Legislature to ban junk food from schools
SALEM — Amid worry that Oregon schoolchildren are getting fat, state lawmakers handily passed legislation that will restrict foods and beverages sold in school cafeterias, student stores and vending machines.
Among state lawmakers who want big bags of potato chips, king-sized candy bars and giant sugar cookies replaced with smaller portion sizes and healthier fare such as dried fruits, nuts and granola bars are: state Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland and Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford.
Bates and Esquivel are among the 27 co-sponsors of House Bill 2650, which will set nutritional standards for foods sold outside of the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, including those items sold at a-la-carte lines, beginning with the 2008-09 school year.
Bates, a family physician, said the new law would end the mixed messages that many schools give students on what it means to eat a balanced, healthful diet.
"It's hard to teach proper nutrition and good eating habits when students walk into the cafeteria and all they have there is pizza and carbonated beverages," Bates said. "Kids learn a lot more at school than just the Three R's."
While Ashland School District banished candy and soda pop from its cafeteria offerings years ago, many of Oregon's other 197 districts have not jumped onto the healthy-foods bandwagon, and will be affected dramatically by the bill, which Gov. Ted Kulongoski is expected to sign into law.
Esquivel, whose voting record suggests that he is opposed generally to taking control away from local boards and commissions, said he felt compelled to support the bipartisan proposal, knowing, as a diabetic, what affect foods have on the body.
"I am not sure what the answer is to the childhood obesity problem, but I do know that kids will be better off without high-carb, high-sugar foods," said Esquivel, who said he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1986 after exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
The impending nutritional standards, which are similar to those already on the books in neighboring California and Washington, would require that snack items not have more than 35 percent of their total calories be from fat, except for snacks that are nuts, eggs and cheese, among other things.
This, the third effort by Oregon lawmakers to enact nutritional standards at schools, was opposed by the Oregon School Boards Association, which argued the bill would seize control from locally elected boards that have traditionally managed schools' affairs.
Rejecting the notion that the law would usurp local control, Rep. Peter Buckley, an ardent supporter of the bill, said just as the state sets high school graduation requirements and curriculum standards, the Legislature is well to set nutritional guidelines for school cafeterias.
"We need a statewide standard so children have the same chance to grow up healthy," said Buckley, an Ashland Democrat and chairman of the House Education Committee.
At Ashland School District's six campuses, cafeteria fare is monitored by a panel of school board members, district staff members and parents, working together to "improve" lunch and breakfast programs, as part of the district's wellness program, developed in part to comply with a mandate for districts that receive federal subsidies for school meals.
"We are constantly working to improve what we are offering students," said school board chairwoman Heidi Parker, adding that restricting snack offerings is only one piece of the wellness pie.
Since House Bill 2650 only affects snacks that schools sell, and not regular meal offerings, Parker said local school officials are limited in what they can do to make cafeterias more conducive to healthful eating.
Parker, who is serving her fifth year on the board, warned that in the absence of state money to bolster the federal lunch program, from which schools get the bulk of their foodservice dollars, districts would be hard pressed to provide what the Legislature is envisioning: reducing childhood obesity and incidence of adult-onset diabetes.
"Everyone is concerned about what we are offering," Parker said of cafeteria foods. "The problem is funding, and without it, it's going to be very difficult to carry their intent forward."
In addition to caloric restrictions under the bill, snacks will only be sold only in single-serving sizes, and be no more than 35 percent sugar by weight, or contain more than .5 gram of trans fat per serving.
For kindergarteners through fifth graders, snacks will not be allowed to contain more than 150 calories, 180 calories for students in grades six through eight, and 200 calories for high schoolers.
Ashland school board member Mat Marr said he is "happy" overall with the district's lunch program, boasting there is a salad bar from which students may have second servings in every local public school.
Marr echoed Parker's sentiment that schools cannot provide truly nutritious meals to students on the cheap. He suggested that part of the problem is the USDA commodities program, which helps reimburse schools that participate in the federal free and reduced lunch program.
"We definitely need more help," said Marr, a member of the seven-member District Food Service Overview Committee.
Additional funding, he said, would allow more expensive locally grown and organic produce to be served at Ashland schools rather than the frozen or processed vegetables that the federal government provides.
"This is fundamentally a wellness issue," Marr said. "Healthy kids learn better."
Burgeoning fuel costs, he said, will likely shift the national paradigm from trucking-in foods to looking to local producers.
Farm-to-school partnerships, Marr explained, would not only be a boon to local growers, but would also give students an opportunity to eat some of the foods that they helped to plant or harvest.
"The goal is they can see that food just doesn't come from the grocery store; it comes from the earth," Marr said.
Ruth Alexander, a school board member also on the foodservices panel, said there is a struggle to provide "tasty healthy foods" with a limited foodservice budget.
"The effort is to ensure kids get are getting the healthiest diet we can offer," Alexander said of the committee.
Among the small but meaningful changes that Ashland schools have made, she said, was replacing white bread with grain bread.
Jeff Ashmun is the senior general manager for Maryland-based Sodexho USA, which oversees school cafeterias in Ashland, Phoenix, Talent and Medford.
So schools may continue to buy their products, snack food manufacturers, he said, are "scrambling" to make products in single-serving sizes, and package 100 percent juices in 12-ounce bottles rather than the customary 16-ounce size.
"But right now, there is not too much available," Ashmun said, adding that as the targeted serving sizes under the bill become available he will be ordering them.
Sodexho is "going to walk the talk" when it comes to nutrition, Ashmun said.
Chris Rizo covers the state Legislature for The Daily Tidings. Reach him at csrizo@hotmail.com.
