Food for Thought: Pupils’ Health

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration passed stringent new guidelines requiring that schools reduce the fat in pizzas and otherwise improve the nutritional quality of food served in the $6.5-billion-a-year federal school lunch program.

In a report issued in January, hoever, outgoing Clinton administration officials said these efforts have been undermined by the rapid growth in the marketing of junk foods to kids on campus. Lucrative contracts with soft drink companies and others selling food with little or no nutritional value have become an increasingly popular source of money for cash-strapped schools. Junk food is easier to get than ever on campus.

The new Agriculture secretary, Ann Veneman, is now reviewing the key recommendation in the Clinton report: that all snacks sold in schools, from soft drinks to candy bars, be required to meet the newly stringent nutritional guidelines. In truth, no one expects Veneman to endorse the recommendation, which would essentially ban junk food sales. Such sales are hugely popular in many school districts. For instance, Education Secretary Roderick Paige was celebrated for landing a $5-million contract with Coca-Cola last year when he ran Houston’s school system. Agriculture Department officials have also been wary of issuing any school nutrition guidelines since the National Soft Drink Assn., in a 1983 lawsuit, persuaded a federal appeals court to rule that the Agriculture Department only has authority to regulate food served in the cafeteria line during meal periods.

However, bipartisan support for more modest steps to discourage junk food consumption in schools has emerged in the wake of two new studies showing that only 2% of school-aged children meet the Food Guide Pyramid serving recommendations for all five major food groups, that children’s consumption of refined sugars and soft drinks has skyrocketed in the last decade and that soft drink consumption is “strongly linked” to the doubling of childhood obesity in the last two decades. The rise in obesity is also linked to a sharp rise in the incidence of Type II diabetes.

At a Senate hearing on children’s nutrition last week, legislators from both parties pledged to expand federal support for nutrition programs whose success has been well established. One model should be California’s Food on the Run, high school workshops that help the schools identify healthy but still popular alternatives to junk food--fruit bars instead of chocolate cakes, for instance. The program also teaches administrators fund-raising techniques that don’t hold them hostage to junk foods.

And this week, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) plans to introduce a bill that would give the secretary of Agriculture power to ban the sale of junk foods before the end of the last lunch period, restoring the authority that has been in doubt since the 1983 appeals court ruling.

Legislators can’t reverse children’s addiction to junk foods. They should, however, take modest steps to discourage it.