Last week, the Obama Administration began a drive to remove junk foods like Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes it will reduce the number of children with weight problems.

The legislation would reduce the number of items high in fat and sugar, and require schools to offer healthier options.

Karen Dennis, professor of exercise science and director of basic activity programs, said, “How do you define junk food? That is a main problem. Technically, something can have no more than X amount of calories per serving in order to be determined as a healthy food. If this is the case, then juice served in a vending machine is not OK, because it has the same amount of sugar as a can of soda.”

She explained that in order to truly reduce the amount of junk food people are eating, there is going to need to be a culture change and people will need to become more educated on the topic.  

Bloomington School District 87 has been making many positive changes to their lunch menu in order to make sure students who are eating school meals get a balanced meal.  

Connie Mueller, director of food and nutrition services for Bloomington School District 87, explained that the cafeterias offer proper portion sizes [two ounces of protein, one-half or three-fourths cup of vegetables] and expose students to fruits and vegetables they may not see at home.   

While these changes are beneficial, they do not come without expenses.

“It’s a really fine balancing act,” Mueller said. “For at least two years, we have offered three fruits or veggies instead of two. We have also added whole grains. With the economy the way it is, this year we did not raise any fees, including lunch prices. We are really weighing what we will do next year. We may need to cut back on healthier decisions and offer two fruits or vegetables a day instead of three.

“We hate to cut back on something that we feel is a good thing to be doing for children,” she said.

At Bloomington High School, 1,000 students out of 1,500 eat school lunches a day. At the high school, there are eight to 10 entrees served a day, between five and seven at the junior high and five at the elementary schools, Mueller explained.

Every school that is part of the National School Lunch Program, which is about 100,000 schools and 31 million students in the United States, must be evaluated every three to five years in order to determine if they are meeting nutritional guidelines.

Mueller explained that when a school does not meet, they are asked to write a plan detailing how they are going to incorporate more healthy food into their school, and then are re-evaluated to make sure they have done so.

Mueller explained it only takes baby steps to make effective changes in the school lunches. One year when she was reviewed, the school had 32 percent calories from fat, which does not exceed the limit, but was more than the ideal amount, in her opinion.

“All I had to do was change some cheese items to reduced fat cheeses and cut one and a half ounce salad dressing to one ounce sizes. It is interesting how little changes can be very effective and much easier to take,” she said.

Unhealthy food in vending machines is also a problem because many school districts rely on funding from vending machines for sports and other extra-curricular activities. If you get rid of junk food from that perspective you are losing money because you lose sponsorships, explained Dennis.