A recent study reported yesterday by the New York Times Well blog indicates they may be.
The study, published in this week’s The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, looked at the sugary drink consumption of 7,000 fifth and eighth graders over a three-year period and its first conclusion isn’t so surprising: when schools banned only soda but not other sugary drinks, sugary beverage purchases on campus did not drop as compared to schools with no beverage ban at all.
This points up the hollowness of a soda-only ban, which is what we now have here in Houston ISD; under our “pouring rights” contract with Coca-Cola, our middle and high school students can still purchase Minute Maid fruit drinks and Powerade from vending machines on campus.
It was the study’s second finding that was really discouraging. On campuses where all sugary beverages were banned, students’ access to the beverages understandably dropped but their overall consumption of sugary drinks remained the same, implying that they were simply getting their sugary drinks off campus in the same quantities.
[One thing worth noting: the study looked at the period between 2004 – 2007, when many districts were first instituting soda bans. I’d like to say the age of the data casts doubt on the findings, but there’s no evidence that I know of to support the notion that kids’ soda and sugary beverage consumption has gone down in the last four or five years.]
The finding that kids will get their sugary drinks regardless of a school ban only points up the degree to which childhood obesity is a deeply complex problem, and one which isn’t entirely the school’s responsibility . As I wrote in my comment on the Well blog post:
. . . . there’s only so much one can do at school to address the multi-faceted problem of childhood obesity. It’s home + school + marketing/media + lack of exercise + widespread availability of cheap, caloric foods. Each one of those pieces of the puzzle needs to be addressed . . . .
But as another Well commenter named Susan pointed out, there’s an equally important reason to ditch sugary beverages in schools:
There is something to be said for taking the moral high ground, even if it doesn’t reduce total sugar consumption. Setting an example is also important.
I couldn’t agree more.
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Dr. Susan Rubin says
Here’s a radical concept: why not teach all about soda in schools? How it is made, including the plastic bottles (science), how it is marketed to kids (media literacy/ english), the story of both sugar cane and HFCS. (they could screen King Corn), the history of coke and pepsi (social studies)
Only when we start to EDUCATE kids (and their parents) about the big picture will anything ever change.
Brad says
Well actually if it doesn’t move the needle maybe we should ask what does and shift our attention to that instead of a soda ban?
Dana Woldow says
I am always troubled by the media version of the “conclusions” of studies like this which rely on self-reported data, especially from children and adolescents. I think the actual conclusion is that kids REPORT that their soft drink consumption is the same, whether they get those drinks at school or not. That is a little bit different from a conclusion that says that kids’ consumption is the same.
Studies have been done around the reliability of self-reported data; some have even focused on self-reported data from kids. This study from the CDC,
http://tinyurl.com/6ue657s
focusing on how kids report “health risk” behaviors, talks about how self reporting is affected by both cognitive and situational factors. That is, the data can be affected both by kids’ inability to recall accurately what they ate or drank, and also by their perception of the social desirability of the behavior they are reporting. Or, as the study says,
“Questions that are most likely to be influenced by a social-desirability bias have response options that “involve attributes considered desirable to have, activities considered desirable to engage in, or objects considered desirable to possess.” ”
What this means is, the amount of soft drinks kids report drinking can possibly be affected by how cool they think it is to drink soft drinks. Keep in mind this study was of fifth graders (about age 10-11) and 8th graders (about 13-14) and took place between 2004-2007.
When my school district (SFUSD) first proposed banning soda back in 2003, there was huge outrage among the students. Drinking soda and other sugary beverages was definitely a high status behavior among students, with many kids making a habit of choosing a lunch consisting only of a soda and a bag of chips. I doubt that the status associated by tweens and young teens with soft drinks has decreased much even now, and certainly not during the time period studied.
So, while I have no doubt that 85% of kids did REPORT that they drank a sugary beverage daily, regardless of whether they could buy it at school or not, I don’t think that is the same as saying that 85% of the kids actually drank a sugary beverage daily. It only proves that they said they did.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Very interesting and a valid point. And yet, how can we ever measure this sort of thing on a wide scale but for self-reporting? A difficult problem for researchers in this area. And it’s funny, because I think with adults it goes the other way – we are more likely to underreport how much junk we eat and drink.
j. sanderson says
Well, maybe we should consider the fact that a large amount of what children like to consume is already “programmed” into them before they even set foot into a school. This can come from media, via television, which tells them it’s “cool” to have these kinds of food. Parents, aren’t able to be around their children after school, because they work, ay try to encourage the right kind of eating, but often opt for dinners, brought in from, fast food, or local restaurants that serve these kinds of drinks. In other words, the pattern is woven before they even know what school lunch consists of, and true to their nature kids eat what they know. WE can attempt to teach and legislate but the primary exposure to media and cultural habits based on the home situation severely limits their effect. From birth to 5 or 6, when they start school , in many cases, children already get a “headstart” on unfortunate habits.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
All true, j.sanderson. I’m in complete agreement. In an piece I wrote for a Slate magazine anti-childhood-obesity essay contest (I was one of the winners 🙂 ), I talk about how we absolutely have to focus as much on education and what I call “inoculation” as we do any other reform. If you’re interested, the essay is here.
Bri says
I do wonder, though. It seems to me that — convenience of vending machines aside — if a kid is accustomed to drinking sugary drinks, often, it’s because they have access to them at home.
So if the school bans sugary drinks in vending machines, but Mom and Dad keep a six-pack of Coke in the pantry (or a case of Snapple, or whatever), wouldn’t a kid be at least somewhat likely to grab one of those and chuck it into the backpack/lunch bag on the way out the door in the morning? Kid wants soda with lunch; kid knows school doesn’t sell soda; kid can grab soda from pantry; problem solved.
And even if they didn’t do that, I’d guess that a teenager who wanted soda, didn’t drink it during the day from the school vending machine, and knew it was available at home or at a friend’s house or whatever would be inclined to grab one — even if this happened to be a kid whose ONLY soda consumption used to be from the vending machine. It’s amazing how we become creatures of habit, and sugary beverages are addictive; a school ban could certainly just be shifting the LOCATION of the consumption, not the amount.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Right. Sigh. But I do like the point (and I’m sure you agree) that just because a ban alone doesn’t change out-of-school habits, we still don’t need to affirmatively offer soda at schools, which sends all kinds of bad messages. As always, we come back to education. . . .
Bri says
Oh, absolutely. It’s the same type of argument I use with my kids’ preschool in trying to get them to give up sugary and overly processed snacks: When you’re in charge of growing children’s minds and bodies, you have an innate responsibility to provide the best of EVERYTHING, including example.
What I did not say, in my original comment — and meant to! — was that I just mean that studies like these don’t surprise me, and are not of much value, I think. School soda bans are important because the school should be a place where children learn lifelong skills and habits (that’s the example part), and do so free from distraction and interruption (that’s the jacked-up-on-crappy-food-and-beverage part). But I don’t think it should surprise anyone that, even if the bans do good in those ways, they don’t solve the overarching issue, which is that our kids have much more access to much more junk than they ever should.
Sophie Johnson says
I personally am a self-described diet soda adict, so I recognize the hypocracy of this statement, but here goes:
Dr. Rubin, I appreciate what you say about the importance of education. But to Dana’s point, whether or not the removal of the soda vending machines changed behavior or not, the kids said that it didn’t. Meaning, even though the removal should communicate that the school doesn’t support or endorse soda, the kids didn’t buy into. The kids still wanted to drink soda (whether or not they actually did, as Dana suggests).
These are teens. As a teen, I know I wasn’t particulary eager to send adults the message that they could control or influence me. I wanted to assert my own decision-making powers, and in fact would probably have done the opposite of what I knew the adults wanted from me, purely to rebel.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
I just linked in one of these comments (I can never say “above” or “below” because I can’t tell when I’m responding!) to that essay I wrote for the Slate anti-childhood-obesity Hive. I think the “inoculation” part of my recommendations really comes into play here – especially with teens. We need to get to the point that soda and other junk food is as uncool as smoking has become (at least with most teens) and my feeling, expressed in the essay, is that teens don’t like to feel that industry is duping and controlling them. The more we can expose that angle, the better off we’d be with this demographic, IMO.
Maura says
Good eating habits start at home. Period. What happens in school hopefully reinforces what is taught at home. It’s all about balance – not abstinence! We are going to such ridiculous extremes in school lunch guidelines they are going to backfire! I find blaming the obesity epidemic on school lunches preposterous. Parents in this country need to take accountability for their children!!!! They need to monitor and guide – that is a parent’s role. I have 3 school age children and I take full responsibility for what they eat at home or otherwise…like every other part of their lives I coach them on what is right. They won’t always make the right choice, but food consumption is an on-going component of good parenting.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Maura – this relates to a larger issue I want to post about. I’ll share the link here, too.
Dana Woldow says
One other point – while some kids who can no longer buy soda at school may bring a sugary drink from home instead, undoubtedly there are less kids drinking soda in SF public schools now than was the case 10 years ago, before all soda and its ilk was removed. Apart from the obesity-related aspect, there are other benefits to kids not drinking soda during the school day, the most obvious of which is that with kids choosing the cola-type beverages (and some non colas), there is the effect of the caffeine to consider.
At my son’s high school (inner city, culturally diverse, 65% low income), there was an immediate 50% drop in suspensions in the 6 months after soda was removed from the school (as compared to the same time period the year before). The Principal at the time attributed it to two factors – that the counselors were trying to work with kids to keep behaviors from escalating to the point where a suspension was called for, and that with the removal of the soda, she no longer felt “that caffeine buzz” as she walked through the halls of the school.
Think about all of the crap in soda. Here’s the ingredients list from Mello Yello (a Coke product):
“Water, high fructose corn syrup, concentrated orange juice, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium benzoate, erythorbic acid and EDTA (to protect taste), potassium citrate, caffeine, yellow 5, carob bean gum. ”
Anyone see anything in there that might set a kid off?
How about Minute Maid orange soda (another fine Coca Cola product)?
“Water Carbonated, Corn Syrup High Fructose, Acacia, Citric Acid, Potassium Benzoate, Sucrose, Vegetable(s) Oil Brominated, Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin, Flavoring Natural, Red 40, Yellow 6.”
Seriously, does anyone believe that schools facilitating kids’ putting this crap into their bodies, at the same time they are trying to focus and learn, is a good idea?
Kate says
I’m fine with soda machines not being in schools. As kids get older though, it would be naive to think that they wouldn’t find other ways to get soda without the parents knowing. A kid could get it on their way home from a convenience store, grocery store or even a fast food restaurant, at least where I live.
As far as what Maura says, I think it has a grain of truth. My teen daughter is watching the food debates, and I have to wonder what her take away message is. I think just the debate alone may backfire in some ways, regardless of whether your kid actually eats the school lunches(most of the time she does not).
Maura says
Just to clarify, I do support the ban on soda in schools. But what I am seeing now is one-up-manship in what should be banned. USDA now says 8oz of 100% juice…okay, but now the state of Massachusetts has done one better with 4oz of 100% juice. It’s just plain naive to think that the 4oz difference in juice servings will help in the fight against obesity. Stop feeding them Dunkin Donuts for breakfast and Burger King for dinner. Take away the video games/TV and get some exercise. I love this country – but we seem to take a good thing too far. Soda ban good – banning everything other than water and milk, foolish. They will just bring something very unhealthy (like perhaps Red Bull) from home, or go to the local convenience store and get a blue slurpee.