Baby Step in Healthful Eating

On Wednesday the Assembly Education Committee will vote on a “lite” version of a bill to restrict the sale of junk food on public school campuses. Last week, lawmakers watered down the original version, buckling under intense pressure from lobbyists representing everything from jellybeans to tortilla chips to sodas. High schools and junior high schools were freed from the bill’s one modest nutritional restriction: that foods peddled on campuses derive no more than 35% of their calories from fat and that sweets carry no more than 35% of their total weight in sugar.

The weakened version of SB 19, by Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), would still apply that standard to elementary schools, the latest target for junk food peddlers.

Opposition to SB 19 is being led by principals accustomed to seeing their schools wolf down five-or six-figure annual profits from vendors, money used to fund supplemental programs like after-school basketball. However, SB 19, which wouldn’t take effect until 2004, would offer $25,000 grants to schools that agreed to develop healthier revenue sources. Principals would have ample time and assistance to develop new funding. And while some principals may suggest that the bill bans everything but Brussels sprouts, the legislation would in fact allow kids a selection that includes pudding and baked potato chips as well as fruit juice bars, frozen yogurt and beef jerky.

With the percentage of overweight children in the United States doubling in the last three decades, school leaders should be trying to discourage students from failing at nutrition. Instead they become pushers. Only 13% of California principals had revenue-sharing arrangements with junk food vendors two years ago; more than half do today.

Escutia’s bill merely slows the junk food free-for-all among the youngest, most vulnerable consumers. It should not take much courage for the Legislature to pass it.

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To Take Action: Members of the Assembly Education Committee from the Los Angeles area include Lou Correa (D-Anaheim), Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge), Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) and Carl Washington (D-Paramount). They can be reached by e-mail at www.assembly.ca.gov. Click on Member Directory.