Edmonton schools trim unhealthy foods from lunch menus

EDMONTON — Junk food is off the menu this fall in Edmonton’s public schools.

Starting Thursday, the first day of school, public schools can no longer sell or provide students with foods from the Alberta nutrition guidelines’ “choose least often” category.

The low-nutrient foods higher in calories, fat, sugar and salt include various types of chips and crackers, cookies and granola bars, sugary cereal, chocolate bars, candy, frozen desserts such as ice cream, pop and fruit-flavoured drinks and bakery items such as pastries and doughnuts, the Alberta Health Services school nutrition handbook says.

Students can still bring treats from home or buy them outside the schools.

That’s what many students from Victoria School of the Arts do at lunchtime, Grade 11 student Lea Beaudoin said. Students at the downtown school often walk over to the nearby Tim Hortons, Dairy Queen or Humpty’s family restaurant, she said.

But food choices in school have improved the past several years, said Beaudoin, who prefers healthy foods.

“I went to a junior high that had a sandwich machine, but the meat was absolutely disgusting,” Beaudoin said. “It was terrible.”

Harry Ainlay High School has phased out junk food the past three years. Principal David Jones said the kids don’t seem to miss it.

“I thought maybe they would just go to McDonalds across the street or take their car and go to the mall — we’re very close to Southgate Mall,” Jones said. “But you know, it’s interesting that the sales (of food in school) went down dramatically in my first year of doing this for the first month. Then all of a sudden they came back because students know and were educated that it’s not good to have french fries and a Slurpee or a large Coke or an extra burger. They become very aware of what’s going into their bodies.”

Harry Ainlay’s cafeteria serves an array of freshly made fare, including roast beef sandwiches, vegetarian sandwiches, baked chicken with rice and vegetables, pork chops and small sirloin steaks. The school has taken sodium-laden packaged foods such as instant noodles off the menu. Students are sometimes treated to hamburgers with all-beef patties and baked french fries, Jones said.

“Nothing is fried any more. In fact, my deep fryers, I took them out three years ago so there are no deep fryers at all in our buildings,” Jones said. “We’re not in the business of making money at cafeterias. We’re in the business of providing good, healthy choices.”

Students are now less lethargic after lunch and better able to focus on schoolwork, he said.

A junk-food-free environment better aligns schools with their commitment to children’s health, public school board chairman Dave Colburn said.

“It jarred my sensibilities, I can tell you, in my first few years on the board, when I saw these (vending) machines chock-a-block with junk food, and yet I heard principals and teachers and administration talking about the importance of creating healthy and active children,” Colburn said Tuesday.

He led the push in 2006 to create the citywide school board policy to get rid of junk food in the city’s 197 public schools. The policy came into effect March 2008 and included a timeline to phase out unhealthy food and drinks sold in cafeterias, vending machines and school stores.

The work proved complicated, Colburn said. The school district had to honour contracts with food vendors, then work with those vendors to make sure foods will meet Alberta nutrition guidelines for children and youth.

A total of 79,698 students are expected to enrol this year in the city’s public schools.

“Schools have an incredible opportunity to change the health values of children,” Colburn said. “When you consider that virtually every child in Edmonton passes through the doors of a school for about 12 years at an impressionable age, the opportunity we have in the school environment to influence the health values of our children and the next generation of adults is profound and virtually limitless, but we need leadership, we need policy, we need commitment on the part of staff and community and we need an understanding that this (health) problem is very real.”

At Edmonton Catholic Schools, parent councils and school officials have worked together to get rid of junk food and pop, replacing them with healthier snacks such as Sun Chips, plain popcorn and bottled water, said Catholic schools spokeswoman Lori Nagy. “Out of 87 schools, the majority of our schools only provide nutritious snacks in their vending machines,” she said.