The Populist, Radical School Food Revolution

by Caroline Grannan via Beyond Chron

Thu, Sep 6, 2007 7:52AM

Thursday, September 6, 2007 : Five years ago, parent activists and staff at San Francisco’s Aptos Middle School fought the SFUSD bureaucracy to begin a pilot project banishing junk food sales, which expanded into the districtwide Wellness Policy. Back then, SFUSD sold soda, Twinkies, French fries and other tempting but health-busting items in middle and high schools’ a la carte Beaneries.

In 2002, when the Aptos principal asked the then-SFUSD Student Nutrition Director to please stop selling soda and junk food at her school, the response was an emphatic no. "The district needs the money."

Popular wisdom then was that selling soda and junk provided essential income to cash-strapped schools. The soda industry was cutting "exclusive pouring rights" deals with schools everywhere, though the SFUSD school board prohibited such pacts here. In exchange for a chunk of cash, the school would sell only Coke or only Pepsi products, often with a quota that required the school administration to actively push the product. (These deals were satirized on the "Daria" animated series and in a "Simpsons" episode in which Bart got so obese, thanks to Springfield Elementary’s vending machines that he had a heart attack.)

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