OKLAHOMA GAZETTE

June 27, 2002

By Sarah Blount

The next time you reach for a bottle of soda, remember you're consuming more than carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar and caramel color. Beyond the calories and caffeine lies an important lesson in why we - and notably school-aged children - can't get enough of the stuff. For most of us, sugar's omnipresent role in our lives may seem like a mere convenience, a minor annoyance or a serious threat to our health. But sugar has a knack for becoming addictive, and it's safe to say our society has fallen victim to soft drinks that are packed full of it.

Do you remember the first time you had a soda? Chances are if you are over a certain age, it wasn't on school grounds. If you haven't reached high school yet, maybe your first soda was between math class and English. Finding an excuse to down a bottle is a breeze. Beat after practice? Grab an essential-vitamin-packed Gatorade. Having a hard time waking up? Forget coffee, because a Mountain Dew sugar high does wonders for the tired teenager.

But after that sugar high wears off, gravitational forces will pull your head toward your desk, with your head landing squarely on the textbook that was there long before the drink.

Take a look around school cafeterias now. I did, and I realized that my class had it tough, being forced to wait until after school to get our hands on that name-brand junk food.

Out with the old, in with the new

In a late-model school cafeteria, you will still find the traditional hot lunch and a cooler with mini-cartons of juice and milk, but to the relief of many students, there are tempting alternatives. Some lunchrooms now resemble shopping mall food courts, offering up a bounty of Taco Bell, McDonald's Quarter Pounders and slices of pepperoni-laden Pizza Hut pizza. The fast food vendors are enticingly positioned across from the pabulum of casserole, peas, rice and beans. And those little cartons of milk can be inconsequentially ignored, thanks to Pepsi and Coke's educational infiltration.

Students may be satisfied, as must the soda vendors and fast food companies, but to those concerned with what little nutritional value it offers, the appearance of fast food and soft drinks on school grounds is viewed as more of a blight on the pedagogical landscape. The question of what children are eating at school has become a pressing matter, since childhood obesity is growing at an alarming rate. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention identified obesity as an epidemic. Shortly thereafter, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher made it a priority. As stated in a 1999 surgeon general's report, nearly 13 percent of America’s children are obese or overweight, nearly tripling for adolescents in the past two decades.

Also, diseases connected to obesity are becoming more common especially in children. According to a March 14 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States has been accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents. Closely linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes is caused by high levels of sugar in the blood and can lead to eye, nerve and kidney diseases, as well as make the body more prone to infections.

With all these facts and numbers, it's hard to ignore the message, especially since virtually every media outlet - from CBS and PBS to NPR and the BBC - has shed light on obesity problems within schools, ethnic cultures and the nation as a whole. They're reporting, through different angles, on what is swiftly overtaking tobacco as the No. 1 health risk in the United States. Obesity kills approximately 300,000 Americans each year. Health reports cite several potential risk factors: a lack of exercise; foods high in sugars, saturated fat and carbohydrates; increased time spent in front of televisions and computers; and a lack of education and awareness. We have a generation waiting to become the new norm in obesity, and people are scrambling to find out why. 

While the finger of blame has pointed at many issues, no single factor - like soft drinks and fast food in school - can be targeted as the basis for obesity, but a lack of physical activity could play an integral role. Mandated physical education is at an all-time low. According to a 1999 study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, less than one-third of Americans meet the federal recommendations to engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity at least five days a week, while 40 percent of adults engage in no leisure-time physical activity at all. Also, Oklahoma is one of two states in the country that does not have mandatory physical education programs in schools. 

Why the school lunch makeovers?

Along the corridors of Putnam City's Hefner Middle School, through a main lobby and past classrooms, stand 11 snack and soda vending machines, interspersed and standing like soldiers, attendants of hungry children looking to supplement their lunches with sugary drinks and confections. These vending machines serve a dual purpose: They collect loose change by spitting out munchies, but the more lucrative transaction is the payoff strategically placed vending machines generate for Putnam City schools. School districts receive a commission for exclusive contracts with soft drink companies.

Putnam City Public Schools is in its fourth year of a five-year contract with Great Plains Coca-Cola. Putnam City Superintendent Jim Capps said his schools receive $595,000 a year, which is allotted to the district's 27 schools.

Oklahoma City Public Schools is also in its fourth year of a five-year contract with Great Plains Coca-Cola, with a guarantee of $7 million for OKCPS during those five years. They receive roughly a million plus per year, and the money is divided among 89 schools. From estimations of the past year, $394,750 of beverage commissions went to a general fund; $151,250 was given to fine arts; and $261,000 went for athletic programs, including sports teams and athletic equipment. OKCPS Athletic Director Billy Hurte described the contract with Coca-Cola as a blessing for the district.

Great Plains Coca-Cola also provides OKCPS in-kind services and contributions every year, including $10,000 in scholarships, $7,500 for scoreboards and $13,500 for sponsorships. It costs Coca-Cola $125,000 for exclusive rights of the school district.

Both districts also have contracts with fast food and snack food companies, including Pizza Hut, Mazzio's, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Blue Bell, Little Debbie and Otis Spunkmeyer. Coca-Cola is the only company from which either district receives money.

This is the first contract both school districts have had with Coca-Cola, but vending machines are not new to either school district, and the number of machines has increased since entering into the contracts.

"We've had very few complaints and criticisms," Capps said. "It's very minimal."

Norma Howard, Putnam City food service director, also said complaints regarding the vending machines and fast food are minimal.

"The high school campuses are closed," she said. "That's why we offer several foods, to meet the students' requests."

There's no complaints from students and school administrators, but the fast food and soda mean trouble to some legislators and health care professionals.

So, what are those people doing about it? Six years ago, the Oklahoma County Medial Society created a program called Schools for Healthy Lifestyles. The tiny staff of three, including Project Manager Wendy Jones and Project Director John Bozalis, works with educators by conducting institutes that essentially teach elementary teachers how to instruct their students in four areas of health: nutrition, physical fitness, accident prevention and cardiovascular/cancer reduction.

As a result of this program, last summer state Senator Bernest Cain, D-Oklahoma City, introduced a bill creating a task force on the promotion of children's health. The task force is comprised of education and health department officials and doctors dealing with obesity in children. The first action taken by the group was in the form of a bill concerning nutrition and physical education in schools. If passed, the bill would have done the following: immediately eliminated vending machines in elementary schools; limited access to middle, junior high and high schools; and required mandatory physical education each week. Educators, students, parents, legislators and soft drink industries met the bill with either reluctance or opposition. It died quietly in the House last April.

"They thought it would affect schools too much," Cain said. "The vending machine and soft drink industries were also pretty active. They went ballistic and really lobbied hard."

Bozalis, who is chairman of the task force, had a similar reaction. "It's called dollars," he said, when asked why the bill was defeated. "Like anything else in life."

Many students and parents who opposed the bill did so because they thought implementing changes would be too costly, eliminating soda would reduce revenue and decision making should be made locally. School Board officials quietly opposed it, Cain explained, because they didn't want to be seen as sacrificing children's health, yet did not want to sacrifice exclusive contracts with soft drink companies.

Bozalis, not allowing himself to be daunted, said the task force plans to "go back and keep plugging away."

"We're going to expand the number of people," he said. "When you have enough people screaming, policies do change."

Cain said he realized it would be difficult, and he didn't expect the bill to be passed this year; however, another bill was passed in the House allowing the task force to continue.

"I could have made a big deal and brought a spotlight to the man who killed the bill, but I want to work with him."

State Rep. Jack Begley, D-Goodwell, House subcommittee chair for appropriations, was the one who killed the bill.

"It's not necessarily a bad bill, but a bad year," Begley said. "We can't afford to look at it now, but we should look at it in the future."

And Begley said he doesn't see an alternative to having vending machines in schools. "I see vending machines everywhere," he said. "I don't know whether it can be stopped."

Food for thought

Brenda Randell, cafeteria manager at Hefner Middle School, said that out of 1,300 children, only 225 are served hot lunches daily.

"The majority are buying snacks," she said. "There's a stigma about eating school food."

Oklahoma State Department of Health Commissioner Leslie Beitsch said the health department faces a big challenge when taking on the task of nutrition education in schools. Already active in educating the general public, Beitsch said that this year the health department proposed to increase its nutritional staff to work with the 15 school districts in Oklahoma County.

"We've seen a number of changes in social and cultural behaviors and norms that have led to huge changes," he said, also stating that although the health department plays a very limited role in school nutrition, it plans to take on a different and more active role in the future.

"It's possible to have a healthy menu that's not inedible. Soda is of absolutely no nutritional value. It's empty calories. They describe soda as liquid candy for kids and the average kid drinks three sodas a day. It's a huge part of their caloric intake for the day and it's empty nutrition."

One of the health department's concerns is when schools enter into contracts with soda companies.

"These are responses to limitations in funding," Beitsch said. "But there are things that can be done, they can be turned off during lunch. Coke and Pepsi both make water products, they both own juice companies. So there are other potential products they can make and purchase if we are even going to allow vending machines. At the same time, as schools are trying to balance their budgets, they're cutting out our programs, music programs and physical education programs. And at the same time, kids are learning how to play video games and surf the Internet. What we're seeing in our society is an increase in consumption of calories and much less exercise, because kids are engaged in much less activity."

As for grappling the issue, Beitsch said Oklahomans want to do the right thing based on the information they have, but they're not well informed on this subject.

"We don't want to change the law on what people eat, we want to educate them and increase their awareness and try to make healthier foods more available to them. We're not going to regulate potato chips," he added.

The conflict of interest, with legislatures and health organizations on one side and school administrators and soft drink companies on the other, is occurring throughout the country. California has been dealing with the encroachment of fast food in schools for years - in a Californian way. In 1995, there was a local initiative to turn schoolyards into edible gardens for students, and the Berkeley school board voted in 1999 that all city schools should have student-created gardens.

Our neighbors to the south, in Texas, have proposed bills in the Texas Legislature. So far they've succeeded in making physical education mandatory in schools. The Legislature meets again in January.

"We're trying to do away with soda and potato chip vendors in school," said Dr. Surendra Varma, vice chairman of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. "How far it will go we don't know. It depends on how strong the fast food lobbyists are."