Public school students in Maryland may have to slog through their afternoon classes without a sugar boost after the state school board yesterday approved new guidelines on junk food to combat the rising number of overweight youths.
The new guidelines, which are not mandatory, recommend that food of "minimal nutritional value" not be sold until the end of the school day -- including the candy and soda often found in vending machines that line high school hallways. Current state policy, which is mandatory, requires only that junk food not be sold until after the last lunch period.
Yessinia Morales, a 10th-grader at Albert Einstein High School in Silver Spring, reaches for her snack purchase from a vending machine.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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The new guidelines also call for healthier snack foods to be sold on carts in elementary and middle schools. The snacks should have no more than nine grams of fat and two grams of saturated fat. The new guidelines also restrict the amount of sugar to 15 grams or less and suggest selling only single servings.
"I think the guidelines are good," said State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick. "We need this."
The current state nutrition policy does not place any restrictions on fat and sugar content in snack foods. School officials said they originally considered adding such requirements to the policy but then backed away to give local school districts more control over what their students eat.
The current policy also includes a long list of exceptions requested by manufacturers and approved by federal officials, including the Screamin' Green Hot Color Fruit Roll-Up and Pokemon Rolls in punch red.
"We wanted to give them a policy that best fit their needs," said John Lang, director of the division of business services for the State Department of Education. "We're confident the local school systems will follow the spirit of these [new] guidelines."
But state board member David F. Tufaro said the new guidelines do not go far enough to curtail what the U.S. surgeon general has called an epidemic of obesity.
"We're trying to set a higher standard . . . and I don't think this is it," Tufaro said.
About 16 percent of children across the country are overweight, meaning that their body-mass index is in the 95th percentile for their age group, according to a 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number has more than doubled in the past two decades.
School officials said they did not know the percentage of overweight children in Maryland. But a report by the American Council for Fitness and Nutrition showed that nearly a quarter of children described themselves as inactive, while 47 percent said they were not regularly active.
Some school districts have begun revisiting their policies in light of the new state guidelines. In Montgomery County, food and nutrition director Kathleen Lazor said the district has gotten rid of snacks with more than seven fat grams, two less than the state's recommended maximum.
That means elementary and middle school students have said farewell to most ice cream snacks. Instead, they get frozen yogurt, sorbet and ice milk. High schools have eliminated regular potato chips from vending machines in favor of baked ones, she said. They have also tossed out extra-large bags that sometimes comprised 2 1/2 servings.
"It's a normal portion," Lazor said. "It's not the supersized portions that you will see out in the commercial world."
Grasmick said she plans to survey school districts on how they implement the guidelines and report back to the state board. Federal law requires that school districts create wellness policies by 2006 that include regulations for nutrition as well as physical and health education.
"What they learn in PE . . . what they see in the halls is all the same message," Lazor said. "We're saying, 'Make smart choices.' "
