Today, the American Beverage Association and its members agreed to voluntarily remove sugary sodas from public schools across the country. Companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes are all members of the ABA. Public high schools that still permit diet sodas will still be able to buy them for their campuses, and they will also be sold drinks that are considered have some nutritional value, juice, sports drinks and low-fat milk, though whole milk will no longer be offered because of its calorie content. Elementary and middle schools will only be sold unsweetened juice, low-fat milk and water. Part of the reason that the soda companies have agreed to this deal, which was made in conjunction with the William J. Clinton Foundation, is that on-campus soda sales make up a very small percentage of their overall sales, not to mention that a voluntary withdrawal looks better, from a PR perspective, than being banned.

It seems that Giant Food Stores loves to sponsor events that get principals dirty. First, they sponsored an event at a York, Pennsylvania elementary school where the principal became a human burger and now they have a principal dunking her head in a vat of chocolate pudding. To help raise money for the school's Life Skills class, Kristin Herb, the principal of Carlisle High School, went bobbing for objects that were hidden in a huge container of pudding in front of a cheering crowd of students. Though she requested the flavor, after pulling out a plastic action figure, a baby's teething ring, a rubber ball, a squid and a toy dog bone, she probably won't be eating any voluntarily for quite some time.

[Image The Sentinel]

Not all school lunch options are created equal. Schools have dietary and budgetary guidelines to go by, but giving students the freedom of choice in choosing what they eat is not something that the guidelines can always take into account. My junior high school, for example, sold churros for 50(cents) and you can bet that many students were eating those fried sticks of cinnamon and sugar goodness at least a few times a week. I highly doubt that whatever nutritional standards the “taco casserole” was made to even considered the possibility that the meal would be augmented with a churro and a bag of Doritos. Parents generally only thought about their kids’ school lunches when they were asked for money on the ride to school and had no control over what the kids purchased with that money. Fortunately for parents who worry about their child’s health and waistline more than they used to, this isn’t the case anymore.