Clinton, 5 food firms OK school-snack pact
Posted on Saturday, October 7, 2006
Hungry students can’t grab a Snickers, but they still can find Campbell’s Tomato Soup “m’m, m’m good” under new national school-snack guidelines won by former President Clinton.
Five months after negotiating a similar deal with soft drink companies, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation — a joint project by the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association — announced Friday an agreement with five major food manufacturers to make school vending fare and other snacks healthier.
“Ensuring that children have healthier food choices at school is another critical step in the fight against childhood obesity,” Clinton said in a statement.
“It will take time, but through coalitions like this of industry and the nonprofit sector, we are going to make a real difference in the lives of millions of children by helping them eat healthier and live healthier.”
The companies — Campbell Soup Co., The Dannon Company Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., Mars Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. — agreed to promote products that use guidelines developed by nutrition specialists at the American Heart Association.
The rules specify the levels of fat, sodium, sugar and calories for the snacks sold in school vending machines, snack carts and fundraisers. Under the guidelines, snacks marketed to schools must derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent from saturated fat. There also is a limit for sugar content by weight.
Stephanie Walker Hynes, a nutritionist in Little Rock and volunteer with the American Heart Association, said the guidelines still allow 5 percent more fat than the U. S. Department of Agriculture mandates for the National School Lunch Program. The Little Rock School District, the state’s largest with 26, 500 students, mandates its school snacks follow the stricter USDA rules, she said. But Hynes said the new national guidelines are a good start.
“I think when you can have any kind of industry jumping on the health bandwagon, it’s a good thing because it sends the message that the dollar sign is not the bottom line,” she said. “For a company to make any changes for health reasons, that to me is a huge step in the right direction.”
No federal law requires schools to sell only snacks that fit the new health specifications. But representatives from the five food companies say they are already planning new products or reformulating current products to meet the guidelines. The companies also have agreed to discourage schools from stocking junk food high in salt, sugar and trans-fats.
In short, supersized candy bars are out and yogurt, granola bars and baked potato chips are in.
At present, Mars Inc. — maker of Snickers and M&M’s — has no product that meets the new rules, said spokesman Alice Nathanson.
“We plan to launch a new line of nutritious products that meet or exceed the Alliance guidelines for children, teens and schools,” she said. “We’ve actually got some products in a test market already and we’ll have more news in the coming months.”
Likewise, Campbell Soup Co. plans to reduce sodium in its soups by using natural sea salt, said Joe Kiely, president of Campbell Away From Home, the company’s food service division.
Most Dannon yogurt products already comply with the guidelines, said spokesman Michael J. Neuwirth. But he said the yogurt maker plans next week to begin shipping Danimals yogurt cups with 25 percent less sugar.
Still, some children’s health advocates criticized the rules for not being binding.
“Tomorrow, all these companies can renounce this agreement and all they would have gotten is some very nice PR today,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. The Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit group campaigns against junk-food advertising in schools.
But making products less unhealthy makes good business sense in a calorie-counting culture, said the food companies’ representatives.
Aurora Gonzalez, spokesman for Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, said the division has strived for years to reduce the amount of saturated fat in its potato chips by using less fatty oils.
“We’re meeting consumer demand,” she said. “So Frito-Lay continues to innovate and develop new products and look for ways to make our current products better.”
But the new rules won’t make much difference in Arkansas, said Dr. Joe Thompson, the state’s surgeon general, who attended Friday’s announcement with Gov. Mike Huckabee in New York City.
Under Act 1220 of 2003, the state already bans vending machines from public elementary schools. Arkansas Department of Education regulations also limit the treats teachers can give students and restrict the use of vending machines on secondary school campuses, shortening operations to 30 minutes after the last lunch period.
Still, Thompson, a pediatrician and director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, said the initiative is an important first step to combat a national problem.
“This will help schools around the country that have not developed child obesity prevention strategies regarding food consumed at school to have a starting place for addressing the problem,” he said in an e-mail.
Hynes, the nutritionist, said the involvement of big organizations such as the Clinton Foundation, American Heart Association and the five food companies also has the potential to help spread healthy eating habits beyond school grounds.
“What it will do is open it up so everyone is thinking about childhood obesity, and take the focus off of just schools,” she said.
“Because most kids just eat one meal at the schools, so it’s not the schools making the obesity a problem. It’s everything. It’s about the education of parents as well as children and everyone jumping on the bandwagon.” Information for this story was contributed by Karen Matthews of The Associated Press.
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