Willow Glen Resident

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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Healthy Side: As part of a recent push to introduce healthier foods to students, San Jose schools have been offering fresh fruit and salad side dishes.

Nutrition-minded parents see childhood obesity cost

By Monica Heger

With the childhood obesity epidemic in the national spotlight, parents and teachers recognize soda costs more than 75 cents a can.

The Santa Clara County civil grand jury recently found the combination of unhealthy food readily available to students on campuses and cutbacks to school physical education programs is contributing to the skyrocketing obesity problem.

Schools are unable to significantly increase the amount of physical education classes due to budget constraints, said Karen Fuqua, spokesperson for the San Jose Unified School District. Moreover, the school day is locked into a pretty rigid schedule.

"Physical education is really difficult for us in a lot of our schools right now, mainly because our minutes are so controlled," Fuqua said. "We can't make the day longer without additional funding."

However, Fuqua said many schools are coming up with creative ways to encourage physical activity among students. She said the school district just finished constructing student nutrition and wellness guidelines that will be implemented in the upcoming year.

The guidelines draw upon the support of parents, teachers and nutrition experts to provide opportunities for students to be physically active and to include nutrition education as part of the curriculum.

These guidelines fall on the heels of a recent trend among schools to provide healthier food for students by eliminating soda and junk food from vending machines. Parents pressed for this change.

San Jose parent Marjorie Freedman help found the Student Nutrition Advisory Council at Bret Hart Middle School about three years ago. She was also involved with Student Health as Partners in Education (SHAPE). The group helped to establish the wellness policy that will be adopted by the San Jose Union School District this fall.

"I got really upset when I saw the junk food at my daughter's middle school and the access the students had to it," Freedman said. "I was distressed to see kids at 10 a.m. drinking a soda and eating a huge bag of chips."

Now students can buy healthier food from the student store, which is open in the morning, at lunch and after school. Instead of chips and a soda, they can buy yogurt and juice.

"My original goal was to get rid of the junk food that was sold in the student store--all the soda and candy," Freedman said. "But then I broadened it to basically get rid of all the junk food on campus from the vending machine to the cafeteria."

Aside from offering healthier snacks, Freedman and the other volunteers on the nutrition council wanted to offer students enjoyable after-school activities that would allow them to burn off steam and calories.

Freedman said volunteer Anne Sheridan was the impetus behind the after-school programs, which were subsidized with the profits earned from the school store.

Sheridan said they started offering hip hop classes, karate, fencing and swimming to reach students who were not involved with organized sports.

It is difficult to teach children healthy eating habits, Freedman said, when vending machines are located throughout the campuses.

Ten years ago the San Jose Unified School District and Pepsi signed a contract that would guarantee the schools 50 percent of the profits from vending machines, at a minimum of $250,000 per year. The contract requires schools to sell only Pepsi products. The 10-year agreement is in its seventh year, and the money received from Pepsi goes into the school's general fund.

Freedman said the contract was originally set up so the profit would go into school nutrition programs, but she's skeptical that ever happened since the schools lack nutrition programs.

"The contract came when the schools were desperate for revenue," Freedman said. "They saw it as an opportunity to bring money into cash-strapped districts."

With three years left in the contract, Freedman said, "My opinion on it is that the soft drink company is not giving the school revenue. It's coming from the kid putting money into a machine."

Plus, she said factoring in other costs made the disadvantages of the contract that much more glaring, including electricity costs for running the machines and the health problems caused by eating unhealthy snacks.

"Until we understand as a society the true cost of this obesity crisis, we are not going to make the change," Freedman said. "It's a very small amount of money when you compare the profit of what schools are making to the health care costs of an obese or diabetic child."