No Processed Food at this School

The Children's Success Academy, a school in Tucson, Arizona, is taking the widespread concern for the health of students' in-school eating habits to an extreme.

The school bans "flavored yogurt, canned fruit, American cheese, processed meats, white bread, peanut butter made with sugar, and virtually all packaged crackers except Triscuits, because they are baked with whole grain," reports AZcentral.com.

Considering that a lot of the conversation about this topic revolves around the fact that children eat a lot of crap at school, this is good news to hear. However, it's easy to wonder whether the restrictions aren't going too far the other direction.

On the one hand, placing strong restrictions can convey to kids that processed foods and sugar are special treats that shouldn't play a large part in their diets. Plus, improving their diets makes kids calmer and more attentive at school.

"When you eat sugar, especially by itself like a candy bar, you get a rush and crash. An apple will not give you instant gratification or a rush, but it lasts longer," says the school's founder and director Nanci Aiken.

"It really does make a difference. It balances them out," teaching assistant Isabelle Medeiros said.

On the other hand, taking such a hard line on certain elements of what could otherwise be a healthy and balanced diet might send students the wrong message about eating healthily in their everyday lives.

"There are all kinds of emotional and behavioral problems that can happen if you tell a child to never, ever eat a cookie," registered dietitian Nancy Rogers, coordinator of the Worksite Wellness Program for the University of Arizona's UA Life & Work Connection, told AZcentral. "Food is in such abundance here. It's not like living on an island where you are never going to see an Oreo. You want to train kids to make good choices to keep their bodies healthy."

Transforming kids' diets with as blunt an instrument as a total ban on all those things can end up cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The article cites the example of a teacher taking a burrito made with a white flour tortilla away from a student and replacing it with a sandwich of peanut butter and honey on whole wheat bread.

Depending what elements of what quality are in the burrito, it is likely a much more nourishing lunch than the one that replaced it. A burrito likely includes vegetables and beans, the nutritional value of which will compensate for the processed carbohydrates provided by the white-flour tortilla. Honey, on the other hand, contains the same basic elements and is only nominally healthier than table sugar, so eating a sandwich filled with it is functionally little different than sprinkling sugar all over your peanut butter. And the peanut butter, though rich in protein and other nutrients, is extremely high in fat.

This school's policy has its heart in the right place, but I think its shortcomings demonstrate our need to look more holistically and gain a more subtle understanding of what a healthy, balanced diet really is.

Photo: KOMUnews via Flickr