Schools

In recent months, several Cobb County schools have made great progress in improving their nutritional environments!  Read the entries below for inspiration and share your own school’s success stories by adding comments!

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  • School Wellness
    March 12, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    In October, Sope Creek Elementary School PTA’s Health and Nutrition Committee conducted a survey to better understand how parents feel about the school lunch program. Upon reading the surveys, the Committee learned that many parents were not satisfied with meal content and felt that improvements should be made. Specifically, parents asked that 1.) more fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains be served in the lunch meal, and that 2.) the beverages offered should be fewer in number and less sugary. Parents also indicated that 3.) they were displeased with the large selection of unhealthy a la carte items for sale in the cafeteria. The Health and Nutrition Committee then met with Cobb County Food and Nutrition Services to facilitate the healthier food/beverage requests. One successful outcome of this meeting is that “Silk” soymilk and lowfat yogurt are now available in the a la carte bin at Sope Creek Elementary! The Committee is disappointed, however, that the unhealthy cookies, ice creams (containing hydrogenated palm kernel oil -a trans fat) and sports drinks are still made available to the students everyday. (The Health and Nutrition Committee is determined to remove these poor choices from the a la carte bin by the beginning of next school year.)

    In an effort to address parent’s concerns about beverage selection, the Committee recently asked Cobb County Food and Nutrition Services to discontinue offering students beverages that list high fructose corn syrup as the second ingredient. The flavored Mayfield milks, fruit punch, orange “drink” and Gatorades all contain high levels of high fructose corn syrup. Many parents, who responded to the lunch survey, indicated that they did not feel their child needed “flavored” milk at school anyway, and that the dairy milk served to their children at home is unflavored.

    The Health and Nutrition Committee asked Cobb County Food and Nutrition Services that a study be conducted in which vanilla, strawberry and chocolate milks would be excluded from the lunch menu for one month, to determine whether children would consume the unflavored milk. Before the study even began, the Health and Nutrition Committee suspected that during the first week of the “milk trial”, children would be disappointed that the sugary milks were not offered, but that in subsequent weeks, children would be content consuming the unflavored version, because that was what was available. Unfortunately, Cobb County Food and Nutrition Services did not grant the study which was requested, and instead, conducted a “milk trial” which only lasted 10 nonconsecutive days (instead of the full month which we requested) and although the flavored milks were unavailable, the other sugary beverages were still for sale at the same time, so the study was inherently flawed. The Health and Nutrition Committee maintains that during the ban on flavored milk, children who had been looking to get their sugar “fix” probably switched to drinking fruit punch, orange drink or Gatorade instead of consuming the unflavored milk, which their parents insist they are drinking at home. It also stands to reason that, if the flavored milks had been removed for longer than just 10 days (or even permanently), children would have changed their “habits” and would have happily consumed the plain milk. The results from the flawed study have not been reported by Food and Nutrition Services yet. We will provide updates as soon as information is available, and will ask that the study be conducted again, without the flaws, so that accurate and useful data can be obtained.

    The Sope Creek Elementary PTA’s Health and Nutrition Committee will continue to work for improvements in school nutrition.

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