Department of Education then ordered a pilot program involving 16 middle schools and nine high schools to evaluate how the new nutrition standards affected food service programs and income. Conducted by the state’s Linking Education, Activity and Food program, the study found most test cafeterias actually boosted their income by reducing or eliminating competitive foods that did not meet the state’s nutrition standards.

The reason? More students purchased the healthier school lunches, if only because they had no other option.

In Folsom, Schieder junked the a la carte menu and ended sales of unhealthy snacks and soda in the district’s 30 schools. The lunch menu was redesigned to give all students the same eight daily options: salads, pasta, wraps, even sushi. Prices were adjusted so that even the poorest students could afford the healthier meals, eliminating the stigma of some students having to buy the cheaper and definitely uncool government meal.

“And you know what? We’re doing fine financially,” Schieder says.

Cooper, who directed the Centers for Disease Control’s National School Health Education Coalition before becoming McComb’s superintendent, did something similar in his conservative, low-income district. At the K-8 level, he and his school board banned all fund raising using candy or other less nutritious offerings. The district set guidelines for what sorts of snacks could be brought to school. At the high school, the lunch menu was revised and soda sales restricted to after school.

“If we’re going to do what No Child Left Behind says—and I think we should—then we can’t ignore the health issues,” says Cooper. “It’s a cop-out to say you can’t change the way kids eat. If there’s nothing else to eat but what you feed them, you can be assured that kids are going to eat the right foods.”