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Posts Tagged ‘Implement Nutrition Standards’

Factors mentioned above were crucial to successfully transitioning from reliance on revenue from competitive foods (foods sold on school campuses outside of school meal programs) to reliance on meal revenue. But these changes were not easy to make. School districts partici-pating in the pilot studies identifi ed the following chal-lenges to implementing SB 19 food standards:

• Open campuses place the food service in direct com-petition with off-campus food and beverage vendors such as coffee shops, fast food restaurants and con-venience stores. Open campuses are most common at the high school level;
• Short meal periods make it hard to serve the student population and leave enough time to eat. Students then rely on more readily available vending and snack bar items.
• Insuffi cient number of food service staff and payment stations make it diffi cult to quickly and effi ciently serve the student population during the lunch period. The resulting long lines deter students from buying the school meal;
• Perishability and increased labor associated with the provision of freshly prepared foods challenge food service to break even given the limited government reimbursement funds that schools receive to subsidize free and reduced price meals.
• Beverage contracts with vending companies may offer fi nancial incentives to schools for selling and advertising the less healthy highly sweetened bever-ages on campus;
• Reliance on the sale of high-calorie, nutrient poor foods to support student programs and activities:These food and beverage sales are often the main source of funding for student clubs, sports teams and student groups. These sales from groups other than food service compete with food service and can decrease food service revenues.
• Inadequate personnel, technology and incentives for monitoring compliance with SB 19 nutrition standards make it diffi cult to ensure that all venues on campus continue to adhere to the nutrition standards.
• Insufficient funding for cafeteria improvements, education and training of staff, and purchasing of healthier food and beverage options. Study schools were able to make these types of changes because they were provided with additional funds as part of participating in the study.
• Schools that have relatively few students eligible for subsidized meals face unique challenges in reducing their reliance on a la carte sales. Not only is it more diffi cult to entice full price students to pay for the school meal, schools receive lower federal and no state reimbursement for meals paid for at full price. Furthermore raising meal prices can result in students seeking out cheaper and less healthful fare off- campus. Closed campus status may therefore be a particularly important issue for higher income schools.