PARENTS TAKE A STAND FOR GOOD NUTRITION

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Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Coca Cola? When parents in Philadelphia heard that the soft drink giant, Coca Cola, had proposed an exclusive “pouring rights contract” with the city school district they quickly moved to “put a cork” in the plan. Read on to learn about three of these parents; how they made their voices heard, how their opinions compare with those of education and nutrition professionals, and what happened after the school board voted on the issue.

Project PA interviews Pat Albright
(2nd from left) and Jill Saull (right).

Jill Saull became a school nutrition activist by an indirect route. Already concerned by the existence of Channel One TV in her child’s school, Jill began

communicating with The Center for Commercial Free Public Education (CCFPE). When this organization sent her an Action Alert describing the Coca Cola contract proposal Jill had a new concern to put on her plate. With encouragement from the CCFPE, Jill decided to take action, which eventually led her to Pat Albright, another Philadelphia mother long-concerned with the nutrition environment in her child’s schools.

Pat Albright’s concerns about school nutrition began when her only child was still in nursery school. By the time the Coke contract story reached her Pat was on Philadelphia’s city-wide Home and School Council. She was very alarmed and ready to work with other parents to let the district administrators know about their many concerns over signing a contract with Coke.

Roslyn McQueen met Pat at a Home and School Council board meeting. When Pat informed her about the pending soft drink deal, Roslyn agreed that they needed to rally community support against the contract. “It’s important to keep young children from getting into the habit of drinking sugary beverages,” Roslyn explains. She believes that the best time to help children learn about making choices that are good for their bodies is when they are young and “teachable”: during their early school years.

Selling to the Captive Audience: Not Playing Fair
The ethics of schools and commercial enterprises collaborating to sell products with little nutritional value to impressionable children has been questioned by professionals as well as parents. Marion Nestle, (pronounced NES-sel) Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University and editor of the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, comments on pouring rights contracts: “Given the financial benefits of such contracts, it is understandable why many school administrators might resist thinking about, let alone dealing with, the agreements’ ethical implications or health consequences.”¹ Nestle has also stated, “I think the food industry has to back off some of their practices. It really has to stop marketing to schools. It's unconscionable.”² In an interview with Project PA Nestle expanded on this view, “Marketing to children crosses an ethical line. Marketing has to do with adult food choices, but with kids, however, you are dealing with a population of people who don’t have the critical, if you like, the cynical know-how to be able to see an advertisement for what it is and be able to see the manipulation for what it is. It is simply not fair.”

Control Nutrition Messages – Control Health
The health consequences of poor nutrition can no longer be ignored by school authorities. Dental problems can be compounded – or caused – by excessive sugar consumption. Our national “epidemic” of childhood obesity makes the headlines on a regular basis. Medical authorities are alarmed by the prevalence of children diagnosed with adult onset diabetes, which was heretofore never seen in children.

Pat also worries that the contract in Philadelphia could have given Coca-Cola

Pat Albright

a voice in the nutrition education that is provided in her son’s school – a voice that would favor high sugar consumption. Others are concerned about this type of influence, too. John Sheehan, vice president of the Douglas County, Colorado, school board, writes, “When we become marketers and distributors, we confuse our mission. I worry about a time when our educational goals might be influenced or even set by private companies targeting our students with their own narrow message.” Sheehan continues: “These students are captive only because our schools have been entrusted with the responsibility of educating them. Taking financial advantage of this unique situation is a breach of that trust.³“

The “captive audience” that the school setting provides for a soda company also bothers Jill. ”Where there is only one company there is no choice.” she explains, “Also, we would have the principals and teachers promoting a product to make money.” Jill thinks that instead of being an environment for learning and critical thinking, schools with exclusive soda contracts devote inappropriate amounts of attention to getting the students to buy a product “that isn’t good for them. Through this type of commercialization at school students are being co-opted and getting nothing out of it . . . certainly no nutritional value.”

Roslyn’s son is asthmatic and overweight. Her main interest in the soft drink contract issue was to achieve consistency of rules in her children’s two worlds: home and school. “My kids might not always agree with my rules, but my son knows we’re trying to help him get his weight down and that we want him to follow the rules of good nutrition everywhere.” After learning about the pending contract, Roslyn stopped assuming everything was OK at school and made time in her busy schedule to learn more about the school nutrition environment.

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¹ “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, University of California Press, 2002. p. 205

² “An 'Eat More' Message for a Fattened America,” by Mary Duenwald. NY Times interview, February 19, 2002.

³ “Why I Said No to Coca-Cola,” American School Board Journal, October 1999. Reprinted by Rethinking Schools” at http://www.rethinkingschools.org/Archives/14_02/coke142.htm