Though Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Cadbury Schweppes and the American Beverage Association agreed last week to stop selling high-calorie beverages to schools, local school officials said they already limit the availability of regular soda, high-calorie juices and artificial drinks.
Starting in the 2008-09 school year, at least half of the available beverages in high schools will be water and no-calorie or low-calorie selections, according to a the Clinton Foundation?s Alliance for a Healthier Generation. The beverage companies worked with the foundation and the American Heart Association in forming the new nationwide guidelines. Elementary schools will sell only water, eight-ounce, calorie-capped servings of certain juices and servings of fat-free and low-fat milks.
But Baltimore City school students already have limited access to sodas.
“Right now the soda machines are only on for after-school events,” said Vanessa Pyatt, a city school system spokeswoman.
Baltimore County school officials said their snack and soda machines remain off until the last lunch period ends.
Bill Reinhard, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said this agreement “is going to push regular sodas out of the machines altogether. Reinhard said schools generally see a drop in sales when regular sodas are removed, but the sales typically rebound.
Baltimore County Public Schools spokesman Brice Freeman said the county contracts with beverage manufacturers, but each school principal decides how profits are allocated.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, child obesity rates have jumped nearly fourfold, from 4.5 percent in the mid-1960s, to 16 percent in 2002. Type 2 childhood diabetes has made a similar leap in recent years. Fewer than 4 percent of childhood diabetes cases in 1990 were diagnosed as Type 2 ? 95 percent of which are associated with poor eating habits and inactivity ? versus 20 percent a decade later, according to the American Diabetes Association.
