Junk Food in Schools: Overview

Introduction

Many experts have pointed to the pervasiveness of junk food and sugary beverages in school settings as a significant factor contributing to America’s childhood obesity epidemic. Students are able to purchase unhealthy snacks and drinks from cafeterias, school stores, or vending machines in the majority of public schools in the United States, despite regulations issued by the federal government in the early 2010s to curb such behaviors. Amid mounting clinical evidence that the childhood obesity epidemic is placing children of ever younger ages at risk for Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and other deadly complications, many public health experts have called for schools to enact further regulations to improve the nutrition of food offered in schools.

Many financially pressed school districts have been reluctant to give up the revenue generated by junk food sales, which can amount to millions of dollars annually. Contracts with soft drink manufacturers have led the sale of carbonated beverages to schoolchildren to become a lucrative business both for the beverage industry and for schools struggling to shore up their budgets.

Opponents of eliminating or restricting the sale of junk food and drinks in school argue that the benefits of increased school revenue outweigh the unhealthy consequences. Many believe that the role of educating children in how to make proper nutritional choices belongs primarily to parents, not teachers. Attempts to police the eating habits of all children, they suggest, are both unreasonable and impractical. Teaching children moderation and self-discipline in terms of their food consumption, they believe, is a more effective long-term strategy than forbidding access to junk food.

Advocates of restricting junk-food sales in schools argue that promoting sound public health is a legitimate part of the public education mission. Just as schools must adhere to stringent safety guidelines regulating everything from buses to playground equipment, schools should also take measures to encourage healthy eating habits. They also contend that if schools fail to take the lead in responding to the childhood obesity epidemic, the health repercussions will ultimately devastate the lives of millions of overweight American children and stagger the American economy with multi-billion-dollar health care costs.

Understanding the Discussion

Competitive Foods: Snacks such as candy, carbonated beverages, potato chips, and popcorn that are available in school cafeterias, vending machines, and school stores.

Hypertension: High blood pressure; a major factor in heart disease.

Obesity: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines as obese any person with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 and above. The BMI, which relates body weight to height, is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. As the BMI describes body weight relative to height, it correlates strongly with total body fat content.

Type 2 Diabetes: The most common form of the disease, affecting about 90 to 95 percent of people with diabetes. People with Type 2 diabetes produce insulin but either do not make enough or their bodies do not use the insulin they make. Most of the people who have this type of diabetes are overweight. Type 2 diabetes has also been called adult-onset diabetes, but physicians are seeing increasing rates of the disease in the pediatric population as childhood obesity rates skyrocket.

History

The controversy over junk food in schools has grown more intense as public health officials have expressed increasing alarm over the health and fitness levels of American youth. Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with rates doubling for children between the ages of two and five and adolescents aged twelve to nineteen and more than tripling for children between the ages of six and eleven. Artificial coloring and preservatives in food also increase hyperactivity in children, making teaching and discipline more difficult. Additionally, children consuming junk food take in lower amounts of vitamins and fatty acids, which are necessary for brain development, thereby compromising an otherwise effective teaching environment. To explain these startling trends, public health experts point to a constellation of factors including the wide availability of inexpensive, high-fat, high-calorie fast food; sophisticated junk food marketing campaigns targeting young consumers; decreased levels of physical activity among young people who tend to spend much of their free time sitting in front of television and digital screens; and, in response to the time pressures of busy, modern lifestyles, the growing popularity of prepackaged meals that, while convenient, do not generally offer optimal nutritional benefits.

Many critics have also indicted school breakfast and lunch programs, which were regulated by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) according to nutritional guidelines established during the 1970s, when many medical and dental authorities were focused on reducing children’s sugar intake. By failing to restrict foods on the basis of calories, saturated fat, and sodium content, the guidelines, critics charged, did not address the nutritional risks faced by contemporary American youngsters.

Although the Department of Agriculture successfully placed restrictions on the sale of so-called competitive foods such as candy, carbonated beverages, and popcorn, a successful 1983 lawsuit brought by the National Soft Drink Association limited the scope of the department’s regulation to food service areas such as cafeterias during mealtimes. Meanwhile, vending machines in school hallways were not affected at all and continued to be in operation throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s.

In 2001, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that teenagers were three times as likely to be overweight as they were in the early 1980s. Many blamed those alarming numbers on the continued rise of junk food being marketed and sold to children in schools during the 1990s, primarily through vending machines. This led to a number of bills introduced by state legislatures in the early 2000s to limit the sale of candy, soft drinks, and other unhealthy snacks in schools, including turning off vending machines during class time and removing sweet snacks from the machines. Some school districts opposed such measures as they depended on vending machines to provide money used to fund extracurricular activities in many schools.

In the following decades, both federal and state governments in the United States began to take an increasingly active role in the debate over junk food in schools. A key provision included in the Child Nutrition and Women, Infants and Children Reauthorization Act of 2004 required schools participating in federal nutrition programs to set guidelines for all foods sold in schools by the 2006 school year.

In 2005, forty state legislatures considered more than two hundred bills addressing the issue of nutrition in schools. The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed bills banning the sale of junk food and soft drinks in public schools and one promoting breakfast foods containing vegetables and fruits. Twenty-two other states followed suit to limit the sale of junk food in schools. Also that year, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced the Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention (HeLP) America Act. The act aimed, among other goals, to reduce junk food in schools by requiring that any food and drinks sold on public school grounds, including in vending machines, meet the same federal nutritional standards as the fare served in the cafeteria. The bill would also compel the Department of Agriculture to revise its nutritional guidelines for schools to limit the amount of sugar, fat, and sodium in school lunches, as well as portion sizes. That bill, which was strongly opposed by lobbyists for the food and beverage industries, was not signed. It was reintroduced in 2007 and again was never voted on. However, a similar act, with the same name, was passed into law in West Virginia in 2005. This law required more than twenty minutes of recess, banned junk food as a reward and at parties, and enforced a serving size on all foods, while monitoring BMI over time. This was an important step, since as many as 70 percent of teachers admitted to using junk food as a reward at that time.

In February 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama launched her Let’s Move! healthy eating and living campaign, which was geared toward stemming the tide of childhood obesity in America. Following the announcement of the First Lady’s initiative, President Barack Obama created the first-ever Task Force on Childhood Obesity. The objectives of the task force were to, among other things, review national child nutrition and physical activity programs and policies and to develop a plan toward utilizing federal funding and resources to help the Let's Move! initiative reach its goals.

According to information from the American Heart Association in 2012, approximately one-third of children ages two to nineteen were overweight, and one-sixth were obese. In addition to the Let’s Move! campaign, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 implemented new standards for schools in 2012 to better align with the most up-to-date Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs). Part of the new set of regulations required schools to offer healthy food options, including twice the amount of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free milk.

The HealthierUS School Challenge, an organization that aims to recognize the nation’s healthiest schools, grew significantly during the 2010s. This USDA-certification program motivates schools to improve their health and wellness programs by increasing recreational activities and healthy food options. By September 2015, there were 6,645 schools certified by the HealthierUS School Challenge.

In April 2014, the USDA issued new regulations, which took effect in July of that year, banning the sale of all junk food in schools. The regulations went on to stipulate that only fruits, vegetables, dairy products, lean-protein foods, and whole-grain items could be sold in cafeterias or vending machines, limiting the maximum calorie count of 200 for snacks and 350 for entrées. Foods containing trans-fats could not be sold. Beverages could contain no more than 35 percent sugar or fat and must be limited to water, low- or no-fat milk, and 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. Drinks must be sold in 12-ounce or less sizes, and elementary school students could only purchase drinks in sizes 8-ounces or less.

Junk Food in Schools Today

While school meals and vending machine options became healthier in many schools following the regulations issued by the USDA in 2012 and 2014, problems arose that prevented some schools from successfully implementing those requirements. In particular, legislative and administrative actions delayed some schools from fully implementing the adjusted requirements. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions to schools' ability to provide healthy school meal programs.

In 2022, the USDA announced new transitional nutrition standards intended to be used by schools during the 2022–23 and 2023–24 academic years, helping schools to transition from their operations during the pandemic back to better nutritious standards. The transitional standards allowed for some loosening of the 2012 regulations, including allowing low-fat milk (in addition to nonfat milk) and for grains in school lunches to be at least 80 percent whole grains. Subsequently, the USDA issued a new set of long-term nutrition standards in July 2024 that aligned with the most updated DGAs; these would be phased in beginning during the 2025–26 school year. Among the new standards aimed at making school meals more nutritious was a requirement to focus on less added sugars, particularly in school breakfasts, and a reduction in sodium levels.

Another effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was that during the pandemic American schoolchildren began receiving free school lunches through nationwide waivers provided by the federal government. While some states continued to offer free meals after the program was discontinued, most did not. Furthermore, although low-income students can qualify for free or reduced price meals, children in need often do not receive those benefits due to various factors. Advocates have pushed to make universal free lunch a permanent change, pointing to research that has proven the benefits to students' overall health and academic achievement for those who receive free meals at school.

Regardless of efforts to improve the nutrition and quality of food in schools, people continue to debate the presence of junk food in schools. Opponents of regulating school junk food point out that factors outside of schools are highly influential in shaping children's relationships with food, essentially negating any effect of school junk food bans. Television and advertising campaigns, most notably, only reinforce the consumption of junk food. Advertising campaigns may inspire this behavior—surveys find a strong relationship between the specific hours that children watch television and the hours they request advertised products from their parents. In addition, children who watch television often have positive opinions of junk food. On the other hand, proponents of regulating junk food contend that healthier food in schools leads to healthier children and better academic outcomes.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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