On my Houston ISD school food blog, The Spork Report, I once shared a candid photo of a Houston middle schooler's "lunch:"  a bag of  Baked Flamin' Hot Cheetos doused in cheesy nacho sauce:
Both of those items were purchased by the student from one of my district's cafeteria a la carte lines (to be accurate, I think HISD actually sells a "knock-off" brand of Baked Flamin' Hot Cheetos), and the photo caused a bit of an uproar here in Houston.  It prompted many people, including one of our school board trustees, to ask: why are schools in the business of selling this sort of non-nutritive junk food in the first place?
So I was interested to read recently that various schools around the country -- in Pasadena, New Mexico and Illinois -- are banning Flamin' Hot Cheetos from their campuses. Â The reasons for the bans range from the product's poor nutritional value (26 grams of fat per bag for the non-baked version) to the fact that kids are leaving hard-to-clean, bright red fingerprints all over classrooms. Â (Ick.)
But Monica Eng of the Chicago Tribune who broke the story on Flamin' Hot Cheeto bans, also examines the potentially addictive properties of the product, a product which her interviewed expert describes as a "hyperpalatable" food.
"Hyperpalatablity" is a term first coined by Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner, who in 2010 wrote a provocative book describing the methods used by the food industry to stimulate demand for its products. Â According to Kessler, processed food companies and chain restaurants carefully calibrate fat, sugar and salt to trigger the brain's reward system, leading eaters to consume more and more of the food, often well past physical fullness, in a manner that resembles (or might actually be) an addiction.
When I first heard about Kessler's book, The End of Overeating, I totally pooh-poohed the notion of food addiction. Â Back then I felt that anyone complaining of a food addiction just lacked basic willpower and was looking for someone else to blame. Â But then I encountered a food product which sent my own synapses firing wildly, causing me to abandon all control. Â I wrote a semi-facetious post about that experience -- "My Love Affair With Stacy and What It's Doing to the Kids;"Â here's an excerpt:
These days, when I think no one in my family is looking, I like to slip discreetly into the pantry to pay Stacy a little visit. I'm in control here, I tell myself every time. I'm not going to let things go too far. But then later, many long, delicious moments later, I emerge from the pantry -- guilty, ashamed, and with salty crumbs all over my face and shirt that are as telltale as any lipstick on a collar. Yes, there will be an extra five pounds on my hips by the pool this summer, but that's a small price to pay for a love like this.
My answer: nothing.
Yes, Flamin' Hots have an aura of "danger" which fuels their wild popularity with kids -- and which other food companies have shamelessly copied (e.g., here and here) -- but when it comes to "addictiveness" and to poor nutritional quality, one kid's Flaming Hot Cheetos is another kid's Cool Ranch Dorito.  All of these snacks are quite deliberately designed to have that "betcha can't eat just one" quality and none of them contribute positively in any way to a child's diet.
And that returns us to the question posed at the outset: Why are schools in the business of selling this stuff?
That very question is about to become part of the national conversation when USDA soon releases proposed nutritional standards for "competitive" school food, i.e., all the foods and beverages sold in campus vending machines, cafeteria snack bars, at fundraisers and the like. Â My fear is that the processed food industry will exert its tremendous lobbying power to keep these regulations as weak as possible. Â Down the road we may no longer have chips with 26 grams of fat sold on school campuses, but I have little doubt we'll still see rejiggered, "lite" versions of these same products.
Is that really where we want to end up? Â Couldn't we do better? Â Is it remotely possible that Congress will follow the lead of San Francisco USD and require snack products sold on campus to not only be low in fat and salt but to also contain naturally-occurring positive nutrients? Â (That "naturally-occurring" qualifier is essential if we're to avoid the inevitable "Baked Flamin' Hot Cheetos -- now fortified with Vitamins B, C & E!").
When the proposed competitive food rules are released for comment, let's see what we can do to get our voices heard.
September 22, 2012: This post was corrected to cite the Chicago Tribune as the original source of the story regarding Flamin' Hot Cheeto bans
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Which will involve a low level of controversy, and use of personel time and money.
Plus, it is clear nothing will come of this, that anybody will notice. But it has the potential to really use time and money. Which us why teachers need a raise.
Like the great majority of Americans, I am a great fan of Michelle Obama. Like her, I was born, raised and educated in Chicago.
My contention is that it really is not that difficult to produce palatable meals for children that are healthly and do not lead to obesity.
But putting oat meal into beef to make hamburgers (as was done at one time in Chicago) is not conducive to good eating.
There are other solutions to nutritrion than serving frozen peas.
Here's something that apparently the Education Industry has missed. Children really like McDonald's. Why not at least attempt to learn something from them?
No real need to demonize potatoes. They kept the Irish alive for centuries.
I know, God Forbid.
flamin' hot and other variants are pretty good too...but the original i can seriously swallow a family size in one sitting.
and no, i'm not morbidly obese. i'm a 5'11" healthy guy with an average weight of 140lb.
My God now I can understand the horrors of teaching. Imagine having to work with small messy children. Imagine the shock when a teacher realizes that kids are messy.
A study released a few months ago found that schools with tighter controls on junk food sold in them do have healthier kids: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/08/13/junk-food-laws-in-schools-may-mean-healthier-kids-study
Another reason why the "Why regulate schools if they can get it at the corner store?" argument doesn't really hold water.
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Schools are in a tough spot. Budgets have been decimated by GOP-led legislatures and/or Governors and this forces tough calls to be made: do we cull the fat from our athletic programs or install vending machines to make up the difference? Parents in these school districts need to be writing their elected officials and demanding that money be returned to schools so that it can be used for health education. At the same time, parents need to lead by example at home or amy efforts made at school will be for naught.
As I recall from my years in school, this was never really an issue. I'm not even sure now that there were more than 2 or 3 machines in the schools I went to that were available for students' use.
So when a *school* is offering to its children junk food on a daily basis, intentionally or not that action carries an underlying message of approval to kids. It says, Hey, kids, it's perfectly OK to eat this way, or else why would we be offering this to you? Junk food at school thus undermines whatever minimal nutrition education children get in their classrooms (if any) because it puts the "walk" and the "talk" totally at odds.
And while I do agree that parental influence/responsibility is a critical factor in teaching kids about a healthy lifestyle, why on earth do we want a situation in which the school is an enemy, not an ally, in that critically important endeavor?
That said, there IS something unique about schools which cannot be said of the corner store, the mall, the movie theater, or the countless other places where kids buy junk food. And that's the fact that school is the means by which we transmit our society's values to the next generation, the mechanism we use for setting children up for the best possible future. For that reason, we quite deliberately pick and choose what's in a school's curriculum, we care very much about who is allowed to teach there, we get in legal fights over religious messages in the classroom, etc etc. We do all of that precisely because we know school is such a powerful influence on our kids, for better or worse.
Part two of this comment to follow.
If junk food is such a problem, why not ban it from minors entirely? Don't have it at school, but also don't have it at home. Give it the same legal restrictions as alcohol. Schools can't give it to students and parents can't give it to their children without breaking the law. Only people 21 and over are legally allowed to buy and consume junk food--including fast food.
Sound insane?
It is insane to make schools more responsible for what is fed to children than their own parents. It is insane to blame schools for children's health and weight when many of their own parents are unhealthy and overweight. And it is insane to insist on only fresh, healthful food when keeping within a school budget.
If a kid doesn't get Flamin' Hot Cheetos with cheese sauce at school, they're just going to go over to Walmart and buy it there. What is the difference? The students are still eating it, and getting fat from it, but ONLY the schools will be blamed for it.
And that *is* insane.
We have 3 children(or mostly teens now) who brown bag daily(occasionally including something Cheeto-like along with real food), maybe buy lunch once every couple weeks. Do I especially care if they use their own cash to have the occasional bag of Cheetos? Not especially, they are fit and active and as a general rule don't go nuts. Do I think they should have the option of grabbing a bag of Cheetos, dumping cheese over it and having the school charge me for a "nutritious" lunch? Not especially.
I guess what I'm saying is that while I disagree with banning students from having snack food in school, I don't think our schools should be selling it.
My point is if children are overweight and unhealthy, parents should look in their own cupboards before pointing fingers at schools.
You don't think schools should be selling it, but have no problem with parents buying it for their children and then blaming schools for the children being fat and unhealthy? Why?