Reviewing the School Cupcake Ban

For several months now, Washington area schools have been taking a hard line on hard candy -- as well as the cookies and cream-filled confections that used to seem like harmless splurges in the course of a child's day. But many parents and health advocates wish schools would devote as much energy to reforming the quality of lunch fare as they've invested in ridding campuses of sodas and snacks.

The controversy over contraband foods is the result of a federal law requiring every school system in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs to write a "wellness policy" by July of last year. D.C.'s Board of Education still has not adopted final rules codifying its wellness policy, although officials insist that many of the programs are already taking place in the schools.

The mandate gives school officials wide latitude, as long as the policies they adopt promote improved nutrition and physical activity -- dual prongs in the battle to overcome childhood obesity. Sixteen percent of children and teens ages 6 to 19 -- roughly 9 million kids -- are considered overweight, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, putting them at risk of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. That percentage has more than tripled since 1980.

It remains to be seen whether school-based wellness initiatives will be an effective weapon against the obesity epidemic -- an explicit goal of the new law. But child health advocates believe schools are in a logical position to model healthy behavior, and the new wellness policies have spurred real change in some schools, which are weeding out junk foods, turning off vending machines and switching to baked versions of fried favorites, such as chicken nuggets and french fries.

Mandy Bean's first-grade class at Glebe Elementary School in Arlington is a long-standing example of how kids can quickly adapt to healthy foods, even if they seem unfamiliar. Long before school policymakers began putting the kibosh on empty calories, Bean was steering kids away from prepackaged, highly processed foods. Each week, on "Fresh Fruit and Veggie Friday," her students take turns bringing in a fresh snack for the class. Kids tend to brave foods they would never sample at home, she notes. One Friday, the class tried edamame, a decidedly "weird"-looking soybean, but, she adds, "they went nuts for that."

Meantime, Spotsylvania County schools have crafted what is perhaps the most comprehensive wellness policy in the region, ranging from curbing what's sold in vending machines to providing nutritional counseling. Implementing that detailed action plan keeps Nancy Farrell, the school system's full-time "wellness dietitian," on her toes. Instead of teachers having ice cream parties or giving out candy bars or pizza coupons as rewards, for example, Farrell encourages them to hold class outdoors, hand out homework passes or offer verbal praise.

Farrell, whose new position is partially funded by a grant from Mary Washington Hospital Foundation in Fredericksburg, also helps parents navigate the county's new fundraising rules: For the next three years, for example, when food and beverages are sold at a school event, a least 50 percent of the items have to meet the county's new nutrition criteria.

"I'm not taking the cupcakes away," Farrell insists. "I'm just saying if you bring in that cupcake, then bring in some milk or water." She also adorns school hallways with posters featuring kids, teachers and principals eating healthy food.

Those things are all well and good, school health advocates agree, but they remain frustrated by the slow pace of achieving broader school lunch reforms. "In my neighborhood in Montgomery County, some parents -- who thought wellness policies would solve the problem of fat-rich, vitamin-poor school lunches -- were appalled to see what was served" immediately after the policy was implemented, says Julia Lear, director of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools at George Washington University. On the first day of the new school year, elementary school kids got a choice: burger and tater tots or French toast sticks and syrup. "Not a green vegetable or fresh fruit in sight," she says.

Little has changed. "We know that a lot of school districts really are taking action to improve the vending machines," Lear adds. "But now the tough stuff is getting those cafeteria lines to match our rhetoric."

Aviva Goldfarb, who has two children in Montgomery County public schools, says the wellness policy has not yet produced noticeable changes in lunch menus. A major obstacle: devising meals that use foods donated to schools by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, such as processed cheese and fruit packaged in corn syrup. After her 7-year-old daughter came home complaining that the grilled cheese tasted like "salty seawater," Goldfarb spoke with school food-service workers. She suspects those sandwiches were loaded with low-quality processed cheese, meeting nutrition guidelines but failing her kids' taste test.

Tracy Fox, a nutrition policy consultant and a lobbyist for schools and nonprofits, points out that changing menus overnight is unrealistic, especially when schools are trying to please finicky children. "You put brown rice and tofu out there and they just won't eat it," she says.

Wellness policies vary greatly across the area. Some provide vast amounts of detail, down to recommended portion sizes for foods and drinks. Others describe sweeping goals in a page or two. A preliminary analysis by Action for Healthy Kids, a public-private partnership that seeks to foster improved nutrition and increased physical activity in the schools, finds that only 54 percent of school systems nationally have met all of the federal government's minimum requirements.

Locally, the District's public schools are phasing in wellness programs despite bureaucratic delays. The school board in December adopted a proposed rule to establish a wellness policy, but the soonest a final rule might be approved would be March. According to Kimberly Perry, vice chair of the Mayor's Commission for Food and Nutrition, who helped draft the document, "It's a very high-quality, high-impact wellness policy." For example, it bans junk food and sugary drinks from school vending machines. It also calls for moving toward more whole grains to improve the quality of school meals. But until the policy is approved, nobody is being held accountable.

In Arlington County, the school board last summer adopted a wellness policy that for the first time established a minimum requirement for playground time. Schools must provide 100 to 125 minutes of recess per week for students in grades 1 through 5; kindergartners get 135 to 150 minutes a week.

Likewise, educators in Prince William County leveraged the wellness platform to pack more physical education into the school day and are looking for ways to make it safer and easier for kids to walk or bike to school. "You need to look at the communities in Prince William that don't even have sidewalks and kids are forced to walk on streets," says Fred Milbert, supervisor of health and physical education for the county's schools.

Schools can't overhaul the infrastructure alone; it will take local government and grass-roots leadership, Milbert points out. So, health advocates urge parents, teachers and administrators to stay involved. "It's got to be a community-wide effort," asserts Brenda Z. Greene, director of school health programs for the National School Boards Association. "It's like [the] tobacco-free [movement]: moving the community, making a change." ·

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