Bill aims at school vending machines

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Congress is considering expanding school nutritional standards to vending machines as the childhood obesity rates continues to rise.

Legislation introduced yesterday by Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat and chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, would require the Department of Agriculture to update school nutrition standards to extend to vending machines and school stores.

Children are overexposed to unhealthy foods from vending machines, a la carte lines and in school stores, school nutrition officials told the committee yesterday.

"Snack foods, desserts, pastries, candy and soft drinks are part of the nation's school landscape," said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. He said school systems have become fertile ground for food marketers as children spend about $140 billion annually on food and beverage products.

Federal nutrition standards for food served in school cafeterias were set in the early 1990s. Expanding that legislation is supported by the committee's top Republican, Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.

"I think we need national standards for what's occurring in the hallways of the nation's schools," he said.

A report by Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, found that 83 percent of elementary schools and 99 percent of high schools sell unhealthy foods such as candy and soft drinks inside and outside the cafeteria. Unhealthy foods are linked to a rising obesity rate among children that has doubled over the past two decades and an upswing in the number of type two diabetes cases in adolescents.

About 30.3 percent of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight and 15.3 percent are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For adolescents -- ages 12 to 19 -- 30.4 percent are overweight and 15.5 percent are obese.

Federal nutrition standards would supplant an agreement between former President Bill Clinton's Alliance for a Healthier Generation and the American Beverage Association, which includes companies such as Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, that created voluntary standards to cap calories and portion sizes and eliminate full-calorie soft drinks in every grade. Those standards will be ready this fall, with full implementation targeted for August 2009.

A similar agreement was reached in October between the Clinton group and five of the country's largest snack food producers -- Dannon, Kraft Foods, Mars, Pepsi and Campbell Soup Co.