Diet Drinks Move In as Calories from Soda in Schools Dive 88 Percent

by Katherine Gustafson · 2010-03-16 10:00:00 UTC
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Beverage companies have made good on their side of a three-year deal hammered out with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a program of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, which called for reducing the amount of high-calorie beverages available to children in schools. As a result, the number of calories our children are drinking on school turf has nosedived 88 percent since 2004.

The deal called for bottlers to stop providing full-calorie soft drinks and instead stock high school vending machines with diet soda, sports drinks under a certain calorie threshold, flavored waters and teas. Elementary and middle schools are restricted to 100 percent juice drinks, low-fat milk and bottled water, according to Reuters.

"The beverages available to students are now lower-calorie, nutritious, smaller-portion choices," said Susan Neely, President and CEO of the American Beverage Association. While we should all applaud this effort in the face of growing childhood obesity, in which excess calories from soda play a key role, I wonder how we've gotten to a place as a culture where diet soda can be called a "nutritious" option?

Nutritious, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means "nourishing." I don't like the idea that we've moved on from ignoring the problem altogether to telling our kids that diet sodas loaded with Aspertame, which recent research suggests may harm the kidneys, are a "nourishing" choice for their growing bodies.

The ABA's "Alliance School Beverage Guidelines Final Progress Report" states that the companies involved in the deal — The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group — have "have helped promote a healthy school environment." Lower-calorie, yes. But "healthy"?

Don't get me wrong; I welcome the idea of getting soda-calories out of schools — it should, admittedly, be the priority task in the face of our problem with obesity. But I think the guidelines for the lower grades are where we should be headed across the board, instead of shunting high schoolers from obsession with full-calorie sodas to an attachment to diet drinks.

When are we going to step up and say that schools are no place for anything less than nourishing?

Photo: jacreative via Flickr

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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