A LOOK AT THE NEW RULES
The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are healthful. The rule announced Thursday will apply to “a la carte” lines in school cafeterias, vending machines, snack bars and any other food sold regularly on campus. It won’t apply to fundraisers, after-school concession stands, class parties or foods brought from home.
A separate set of rules already applies to meals in the main lunch line.
Under the new rules, most food sold in school will now be subject to fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits. Snack foods will have to be less than 200 calories and have some nutritional value instead of being mostly empty calories.
What’s out
Candy
Snack cakes
Most cookies
Most pretzels
Most ice cream and ice cream treats
Deep-fried, high-fat foods
Greasy pizza
Many juice drinks
High-calorie sodas
High-calorie sports drinks
What’s in
Baked potato chips
Trail mix
Dried fruits
Fruit cups
Yogurt
Baked lower-fat french fries
Healthier pizzas with whole grain crust
100 percent juice drinks
Diet soda (high schools)
Diet sports drinks (high schools)
— Associated Press
[ FOR AJC ]
GEORGIA ANGLE
You can lead a kid to water, but you can’t make him drink it instead of soda.
That’s DeKalb County parent Anita Johnson’s take on the new Agriculture Department healthful snack rules.
“I think it’s a good idea if they can make it stick,” said Johnson, whose two daughters attend Southwest DeKalb High. “But it’s going to be hard.”
She predicts high school students will snack at gas station convenience stores instead of school, while younger campus-bound kids develop a black market for high fructose treats.
Ana Kucelin, the dietitian for the City Schools of Decatur, acknowledged that kids — even her own — prefer ice cream and pizza. So at home she makes pizza with whole wheat crust and lots of vegetables.
“The solution is to make these foods healthier,” she said.
Decatur is already using pizza with half whole wheat crust, while reducing the fat on the menu and experimenting with vegetables such as bok choy.
Kucelin predicted the food industry will give schools more choices by developing more healthful options with kids’ taste buds in mind.
Officials in Gwinnett and Marietta said they are striving to serve healthier options to students, and Cobb said it has a team of dietitians reviewing the new standards to assess any necessary menu changes.
— TY TAGAMI
Kids, your days of blowing off those healthier school lunches and filling up on cookies from the vending machine are numbered. The government is onto you.
For the first time, the Agriculture Department is telling schools what sorts of snacks they can sell. The new restrictions announced Thursday fill a gap in nutrition rules that allowed many students to load up on fat, sugar and salt despite the existing guidelines for healthful meals.
“Parents will no longer have to worry that their kids are using their lunch money to buy junk food and junk drinks at school,” said Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest who lobbied for the new rules.
That doesn’t mean schools will be limited to doling out broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
Snacks that still make the grade include granola bars, low-fat tortilla chips, fruit cups and 100 percent fruit juice. And high school students can buy diet versions of soda, sports drinks and iced tea.
But say goodbye to some beloved school standbys, such as doughy pretzels, chocolate chip cookies and those little ice cream cups with their own spoons. Some may survive in low-fat or whole wheat versions. The idea is to weed out junk food and replace it with something with nutritional merit.
The bottom line, said Wootan: “There has to be some food in the food.”
There are no vending machines at Lauren Jones’ middle school in Hoover, Ala., but she said there’s an “a la carte” stand that sells chips, ice cream and other snacks.
“Having something sweet to go with your meal is good sometimes,” the 13-year-old said, although she also thinks that encouraging kids to eat healthier is worthwhile.
The federal snack rules don’t take effect until the 2014-15 school year, but there’s nothing to stop schools from making changes earlier.
Some students won’t notice much difference. Many schools already are working to improve their offerings. Thirty-nine states have some sort of snack food policy in place.
Rachel Snyder, 17, said earlier this year her school in Washington, Ill., stripped its vending machines of sweets. She misses the pretzel-filled M&M’s.
“If I want a sugary snack every now and then,” Snyder said, “I should be able to buy it.”
The federal rules put calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits on almost everything sold during the day at 100,000 schools — expanding on the previous rules for meals. The Agriculture Department sets nutritional standards for schools that receive federal funds to help pay for lunches, and that covers nearly every public school and about half of private ones.
One oasis of sweetness and fat will remain: anything students bring from home, from bagged lunches to birthday cupcakes.
The Agriculture Department was required to draw up the rules under a law passed by Congress in 2010, championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as part of the government’s effort to combat childhood obesity.
Nutritional guidelines for subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall.
Last year’s rules making main lunch fare more nutritious faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn’t be telling kids what to eat.
“While well-intended, these new regulations have essentially put the federal government in the business of dictating the type, amount, and even color of food that can and cannot be served in school cafeterias,” said Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., at a congressional hearing Thursday.
[ BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM ]
The rules have the potential to transform what many children eat at school.
In addition to meals already subject to nutrition standards, most lunchrooms also have a la carte lines that sell other foods — often greasy foods like mozzarella sticks and nachos. That gives students a way to circumvent the healthy lunches. Under the rules, those lines could offer more healthful pizzas, low-fat hamburgers, fruit cups or yogurt and similar fare.
One of the biggest changes will be a near-ban on high-calorie sports drinks. Many beverage companies added sports drinks to school vending machines after sodas were pulled in response to criticism from the public health community.
The rule would only allow sales in high schools of sodas and sports drinks that contain 60 calories or less in a 12-ounce serving, banning the highest-calorie versions of those beverages.
Low-calorie sports drinks — Gatorade’s G2, for example — and diet drinks will be allowed in high school.
Elementary and middle schools will be allowed to sell only water, carbonated water, 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice, and low fat and fat-free milk, including nonfat flavored milks.
[ END OPTIONAL TRIM ]
A school nutritionist said schools have had difficulty adjusting to the 2012 changes, and the new a la carte standards could also be a hardship.
The healthier foods are expensive, said Sandra Ford, president of the School Nutrition Association and director of food and nutrition services for a school district in Bradenton, Fla. She also predicted that her school district could lose $975,000 a year under the new a la carte guidelines because they would have to eliminate many of the popular foods they sell.
About the Author
