There is a revolution going on in our country’s schools this year and it’s not about the Common Core Standards. It’s about ensuring that all food sold in schools (outside of the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program) adhere to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Smart Snacks nutritional standards, in which schools must have transitioned to complete compliance by July 1.
To better understand the evolution of the Smart Snacks guidelines, it is important that parents and caretakers revert back to 1979, when the Department passed competitive food rules for the first time. Regulations limited sales of food with less than five percent of the recommended dietary allowances per serving for eight key nutrients. These products included soft drinks, chewing gum, and other sugar-based foods. These items could not be sold in food-service areas during mealtimes but could be sold anywhere else in a school at any time.
President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required the Department for the first time in more than 30 years to establish national nutritional standards for all foods sold and served at schools any time during the day. This law exempts fund-raisers from its compliance as long as they are approved by the school and are infrequent.
Three years later the Department proposed new competitive food rules and opened them for public feedback for 60 days. After public comment and revision, it published a revamp of school snack standards called “Smart Snacks in School” in June 2013 and informed all participating schools that they had 14 months in which to comply. The rules are in effect only during the school day and 30 minutes thereafter.
Helping United Mankind and Nutrition Healthy Vending Machines is one of the new merchants selling healthy food and beverages in schools across the nation. The company also published a “Smart Snacks In School Guide,” which contains a summary of food and beverage rules as well as nutrient standards.
Any competitive snack food sold must be a fruit, vegetable, dairy product, protein-rich food (meat, beans, poultry, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds), whole-grain rich food (first ingredient is a whole grain or product is 50 percent whole grains), or a combo food that has at least a quarter cup fruit or vegetable. All the competitive foods have nutrient limits in calories, sugar, sodium, and fat.
Competitive snack beverages are sold in limited in portions and have limited calories. They include water, carbonated water, unflavored low-fat milk, flavored or unflavored fat-free milk and soy alternatives, 100-percent fruit or vegetable juice, and diet sodas. Caffeinated drinks can only be sold in high schools.
Sean Kelly, chief executive officer of Helping Unite Mankind and Nutrition Healthy Vending Machines, explains, “Kids consume up to 60 percent of their total calories from school and up to 40 percent of their caloric consumption comes from junk food. To exacerbate this problem, the nutritional education that we provide our kids in our society is negligible at best.”
Some schools have already started selling healthful snacks at lunchtime either on the menu or from vending programs. As a result, these schools have already seen their students boost their overall daily consumption of fruit by 26 percent, vegetables by 14 percent, and whole grains by 30 percent. They also ate more fiber, calcium, and vitamins A and C.
Kelly believes there is a correlation between the declining academic performance of the United States’ students (ranked 17th among 50 other countries according to a study done by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2012) and an increase in the processed food industry in our country.
“This isn’t just about obesity and malnutrition,” Kelley remarked. “It’s also about the state of education in America. Maybe the reason our kids can’t learn what we want them to learn is because they can’t focus or retain information because they’re falling asleep in class and they continually experience blood sugar-induced erratic energy swings as a result of poor nutrition.”
According to Kelly, when people talk about the solving the obesity epidemic, they talk about educating people more about nutrition, getting people to eat less harmful food and more healthy food, and having people exercise more.
Kelly, who was a personal trainer while in college, does believe in those solutions, but he also adds one more component to the mix — easy and convenient access to healthy foods.
“The reality of the world we live in today is that it is very, very difficult to be healthy, but for a second, I want us to imagine a new world. A world where healthy food is actually more convenient than junk food. Where it’s easy to access nutrition and nutrition is everywhere. Where convenience stores and vending machines and micro-markets bring nutrition directly to people rather than asking people to get educated about it and go and find it on their own,” Kelly says.
He continues, “Where it’s incredibly difficult to find and, therefore, eat those foods that are harmful to you, so you do so sparingly as was the original intention. Where everywhere you turn there are fresh foods, energy-sustaining health snacks, foods from the earth, healthy drinks, fruits and vegetables. In this world, it’s almost impossible to consistently eat harmfully and, as a result, the problems related to obesity, malnutrition, even education, began to fade away. Access, therefore, is the answer.”
To find out more about Smart Snack in School, visit www.smartsnacksinschool.com.
Allison Plitt is a freelance writer who lives in Queens with her husband and young daughter. She is a frequent contributor to New York Parenting.
