Too much soda in schools?

I'm not anti-soft drink. But I also know that soda is a boatload of nutritionally empty calories, so I try to treat it as the treat it is. At home, that means we reserve pop (as I grew up calling it) for family game nights and parties. But kids have plenty of access to the sweet stuff elsewhere, including schools, according to a recent study in the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine.

Researchers surveyed about 2,000 public schools and 900 private schools. They found that just 16 percent of elementary-school kids could purchase only beverages that meet the Institute of Medicine guidelines for healthy drinks, which are water, 4-ounce servings of 100 percent juice, and 8-ounce servings of nonfat or 1 percent unflavored milk. Kids in private schools fared even worse, with greater access to unhealthy beverages in vending machines, school stores, or snack bars.

The results varied by region as well, with students in public elementary schools in the Northeast and South having greater access to unhealthy beverages such as higher-fat milk than students in the Midwest and West.

Sales of snacks and drinks provide a lot of revenue to cash-strapped schools, so it's easy to see why they would want to keep offering them. It just makes it that much harder to be sure my kids are eating healthy over the week when I'm not there. Having such easy access to less than nutritious options makes it very difficult, especially when dealing with young children. I, for one, don't think we really should be asking young children to make the responsible choices that even many adults have trouble with. 

So while I don't mind occasional treats and soft drinks, I would rather my kids' schools didn't make them so easily available from the very moment they walk through the school doors.

--Erin Gudeux, sensory senior project leader

Read our recent report on where sugar hides in foods and how to avoid it.

—Joel Keehn