By GIL KLEIN
Media General News Service
Saturday, July 22, 2006

WASHINGTON – Die, cupcakes. Be gone, French fries. Disappear, sodas. Trans fats, take that.

School districts across the country are responding to a federal mandate to review the nutritional value of their school lunches by this month and to look at what’s sold in vending machines and for school fundraisers.

Some schools are even restricting the goodies teachers can give out as rewards and what children can bring from home to share with their classmates for birthday celebrations.

“Schools can play a role in fighting childhood obesity,” said Suanne Buggy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the mandate because of its role in subsidizing school lunches. “The policy gives the schools an opportunity to create a healthy environment.”

Reacting to the rise in juvenile obesity, Congress passed legislation last year that required every school district to create a panel of community members to devise “wellness polices” on school menus and student exercise time. With little enforcement power, the USDA is counting on school districts to take the initiative.

At issue is not only the standard fare offered for school lunches, but also the a la carte items that schools sell on the side as money-making ventures subsidizing the food service.

In Rocky Mount, N.C., schools once offered cookies as big as a child’s face as an a la carte item, said district nutritionist Patty Green.

In the past year, fried chicken sandwiches and chicken and shrimp poppers — all loaded with fats — were eliminated from the selections. In their place are chicken Caesar salads and chef salads with fat-free dressings, she said.

This year, students will find sandwiches on whole wheat bread, rolls and even apple turnovers made with whole grains, frozen “push ups” made with 100 percent fruit juice and low-fat ice cream sandwiches.
“Hopefully the food is still going to be good,” Green said. “Many of the changes the kids don’t notice. We went from 2 percent milk to skim milk, and no one complained.”

Some critics say the federal policy is too vague to force changes.

“Ultimately, this means that little will be done in school districts in which the local bureaucrats or food service management companies neither wish to expend the effort, nor incur the expense, necessary to affect meaningful change,” wrote school food nutrition expert Ann Cooper. “Kids are being served — and sold — toxic processed ‘foods’ in an educational environment intended to nurture their minds and bodies.”

Cooper, a professional chef, transformed the menus of the Berkeley, Calif., schools to replace frozen, processed food, laden with sugar and trans fats, with offerings of fresh fruits, vegetables and food made from whole grains.

Change is not restricted to the San Francisco area where Cooper’s effort was underwritten by a famous restaurant.

“I have a central kitchen that had a wall of deep-fat fryers,” said Imogene Clarke, director of school nutrition services in Columbia, S.C. “This summer we took out seven and left one.”

French fries now are baked, she said. The trick is to make them look and taste as good as the deep-fat variety. Whole wheat pizza with low-fat cheese will be new this year, as well as corndogs made with turkey franks and whole wheat flour.

“You can’t take everything away from the kids that they like,” Clarke said. “They will find a way to get it.”
School vending machines often are a money maker for schools, and some principals have resisted efforts to change what they sell. But that’s changing.

In Mississippi’s Jackson County, students this fall will find vending machines without carbonated beverages, candy bars and hard candy, said food service director Lark Christian.

Sodas will be replaced with water, 100 percent fruit drinks, and Gatorade sports drinks, she said. Items in the snack machines will have to have some nutritional value.

“This is coming to every school district in Mississippi,” Christian said.

In Kentucky, school nutritionists worked for four years to convince the legislature to change what’s sold in school vending machines.

“The first year we proposed it, people looked at us like we were from outer space,” said Anita Courtney, who just retired as director of health promotion for Fayette County schools in Lexington.

Now school nutritionists are aiming at candy that is given out to students to reward good behavior and academic performance, she said. A 2002 survey found this was a common practice in 84 percent of the schools. Also targeted are candy and doughnuts sold in school fundraisers.

“It’s going to be hard to overturn years of habit,” she said.

Just as hard will be stopping parents from sending in cupcakes and candy to help their children celebrate their birthdays, nutritionists say.

“You can have a birthday celebration every day of the year,” said Clarke of Columbia. “We are recommending to principals that at the beginning of every month, a class can celebrate everybody’s birthday for that month and be done with it.”

But children should be allowed some options that are not necessarily the most nutritious food available, said Rocky Mount’s Green.

“If you take everything away from the students, then they don’t learn how to make a choice,” she said. “Pizza is not a bad food — you just don’t eat it every day. You want to eat a variety of foods. If we can teach students that and offer foods they like, that’s the goal.”