Inadequate Public Funding and the Sale of Competitive Foods as a Revenue Source

This is a guest blog-post by Professor Timothy D. Lytton

First Lady Michelle Obama’s recently launched Let’s Move campaign to reduce childhood obesity has put a spotlight on reforming school food.

The primary reason for the abundance of unhealthy foods in schools is inadequate public funding of school meals and schools in general. Unfortunately, the sale of unhealthy foods, popular among students, is an essential source of revenue for many schools.

Today, most schools are dominated by foods that are high in sugar, fat, and salt. These items—pizza, burgers, French fries, cakes, snack foods, soda, and candy—are sold in cafeterias, vending machines, and school stores. In addition, students sell these foods to raise funds for extra-curricular activities, parents provide them for in-class birthday parties, and teachers give them out as rewards.

Unhealthy Foods in the Cafeteria

School food services sell unhealthy kids’ favorites as a la carte items in the cafeteria to make up for inadequate school meal subsidies. Additionally, they have incorporated them into the subsidized meals themselves in order to avoid losing student participation in the meal program. (The Federal funding is paid per participating child).

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Men’s Health Magazine, milking the success of its “Eat this, not that” line of books, provides a grotesquely entertaining list of the 30 worst foods in the country. Most, as you can imagine, are from fast food establishments.

For each food, there’s also a suggested alternative that is more healthful, but, as Albert Einstein once said, everything is relative. For example:

Not exactly a perfectly healthy alternative. But sure beats 9 grams of trans fat and a days worth of sodium in one dish.

The list counts down from #30 to the #1 worst food in the US. Itching to die which food came in at #1? We’ve saved you 29 clicks.

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