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Childhood Obesity Prevention Agenda for States, Municipalities, and School Boards

American children are suffering from an epidemic of obesity. In spite of this, purveyors of junk food increasingly are able to use public schools as a platform for their marketing campaigns. In effect, the junk-food lobby has latched on to the compulsory school laws as a way to corral a captive audience of impressionable children.

Parents should guide the eating habits of their kids. Corporations have no business wedging into that relationship. Schools should support parents in this. We are what we eat, as the old saying goes; and in this the schools play an important part, for good or ill. Schools should encourage healthful eating habits and exercise. They should not become marketing zones and shopping centers in which junk-food manufacturers get open access to impressionable children.

WE CALL ON STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN BY PROHIBITING THE MARKETING AND SALE OF JUNK FOOD IN SCHOOLS.

Schools should help parents promote good nutrition, rather than support junk-food companies that promote products high in added sugar and fat.

1. States, municipalities, and school boards should prohibit the marketing of junk food on school property.

Prohibit contracts that obligate children to watch or listen to ads for junk food on school property. An example is Channel One, an in-school TV marketing program.
Prohibit display of visual advertisements for junk food in school, such as billboards, signs, posters, and logo placements.

Prohibit the use of corporate-sponsored curricula featuring or promoting junk-food products.

Prohibit exclusive marketing ("pouring rights") contracts between soda beverage companies and school districts, school food-service agencies, and school groups.
Schools should make healthful food available to children.

2. States, municipalities, and school boards should ban the sale or distribution of junk food on school property.

Prohibit sale of junk food on school property, including, but not limited to, à la carte, before-school, or after-school programs, concession stands, or vending machines.

Prohibit the distribution of junk food as a reward or prize for good behavior or exemplary performance.

Prohibit distribution of free samples of junk food on school property.
Amend Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices statutes and ordinances to prohibit marketing of junk food to children on school property.

Schools should be rewarded for exceeding federal nutrition standards.

3. States, municipalities, and school boards should provide financial rewards to school districts, schools, and food-service agencies that exceed federal nutrition guidelines and obey restrictions on the sale of junk food in schools.

School districts and school food-service agencies should exceed the nutritional standards of the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, especially by providing plenty of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, fat-free dairy products, and local and organic products, but no foods with hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and few or no fried foods.

School districts and school food-service agencies must strictly comply with the federal competitive foods rule.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have defined junk food as "foods which provide calories primarily through fats or added sugars and have minimal amounts of vitamins and minerals."

The Childhood Obesity Prevention Agenda is endorsed by leading scientists and obesity experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Yale, and other major research institutions, along with the American College of Preventive Medicine, Center for a New American Dream, Center for Food and Justice, Center for Media Education, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Connecticut Public Health Association, Eagle Forum, Green Party of the United States, Maryland Public Health Association, Massachusetts Public Health Association, Michigan Public Health Association, New Mexico Public Health Association, Organic Consumers Association, Science and Environmental Health Network, Stonyfield Farm, and the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center.

Other prominent endorsers include: Lawrence Cheskin (director, Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center); Greg Critser (author, Fat Land); Frances Moore Lappé (author, Diet for a Small Planet); Marion Nestle (author, Food Politics); Peggy O'Mara (publisher and editor, Mothering magazine); Alvin Poussaint (Harvard Medical School); Raffi (children's troubadour); Ellen Ruppel Shell (author, The Hungry Gene); Walter Willett (Harvard School of Public Health).

The Childhood Obesity Prevention Agenda was created by Commercial Alert.