By Rachel Whitten
July 27, 2010

(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. – Starting this Sunday, snack and beverage choices in Kansas school vending machines will be healthier.

Back in May, the Kansas State Board of Education voted to require school districts to adhere to the “advanced” nutrition requirements set forth in 2005 as suggestions in the school wellness guidelines. Although next year schools will have to adhere to even stricter guidelines, this year about 90 percent of all schools in Kansas already meet the standard going into effect Aug. 1.

Since the Board of Education approved the measure, it has garnered both strong praise and harsh criticism.

Ron Hein, an attorney who represents the Kansas Beverage Association has taken issue with the requirements at both the June and July open forum during the Board of Education meeting. He said the board did not take the proper steps to implement the policy.

“At the March meeting they said they wanted to look at this issue and meet with stakeholders, schools, parent groups, and industry members,” Hein said. “Instead unilaterally in May of this year, on their own without going out and seeking input as to what they should do they decided to take the School Wellness Guidelines that were implemented in 2005 and mandate they be effective August 1.”

Janet Waugh, the State Board of Education chair from Kansas City, said the Board followed proper protocol.

“I think there’s a total misunderstanding. We had the data from the school districts that the majority of them were already at this level so we weren’t impacting that many districts,” Waugh said, later adding that the only controversy the board faced when deciding was that some members agreed with the premise of the measure, but wanted to leave the decision up to local boards.

Hein said he felt the new requirement was duplicitous, because it doesn’t take into account other places students can get junk food, it only targets vending machines.

“This was just for vending machines, not for schools stores, not other programs that are available to students, they just picked out one, which is a problem in itself,” Hein said.

But Jason Eberhart-Phillips, a physician and Kansas State Health Officer said the action to put healthier foods in school vending machines was a huge step even taking into account other junk food sources for students.

“I think the State School Board just ran 26 miles of a marathon. I don’t want to quibble on the last .2 miles,” Eberhart-Phillips said. “Just cleaning up the vending machines has just sent a totally powerful message that really makes me proud to live in Kansas.”

Hein said the wellness guidelines don’t address portion control. The Beverage Association aligns itself with other eating principles; chiefly the Health Alliance Guidelines, which Hein said is healthier than limiting choices.

“There are no good or bad products or types of foods that are out there, what’s healthy is dependent on eating a proper diet and getting proper exercise and moderation in all sorts of foods,” Hein said.

Nonetheless, Eberhart-Phillips compared putting junk food in schools to allowing smoking on school grounds and cigarette vending machines in teacher lounges.

“Twenty years from now we’ll look at this and look back and laugh at this and say ‘really? They sold Twinkies in school? What were they thinking?’ It will just sound bizarre,” Eberhart-Phillips said. “Why are we taking these multinational companies and inviting them to market their product in schools? Don’t these companies have enough other ways of infiltrating our lives that we don’t have to get kids addicted to their product in 3^rd grade?”

Traditionally, negotiating contracts with a beverage company like Pepsi or Coca-Cola, to allow exclusive sale of their product in a school has earned money for district athletic programs or extracurricular activities.

Board member Waugh said she has not received calls from superintendents in her district regarding the loss of money, but she has received two emails and one call from out of her district.

“The only call I’ve received was from an athletic director from Hutchinson. He claimed they would lose quite a bit of money,” Waugh said.

Schools could definitely lose money, Hein said.

“If the decision of what they can sell deviates from what the contract is, it will have ramifications, and could affect the amount of money schools receive,” Hein said. “That was something that was never contemplated by the Board of Education.”

But Eberhart-Phillips said the short term financial benefit is not worth long term health problems.

“That’s the justification that the Beverage Association and all the industry hacks are trying to make the case,” he said. “Find administrators who want to publicly come out and say ‘we don’t care about how fat our kids are getting, we just care about the money.’ They’re just not showing up.”

Hein said the Beverage Association doesn’t think obesity is not a problem, just that this manner isn’t the way to combat the concern.

“We’re not in there saying that the Board of Education shouldn’t be looking at this issue or attempting to address the issue,” Hein said. “We just think they picked the wrong process to follow, they made the decision before input from the public and we believe there are better solutions that are out there, that will work better for students, teachers, parents and administrators.”

But both Waugh and Eberhart-Phillips acknowledge the vending machine restrictions are not a panacea for the obesity epidemic.

“The reality is this is not going to solve the obesity issue because it is certainly not, we recognize that,” Waugh said. “But we’re just making a statement that we want to provide good examples; that we want to show communities, parents and students what healthful eating is, that you can have snack and it can be healthy.”

The cost of healthcare for obese adults and children is far more than the cost to wage educational campaigns against the expanding problem, Eberhart-Phillips said.

“It costs our state taxpayers tens of millions of dollars not to face up to the obesity problem. We’re paying it in our taxes for Medicaid and Medicare and other government funded health services,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re skinny as a rail, the obesity problem is still hurting you, it’s making us poorer as a nation.”