Schools face junk food ban

Life in the school cafeteria will just not be the same, said Melissa

Alvarez, a ninth-grader at John Burroughs High School, who lamented

two bills passed Tuesday that could make the French fries she was

munching on a thing of the past.

“It’s not fair,” Melissa said of SB 12 and SB 965, which restrict

the sale of soda and junk food to students on public school campuses

statewide. “We have our own money; we should be able to buy it. It’s

not our fault some kids buy all this junk food and gain weight.”

Although Burbank, Glendale and La Canada Flintridge unified school

districts already have some existing nutrition standards that are in

accordance with the guidelines set forth by the bills, news of the

bills, which are on their way to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk,

did not seem to appease some students.

“It’s horrible,” ninth-grader Kyle Williams said. “They might as

well just kill us.”

SB 965 states that only fruit and vegetable juices, milk products,

water and electrolyte replacements drinks like Powerade and Gatorade

can be sold on school campuses.

SB 12 provides calorie, sugar and fat gram restrictions for snacks

and entrees. For instance, a snack should not have more than 35% of

its calories from fat, excluding foods such as beans, nuts, nut

butters and seeds, eggs, non-fried vegetables and cheese.

Snacks sold in elementary schools can have no more than 150

calories and middle and high school snacks can have no more than 250

calories in them, according to the bill.

Some students had a more positive reaction to the passage of the

bill.

“I think it’s cool,” said 15-year-old sophomore Kyle Budrick, as

he sat with his friends who were eating homemade sack lunches in the

school’s cafeteria. “People should be more concerned with their

health.”

The bills were introduced by state Sen. Martha Esuctia in an

attempt to curb growing rates of childhood obesity -- according to

the Institute of Medicine for the National Academy of Science,

approximately 9 million children in America over the age of 6 are

obese.

Obesity rates have more than doubled for children ages 2 to 5 and

12 to 19 and have more than tripled for children ages 6 to 11,

according to the institute.

“Any way that we can encourage our youth to form better eating

habits, and what they buy at school makes a lot of difference in the

kind of eating habits they form that will be with them the rest of

their lives,” said state Sen. Jack Scott, who supported the bill.

If Schwarzenegger signs the bills, they will go into effect on

July 1, 2007.

Many schools in the Burbank, Glendale and La Canada have already

made efforts that are similar to those proposed by the bills.

Burroughs High School administrators took soda out of schools last

spring and also offer students bagels and orange juice as breakfast

options instead of high-calorie snack cakes, according to the

school’s principal, Emilio Urioste.

Glendale Unified School District is preparing to offer students

100% fruit smoothies districtwide instead of sodas, according to the

district’s director of food services, Rosa Orosemane.

Sodas sold in vending machines and the cafeteria at La Canada High

School were taken out in 2003 because of previous bills that

restricted the sale of sodas to grades 8 and under -- La Canada High

School includes grades 7 through 12.

PTA groups expressed satisfaction that the bills passed. The

California State PTA supported the bills.

“One of the major focuses of the PTA is child health and welfare,”

said Glendale Council PTA President Patty Scripter. “We all know that

we need to model a healthy life style for children, and soda and junk

food are not part of a healthy life style.”

Glendale schools are trying to offer a wide variety of flavors for

electrolyte drinks and the new smoothies, explained Orosemane.

“They want to be able to make the choices on their own,” she said

of students. “We want to give them a variety of their favorite

flavors and colors so they don’t feel as if they’re being cheated.”

Some students suggested that schools should put a greater emphasis

on combating obesity through physical exercise.

“Them selling healthier food won’t do anything. Kids still won’t

eat it,” said Burroughs 11th-grader Karissa Rinn, as she sipped on an

iced tea under the awnings at Burroughs High School. “They should

push the kids more in P.E. classes. There’s a lot of kids who sit

around in P.E., but if you work in P.E. class it really does make a

difference.”

Urioste believed that the new bills are not the solution to the

problem of increasing numbers of overweight and obese children and

teenagers.

Glendale High School Principal Katherine Fundukian said that while

the bill is ultimately positive because it promotes better habits for

children, she was skeptical about whether the bills will have any

significant effects, since they only cover what can be sold at school

-- not what students can bring from home.

“I don’t know if it will curb anything or not,” she said. “If it’s

the schools and the homes working together to promote healthier life

styles, that certainly is a step in the right direction. It doesn’t

make a bit of difference what’s offered on campus if they’re bringing

Twinkies -- it doesn’t cover what’s brought into school in a brown

bag.”

QUESTION

Should junk food be removed from public schools? E-mail your

responses to o7burbankleader @latimes.comf7; mail them to the

Burbank Leader, 111 W. Wilson Ave., Glendale, CA 91203. Please spell

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purposes only.