Chips? Cookies? Candy? Do you ever eat snacks from your school cafeteria? Are they tasty? Re-energizing? Convenient? How about healthy?
Do you consider the ingredients, additives or nutritional value of the snacks you buy or consume at school? If so, does that information ever stop you from eating certain foods?
In a guest essay, “Can We Agree Kids Don’t Need Doritos at School?,” Lindsey Smith Taillie, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, writes about how different states are tackling the issue of unhealthy food in our school cafeterias and why fixing the problem is more difficult than it seems:
When my daughter started kindergarten, I was shocked when she brought home a book bag full of empty Doritos bags and muffin wrappers. She’d been buying them with her lunch card at the school canteen, along with other packaged snacks she rarely got at home.
I shouldn’t have been surprised; I’ve spent my career studying why it’s hard for children to eat healthfully in our modern food environment. Ultraprocessed foods are cheap, tasty and ubiquitous, including in schools. They make up about 70 percent of the food supply and two-thirds of the calories consumed by American children.
This year, when Arizona became one of the first states to restrict ultraprocessed foods in schools, I should have been thrilled. Studies have linked these foods to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression.
But I expect Arizona’s lunchrooms will still have many ultraprocessed foods.
That’s because Arizona’s law defines ultraprocessed foods very narrowly, as foods containing a handful of additives — like Red Dye No. 3, Yellow No. 5 and brominated vegetable oil — a couple of which the Food and Drug Administration banned before the bill passed.
Since January, some two dozen bills introduced across 15 states have proposed targeting ultraprocessed foods through school bans or labels. The catch? Most have equated ultraprocessing with artificial coloring, after the campaign by the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., against artificial food dyes. Yet foods with synthetic dyes make up fewer than 10 percent of packaged ultraprocessed foods available in the United States.
Ms. Smith Taillie includes a chart showing the school foods that qualify for restriction in California and Arizona:
She compares Arizona’s “narrow” approach to regulating unhealthy food in our cafeterias with California’s broader strategy, which she believes will be more effective:
Solely regulating nutritional content or, as in the case of Arizona, individual additives allows the food industry to play a game of Whac-a-Mole, hitting individual targets but failing to fundamentally change the nature of foods that schools serve. It also ignores the broader forces driving these diets: Schools rely on these foods because they are inexpensive, easy to prepare and fast to eat — critical components in underfunded nutrition programs that don’t have the resources to cook from scratch or the time to allow kids a longer lunch. Children become the final cog in an industrial food system that replaces whole foods with cheap and convenient substitutes.
California provides an example of a better path. When the state banned ultraprocessed foods in schools in October, it used a much broader definition than Arizona’s. The law, which will be phased in over the next decade, defines ultraprocessed foods as those that contain a wide array of additives, not just artificial colors. These include sweeteners, flavors, stabilizers, emulsifiers, foaming agents and others — all strong proxies for industrial processing. It has another requirement: The foods must be high in added sugar, sodium or saturated fat or contain nonsugar sweeteners. This stipulation means that California’s law will target the foods most likely to be unhealthy and will be less likely to include foods like whole-grain breads.
Of course, there’s more to improving diets than reducing ultraprocessed foods. Equally important will be creating policies to ensure that kids have access to healthy, minimally processed foods — and making sure school food programs have the funds, equipment, kitchen space and staff to prepare them. This means increasing meal reimbursement rates, expanding grants for kitchen infrastructure and staff training and adding incentives for local food procurement.
States like Arizona and California get one thing right: School lunches are the place to start. Fixing school lunches would help children eat healthier today while instilling a food culture and eating behaviors that could last into adulthood.
Students, read the entire essay and then tell us:
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What snacks are available at your school? Are they healthy?
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Do you ever eat any? What do you consider when choosing your snack at school — convenience, taste, health, price? Do you ever think about whether a food is ultraprocessed or not?
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What’s your reaction to the essay? How persuasive is Ms. Smith Taillie’s argument that we need more — and more effective — regulation of the food, drink and snacks served in school cafeterias?
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The essay notes that schools rely on ultraprocessed foods because they are “inexpensive, easy to prepare and fast to eat.” However, studies have linked these foods to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression. Should schools restrict ultraprocessed foods like Doritos and other popular snacks? Why, or why not?
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Ms. Smith Taillie writes, “Fixing school lunches would help children eat healthier today while instilling a food culture and eating behaviors that could last into adulthood.” Do you agree? How important is the issue of healthy food at schools for you?
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If you were tasked with creating a new state or national standard for school lunches, what kinds of regulations or guidelines, if any, would you focus on? The elimination of certain ingredients and additives (like Red Dye No. 3)? Nutritional limits (like calories and sodium)? Banning or restricting ultraprocessed foods? Increasing school funding? Something else?
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Will you pay more attention to the snacks you consume after reading the essay?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
Jeremy Engle is an editor of The Learning Network who worked in teaching for more than 20 years before joining The Times.
The post Are the Snacks at Your School Healthy? appeared first on New York Times.
