Edmonton public schools go junk-food free

Junk food is off the menu this fall in Edmonton’s public schools.

Starting Thursday, the first day of school, public schools can no longer sell or provide students with foods from the Alberta nutrition guidelines’ “choose least often” category.

The low-nutrient foods higher in calories, fat, sugar and salt include various types of chips and crackers, cookies and granola bars, sugary cereal, chocolate bars, candy, frozen desserts such as ice cream, pop and fruit-flavoured drinks and bakery items such as pastries and doughnuts, the Alberta Health Services school nutrition handbook says.

Students can still bring treats from home or buy them outside the schools.

That’s what many students from Victoria School of the Arts do at lunchtime, Grade 11 student Lea Beaudoin said. Students at the downtown K-12 school often walk over to the nearby Tim Hortons, Dairy Queen or Humpty’s family restaurant, she said.

But food choices in school have improved the past several years, said Beaudoin, who prefers healthy foods.

“I went to a junior high that had a sandwich machine, but the meat was absolutely disgusting,” Beaudoin said. “It was terrible.”

Vending machines in Victoria school sell healthier items such as Nature Valley granola bars – which are in the “choose sometimes” category of the nutritional guidelines – as well as fruit, said Victoria student Skar Svajger, 16.

“But the fruit is really expensive,” Svajger said. “It’s like $2 for a banana. A cookie is about $1.”

Harry Ainlay High School has phased out junk food the past three years. Principal David Jones said the kids don’t seem to miss it.

“I thought maybe they would just go to McDonalds across the street or take their car and go to the mall – we’re very close to Southgate Mall,” Jones said. “But you know, it’s interesting that the sales (of food in school) went down dramatically in my first year of doing this for the first month. Then all of a sudden they came back because students know and were educated that it’s not good to have french fries and a Slurpee or a large Coke or an extra burger. They become very aware of what’s going into their bodies.”

Harry Ainlay’s cafeteria serves an array of freshly made fare, including roast beef sandwiches, vegetarian sandwiches, baked chicken with rice and vegetables, pork chops and small sirloin steaks. The school has taken sodium-laden packaged foods such as instant noodles off the menu. Students are sometimes treated to hamburgers with all-beef patties and baked french fries, Jones said.

“Nothing is fried any more. In fact, my deep fryers, I took them out three years ago so there are no deep fryers at all in our buildings,” Jones said. “We’re not in the business of making money at cafeterias. We’re in the business of providing good, healthy choices.”

Students are now less lethargic after lunch and better able to focus on schoolwork, he said.

Ottewell Junior High School stocks its vending machines and “snack shack” with healthier options: water, milk, slushes made with real fruit juice, cheese sticks, healthier granola bars, fruit and yogurt. The school features daily inexpensive and healthy lunch items such as multi-grain sandwiches, whole wheat subs and occasional treats such as pizza with whole-grain crust, said assistant principal Bob Zukerman. The school also rewards students “caught” with healthy lunches with small prizes, he said.

“Everything was carefully scrutinized,” said Zukerman, whose school was one of the first in the city to ban pop in vending machines nearly 10 years ago.

“We had a whole transformation of what we allow in our vending machines. There’s no more chocolate bars. At first, the students said, ‘Where’s the chips?’ but they’ll go for what’s there over the long run. It’s been a good transition and I think parents really appreciate it.”

Scott Digweed plans to check the vending machines this September in his 10-year-old daughter’s school to make sure all junk is removed.

“Now that there’s a policy backing this up, I want to make sure that it’s followed,” he said. “We are trying to teach our daughter at home how to eat healthily … so it’s a little disheartening to have the things we’re trying to teach her undermined at school.”

Digweed previously spoke with the principal at his daughter’s school to express concerns about candy being distributed to reward students in class and about unhealthy treats in the vending machines.

“It sounded like, speaking with the principal, that they have had struggles with the operators of the vending machines, so they will make the request to remove unhealthy items from the machines and then they start showing up again in the machine,” Digweed said.

A junk-food-free environment better aligns schools with their commitment to children’s health, public school board chairman Dave Colburn said.

“It jarred my sensibilities, I can tell you, in my first few years on the board, when I saw these (vending) machines chock-a-block with junk food, and yet I heard principals and teachers and administration talking about the importance of creating healthy and active children,” Colburn said Tuesday.

He led the push in 2006 to create the citywide school board policy to get rid of junk food in the city’s 197 public schools. The policy came into effect March 2008 and included a timeline to phase out unhealthy food and drinks sold in cafeterias, vending machines and school stores.

The work proved complicated, Colburn said. The school district had to honour contracts with food vendors, then work with those vendors to make sure foods will meet Alberta nutrition guidelines for children and youth.

A total of 79,698 students are expected to enrol this year in the city’s public schools.

“Schools have an incredible opportunity to change the health values of children,” Colburn said. “When you consider that virtually every child in Edmonton passes through the doors of a school for about 12 years at an impressionable age, the opportunity we have in the school environment to influence the health values of our children and the next generation of adults is profound and virtually limitless, but we need leadership, we need policy, we need commitment on the part of staff and community and we need an understanding that this (health) problem is very real.”

At Edmonton Catholic Schools, parent councils and school officials have worked together to get rid of junk food and pop, replacing them with healthier snacks such as Sun Chips, plain popcorn and bottled water, said Catholic schools spokeswoman Lori Nagy. “Out of 87 schools, the majority of our schools only provide nutritious snacks in their vending machines,” she said.

Parents of students at Archbishop Joseph MacNeil Elementary and Junior High appreciate the school offering “valuable-calorie” snacks, said Emily Ball, chairwoman of the southwest Edmonton school’s parent council.

“If it’s not there, they’re not going to buy it,” Ball said.