A federal offensive on obesity has launched a snack attack on school districts across the country.
The Smart Snacks rule, part of the larger Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, took effect July 1, and has districts scrambling to keep bad snacks from students and provide healthier alternatives.
Candy bars have been missing from Greeley-Evans School District 6 vending machines for years. Soda at schools? It’s been gone for five years.
But this year’s vending machine options will still look far different from what kids are used to.
Move over Oreos and Chips Ahoy! cookies; make room for Nutri-Grain bars and Craisins.
“It’s a bigger picture,” said Jeremy West, District 6 nutrition services director. “It’s, as a nation, how are we doing food? And, you know, there’s room for some improvement there.”
Those gains West speaks of don’t come without pain.
“We’re still mourning the loss of the beef jerky,” West said, laughing.
The Jack Link’s Beef Jerky was too sodium-rich for federal standards and was thus scrapped along with a host of other traditional vending machine treats.
Those losses have West and others with the district wondering how much the new standards will harm vending machine sales.
Because the district owns nearly every vending machine in district schools, it makes some decent money (about $71,000 last year) selling snacks. New treats, especially ones that just don’t exist at traditional grocery stores (think: Whole Grain Rice Krispies Treats) may take a while for students to warm up to, West said.
“Despite it being a challenge, it really does fit what we’re trying to do as a department,” West said.
NO SEISMIC SHIFT
The new regulations mandate that any food sold in school must be a “whole grain-rich” grain product or it must have fruit, vegetable, dairy or protein as its first ingredient.
Foods that pass the above tests have more hurdles. They must also:
» Be less than 200 calories and 35 percent or less of those may be from fat.
» Contain less than 230 mg of sodium.
» Contain 35 percent or less sugar as a percentage of the product’s total weight.
Rules for beverage options were handed down as well, allowing only plain water, unflavored low-fat milk, unflavored or flavored fat-free milk alternatives, 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice and 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice diluted with water and no added sweeteners.
District 6 faces fewer hurdles to compliance than many districts.
Along with its ban of soda five years ago, the district was two years into a vending machine program called Right Bite Vending. That program adopted a stoplight approach. Green meant go, yellow meant caution and red meant, “You probably shouldn’t eat that if you care about your health.”
Red items included Clif Bars, found in the pharmacy section of the 11th Avenue King Soopers in Greeley. Those won’t be sold in vending machines this year (too many calories).
Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal Bars? Those are available wherever healthy snacks are sold — all district vending machines.
Although the shift isn’t seismic, there will be enough new options to raise some eyebrows. West said he didn’t notice a taste difference with Whole Grain Rice Krispies Treats. Kids, on the other hand, may not be as eager to taste test.
That’s something the district has thought about.
“I would say any time you make healthier changes and you take away things people like that are not so healthy, it’s pretty much a given that there’s going to be a decline in sales,” said Kara Sample, nutrition services assistant director.
The new rule has other ways of slashing schools’ bottom lines. Like oil and gas development, call it the snack setback. Those setbacks also affect school-related fundraisers. Any fundraisers centered on food must match federal guidelines when sold between midnight and 30 minutes after school ends.
There is some worry throughout the district that the new regulations will harm fundraising efforts, Sample said.
States were given leeway to create a number of exemptions to the fundraising rules. Colorado chose three exemptions per school building. District 6 nixed that plan, allowing no exemptions for schools in the district, Sample said.
Instead of raising money by selling unhealthy snacks, the district is encouraging schools to fundraise via Read-a-thons and Walk-a-thons. Centennial Elementary School, Sample said, has led the way in tying fundraising to education or physical activity even prior to the new regulations.
With all of the fuss surrounding the healthier snacks, one could wonder why the district keeps vending machines in its schools at all.
Sample said she’s not sure the district has ever considered removing vending machines, but she has an idea as to why that’s not a likely scenario. Revenue to the tune of $70,000 is one reason. Each building collects about 4.5 percent of the revenue its vending machines generate.
So, the administration building’s vending machine, which produced $694 in revenue from 2013-2014, earned that building $31.04. Greeley West had the highest vending machine revenue at more than $30,000, which yielded about $1,500 for the school.
There are 22 vending machines in district buildings, and only eight of which are available for student use. There are an additional 52 beverage vending machines, 16 of which are available for student use.
Those machines, and the profits they generate, may be more difficult to part with than unhealthy snacks.
“I think the pushback would come from the fact that the vending machines do provide some profit to schools,” Sample said. “That would be the stumbling block there, is that is one more little funding stream.”