Don’t Let Them Eat Cake: Healthy snacks get high marks in Bradley Beach
By TOM CARDINALE
Vegetables, popcorn and even pizza get high marks at the Bradley Beach Elementary School. But dont let them eat cake.
Bradley Beach Elementary School is adjusting well to the new state wide regulations on school food, according to Superintendent Dr. Wayne Turner. He credits the school’s gradual move to the lower sugar foods, even before the state regulations were enacted, for their success.
Turner said the school began acting in accordance to the new law “a full year before it was put into law.”
“The issue is the foods referred to as ‘minimal nutritional value,’” Dr. Turner said. “those where sugar is the first ingredient. These have been eliminated.”
Turner said the changes have posed some problems but have overall not been an issue for the students.
“The thing the kids miss most is the fresh baked cookies,” he said. “We started out cutting down the days they were available and then got rid of them.”
Other changes include the change to baked chips in snack machines and whole wheat rolls and bread. The greatest difficulty has come, however, with the traditional elementary school class parties.
“That’s been the toughest,” he said. “We made it through Halloween, we have parents being creative. We had parents send pizza and other snacks that weren’t laden with sugar.”
“I’ve had to send cakes home once,” Dr. Turner continued.
The school’s policy is to send any unacceptable snacks home with the student.
The school also prepared a handbook that was sent home with students at the beginning of the school year. It outlined the new regulations and some of the acceptable alternative snacks. The list included such options as fruit, pizza, pudding, popcorn, vegetables, granola bars, bagels, or yogurt. Turner said these options have made it fairly easy to adjust.
“We’re pretty much as far as we’re going to go with it so it’s just maintaining it,” he said. “Unless we receive stronger guidelines but I’m not sure how much further they could go.”
Turner said one place where the restrictions have had an impact, aside from the lunchroom, is in the school’s fund-raising efforts.
“We had a fund-raising meeting for the eighth graders’ trip to Washington and one of the usual ones was candy sales so we’re looking at alternatives,” he said. “It’s too early to tell whether or not fund-raising efforts have declined.”
The long term nature of the program makes it difficult to judge it’s success, Dr. Turner said, but he is optimistic about it’s possibilities, with the cooperation of parents.
“We’ll never really know the effects but the bottom line is if, in a class of 20 students, you have 20 instances, plus holidays, where food with sugar is being distributed it would be fair to say that wouldn’t be healthy,” he said. “Parents have been very cooperative, if you’re a parent you could send your kids with a lunch-box full of M&Ms. That’s parental choice. All we can do is comply with the regulations.”
Contact Tom Cardinale at tom@thecoaster.net.
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