How school food is hurting kids

One of the things I didn't like about A's preschool was the snack food, which was brought by a child's parent on their assigned day. The teachers asked for healthy food, and they provided a list of ideal snacks in the parents' handbook, but most parents had a different idea of "healthy" than I did.

A. was introduced to Capri Sun, having never before drunk anything but water, 100% juice, and organic milk. She ate store-bought cookies full of trans-fat (the sugar isn't great, but the trans-fats are awful). She started campaigning for me to buy Go-Gurts, which are so foul that when I once tasted one, the fake berry flavor was so strong it made my throat feel thick and tight. She ate cupcakes with frosting chock full of artificial colors, non-natural peanut butter (have I mentioned trans-fats?), and jello (which is nutritionally less than zero).

It's not that we are health nuts or that I never let her eat sugar or anything that strict. A. loves Tic-Tacs and M&Ms, which are also full of artificial colors and flavors and sugar. She loves the various Morningstar Farms soy products, which possibly I should not let her eat because of the plant estrogens, but the faux burgers are my savior when we haven't been to the store in a week. And I can say with absolute certainty that she doesn't eat enough vegetables.

The problem is that the preschool snacks come in recognizable plastic and tinfoil containers, which A. then spots in the grocery store and requests. Every day she attended preschool, it seemed, she learned one more junk product by sight. A. doesn't see advertising, so in our case it was obvious she was introduced to these foods at school. I can take her down the cereal aisle and she doesn't utter a peep unless we're out of Cheerios, because they never served cereal at preschool. But enter the juice aisle, the cookies and crackers aisle, or pass by the yogurt, and it's Let the Hassling Begin! I wind up buying 8 small tubes of Stonyfield Farms yogurt at $4.19 a box (!!) just to avoid the argument over the similarly packaged Go-Gurts.

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It turns out that there are broad, aggregate effects of a poor diet within the schools. One alternative school for troubled kids in Appleton, Wisconsin changed their cafeteria food service to include only organic and unprocessed foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and no artificial anything. They removed the soda and candy vending machines. The result?

The reports Principal LuAnn Coenen files with the State of Wisconsin reflect the results of this new lunch program—drop outs, expulsions, drug use, weapons brought to school, and suicides are all at zero. Now “grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching,” according to the Pure Facts newsletter. Teachers are happier because they can spend time teaching instead of disciplining or dealing with interruptions. “Since the introduction of the food program, I have noticed an enormous difference in the behavior of my students in the classroom,” said teacher Mary Bruyette. “They’re on task, they are attentive. They can concentrate for longer periods of time.” Even their stamina, attitude, and health has increased from eating the food available at school. Students are happier because it is easier to concentrate in class and easier to get along with other students.

You can read more about Appleton's new food programs here. It sounds pretty dramatic, but there are some other examples where healthy foods improved schools. At Gordon Middle School in Philadelphia, the results were similarly amazing, as recounted by the school's principal:

"One aspect of creating a new Gordon was accepting the premise that a hungry student body was not fueled to achieve.... I began making trips to the housing project, bringing coffee and rolls with me, to meet parents and grandparents. We talked about packing snacks for kids to eat in class at school. They agreed to send in the fruits, veggies and pretzels needed to get the kids from our 7:45 am start, till lunchtime, ready to deal with their heavy math, science, and language courses scheduled in extended time blocks.

"Kids were pleased that it was OK to eat in class when they got hungry, and that having food at school outside the cafeteria was no longer forbidden. When students and teachers jointly approved the kinds of food to be eaten, candy and gum virtually disappeared.

"As an extension of the `snack' idea, home ec teachers, supported by the nurse and phys ed teachers, decided to offer snacks to students during breaks when they were taking mandatory state tests - the very tests that ranked the student body at the bottom of the scoring range. Weeks of preparation and encouragement included the idea that students were going to be `fueled for success.' They were served by their teachers and me with fruit juice and high energy snacks prepared in our home ed kitchens....

"Six weeks later when the test results arrived from the state scoring center, the results were staggering. Not only had our Gordon kids scored at the top among our three district junior highs, but placed second among junior highs in the county and ranked among the top ten percent in the state. A new attitude for success was born in this impoverished inner-city middle school that was repeated for the next three years. The school drew accolades from our Pennsylvania Department of Education and from the U.S. Department of Education, naming Gordon a Blue Ribbon School - one of the best 200 secondary schools in the U.S. during 1992-93.

A 1986 study done in New York City public schools concluded the following:

The introduction of a diet policy which lowered sucrose, synthetic food color/flavors, and two preservatives (BHA and BHT) over 4 years in 803 public schools was followed by a 15.7% increase in mean academic percentile ranking [i.e. from 39th to 55th percentile] above the rest of the nation's schools who used the same standardized tests. Prior to the 15.7% gain, the standard deviation of the annual change in nation percentile rating had been less than 1%. Each school's academic performance ranking was negatively correlated with the percent of children who ate school food prior to the diet policy changes. However, after the policy transitions, the percent of students who ate school lunches and breakfasts within each school became positively correlated with that school's rate of gain (r = .28, p < .0001).

To recap: before the dietary changes, the more students within each school who ate the school food, the worse the test scores were; after the dietary changes, the more students who ate school food, the better the test scores.

Apparently you can even see the behavioral effects of junk food in mice (see second article).

One group called the Feingold Association believes that many behavioral problems and many cases of ADHD are attributable to certain chemicals in food, some of which occur naturally, but many of which are found in artificial food dyes, flavorings, or preservatives. The anecdotal stories from parents, such as this one, make me believe that certain food additives do indeed affect certain children behaviorally, in addition to the more obvious effects of sugar and caffeine. (The precise percentage of hyperactive children that might be helped by the additives-free Feingold diet is too big a controversy for me to wade into in this post.)

The book Fast Food Nation talks about how the junk food industry has maneuvered its way into schools. Food advertising is in the hallways and on the school buses, on Channel One and even in the textbooks; soda pop and candy vending machines abound; and I think I read that one third of high school cafeterias include a fast food franchise. According to Fast Food Nation, some soda pop contracts require schools to sell 50 sodas per student in a given school year, in order to receive promised funds.

Schools believe they're making money off such deals, but I think they're being had. The organic and fresh foods lunches in Appleton, Wisconsin cost a total of $20,000 a year more than their previous, heavily processed, fatty lunches. That's probably made up by having several students remain in the school who would otherwise have dropped out or been expelled. Meanwhile, junk food seems to cause discipline problems and lower test scores, side effects which undoubtedly waste school resources. The money schools get from Coke is likely to be lost if test scores decline and funding begins to wither under No Child Left Behind.

And anyway, I thought the whole idea of the public schools was in loco parentis. Never mind how it hurts the school as an institution, it's just plain wrong for a school to foist junk food on children (and in that category I include most school lunches).