How One Mom Fought Junk Food in School and Won

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The blog School Bites is run by a mom who wants to provide the healthiest and most nutritious food for her children. At home she can help teach them healthy eating, but at school her children and other students are exposed to a lot junk food. Over the past couple of years she has been fighting to make the food culture a healthier place in her local school district and here is what she had to say on her blog about what she accomplished:

What finally worked was a stronger dis­trict well­ness pol­icy com­bined with teacher edu­ca­tion (SEE Healthy Class­rooms Ini­tia­tive: Edu­cat­ing Teach­ers on Healthy School Cel­e­bra­tions, Non-Food Rewards & More). I man­aged to get a spot on a com­mit­tee that was con­vened to update our pol­icy accord­ing to the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act. Not all dis­trict offi­cials wanted to do away with cupcakes–one even argued that junk-food cel­e­bra­tions can be an impor­tant part of cul­tural tra­di­tions. But we had enough sup­port on the com­mit­tee to push it through. We then found a grant to help launch our Healthy Class­rooms Ini­tia­tive, which helped ensure that the pol­icy was directly com­mu­ni­cated to all staff.

At my kids’ school, the new pol­icy was announced at the start of the school year. Our prin­ci­pal issued a strong mes­sage to par­ents: Cup­cakes, cook­ies and brown­ies do not meet our dis­trict nutri­tion stan­dards and shouldn’t be served at par­ties. Some teach­ers balked–particularly those in the habit of using candy as an incen­tive. But to my knowl­edge, there hasn’t been a ton of push back from par­ents. In fact, I’ve heard many say that they’re pleased with the change. Rumor has it other schools in our dis­trict have expe­ri­enced more of an uproar.

I fig­ure it’s like the seat belt law. Some peo­ple were out­raged at first, yet we all now wear them with­out giv­ing it a sec­ond thought. And every day, lives are saved.

All I know is, since the change, my kids are eat­ing bet­ter and demand­ing less junk food (shocker, yes!). They actu­ally eat their lunch at school and are hun­gry for a healthy after-school snack. Their teach­ers have come up with ways to reward them with­out dish­ing out ice cream or candy. And now, every once in a while, I can treat them to spe­cial dessert (whereas before I felt like I never could) and relax on hol­i­days like Halloween.

And it isn’t just about MY kids: Think of the poten­tial dif­fer­ence it’s mak­ing for chil­dren who don’t have access to healthy food at home.

So to all of you who are work­ing hard to change the food envi­ron­ment in your class­rooms and schools, KEEP FIGHTING! (SEE Call­ing All Moms: How YOU Can Make a Dif­fer­ence in the Fight for Health­ier School Food). Trust me, I know how ardu­ous and frus­trat­ing it can be. There are plenty of times that it felt hope­less. So every time a door shuts, please take a deep breath and look for a win­dow (or a chimney–thank you, Fear Nada Healthy Mama!). And remem­ber that change IS pos­si­ble.