Bottled Water Goes to School

Restrictions on soft-drink availability bode well for bottled water

By Felicia Fuller, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 4/1/2003

Touted for its purity and portability, bottled water has experienced exponential growth over the past two decades, with total U.S. consumption topping 5 billion gallons—up 125% since 1990, according to Beverage Marketing Corp. (BMC).

“It’s the fastest-growing beverage category in the United States,” says Gary Hemphill, senior vice president of New York City-based BMC. “It’s especially gaining popularity with young people.”

Long consumed by health-conscious adults, bottled water has found a new audience among America’s youth. Amid reports of rising obesity rates, school nutrition exponents and state legislators are banding together to replace or augment soft drinks in school cafeterias and vending machines with alternatives such as water and fruit juice.

According to a recent study by The Lancet medical journal, each daily serving of carbonated soft drinks increases a child’s risk for obesity by 60%. Nearly half of the excess sugar that kids consume daily comes from soft drinks, reports show.

“Children are overweight and unhealthy because they eat and drink the wrong things,” says Barry Sackin, vice president of public policy for the American School Food Service Association (ASFSA) in Alexandria, Va. “By ridding school menus of soft drinks and fatty snacks, we can help curb the problem.” ASFSA and other professional groups are lobbying Congress to commit $1 billion to improve nutrition in America’s schools, in part, by stocking school vending machines with more-healthful alternatives.

LEGISLATING CHANGE
Texas was among the first states to restrict the sale of certain items in school cafeterias and vending machines. The sale of foods and beverages deemed by the government to be “of minimal nutritional value” are forbidden in cafeterias, hallways and common areas where federally subsidized school meals are served or eaten. Noncompliant schools could lose their school-lunch subsidies. In some Texas schools, soft-drink machines are controlled by timers and do not operate when meals are served.

“I’ve noticed that students drink more water and juice now and that’s a good thing,” says Royce Cooper, principal at Lewisville High in Lewisville, Texas.

For their part, other schools are implementing price strategies to promote sales of healthful beverages and low-fat snacks.

North High School in Minneapolis eliminated all but one of its eight soft-drink machines in 2001, replacing them with 10 water machines and two juice machines. At 75 cents a bottle, water outsold $1.25 cans of carbonated soft drinks compared to the same period the previous year.

In Los Angeles, carbonated drinks are being phased out of school vending machines and replaced with water and other noncarbonated beverages in accordance with a recent school-district decision to restrict soft-drink sales at area campuses. Effective January 2004, only bottled water, milk, fruit juices and sports drinks with fewer than 42 grams of sugar per 20-ounce serving will be available for purchase at middle schools and high schools. Soft drinks may be sold at fund-raisers, dances and sporting events.

California prohibits the sale of carbonated beverages from 30 minutes before school starts until the end of the last lunch period. But state Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) wants to expand that law to encompass the entire school day.

Ortiz introduced legislation in February that would ban soft-drink sales to students in phases beginning with elementary schools in January 2004, middle schools in January 2005 and high schools in January 2007. Ortiz introduced a similar bill in 2001 that was shot down by the California Senate Education Committee early last year.

REPLACING VENDING REVENUES
Dissenters argue that implementing the nutrition standards would be too costly, and that eliminating soft-drink sales would drastically reduce revenues.

Earlier this year, for example, Indiana school districts successfully blocked proposed state legislation that would have cut in-school vending options. According to a report in The Indianapolis Star, 15 central Indiana school districts received a total of $1.2 million in vending revenues, money the districts argued that they badly need to fund school programs.

Still, some schools are moving quickly to restrict student access to carbonated beverages. Oak Grove Middle School in Concord, Calif., has installed timers in its vending machines allowing carbonated drinks to be sold only after school. At Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill, Calif., just one of 10 branded soft-drink machines offers carbonated beverages. The remaining machines are stocked with bottled water and fruit juice.

“Now we can do what a lot of people were asking us to do,” says Vivian Boyd, Sequoia principal. “If soda isn’t available, students will buy water.”