Righis:s - Food Politics

"P O U R I N G R I G H T S" C O N T R A C T S

Marion Nestle, PhD MPH . aa...>.,.

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Righis":s _

As part of an effort to counteract the rising prevalence of overweight and obesity amongchildren and adolescents, one Healthy People 2010 objective calls for an increase in "theproportion of children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years whose intake of meals andsnacks at schools contributes proportionally to good overall dietary quality."' As theaccompanying text explains, today's students have "increased food options" at school.Although the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires federally subsidized schoolmeal programs to meet established nutritional standards and dietary guidelines, thisrequirement does not apply to foods sold outside of school cafeterias in snack bars,school stores, or vending machines. The quality of "competitive" foods sold outside thecafeteria has long been a source of concern to nutritionists and school food service direc-tors, as these foods often are higher in fat, sugar, and sodium than is desirable and stu-dents consume them instead of the more nutritious foods provided by federally supportedschool meal programs.24 Thus, one purpose of the Healthy People objective is to estab-lish an environment in schools that will encourage a good overall diet and, therefore, con-tribute to learning readiness as well as to short- and long-term disease prevention andhealth promotion.

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Left unstated in the rationale for this objective, butclearly underlying it, is an explicit comment about thecurrent food environment in schools. Health professionalswho do not presently live with school-age children may beunaware of the increasing intrusiveness of food com-mercialism in schools in recent years. As I will show, foodcompanies view schoolchildren as an attractive marketand use every possible means to promote their products tothis young, impressionable, and captive audience. Softdrink companies are especially creative in the breadth ofmethods they use to promote their products to childrenboth in and outside of school (see "Examples of MethodsUsed By Soft Drink Companies to Market Their Productsto Children In and Outside of School," page 31 1). Amongthese methods, contracts with school districts for ex-clusive use of particular brands of soft drinks are espe-cially noteworthy. Although such "pouring rights" contractshave been negotiated by colleges and universities sincethe early 1990s,56 their introduction into elementary,middle, and high schools is a more recent-and more

questionable-market-ing development.

y People 2010 objectives call for The Center forand snacks served in schools to Commercial-Free Publicbute to overall diets that meet Education, an advocacyLi dietary guidelines. Sales in schools organization in Oakland,,ds and drinks high in calories and California, reports thatinutrients undermine this health in 1998, more than a:ive, as well as participation in the hundred districts ornutritious, federally sponsored, school1 had signedlunch programs. Competitive exclusive contracts with

also undermine nutrition Coke or Pepsi at a costation taught in the classroom, of more than $100 mil-:ive contracts between schoolts and soft drink companies for lion to the companies.ive rights to sell one brand are the By early 2000, the num-development in the increasing ber of school districtsercialization of school food. These with pouring rights con-lctS, intended to elicit brand loyalty tracts had grown to 180,young children who have a in 33 states (Personal

e of purchases ahead of them, are communication, Andrewally questionable because they Hagelshaw, Executivechools in the position of "pushing" Director, Center for-ink consumption. "Pouring rights" Commercial-Free PublicLcts deserve attention from public Education, June 2000).professionals concerned about the The exclusivity ofonal quality of children's diets. these contracts leads to

situations so patentlyabsurd as to gain nation-

wide media attention. In the most widely publicized inci-dent, a high school in Georgia suspended a senior studentfor wearing a shirt with a Pepsi logo during a "Coke Day"rally sponsored by the student government.8

The public health implications of exclusivity contractsin creating an environment that actively promotes softdrink consumption only rarely emerges as an issue fordebate outside of advocacy circles. Instead, the loudestprotests come from competing soft drink companiesobjecting that a given contract prevents sales of their prod-ucts and, therefore, "freedom of choice" in the market-place. Yet nutritional issues related to soft drinks placethem at the forefront of present-day dietary concerns.

WHY CARE ABOUT SOFT DRINKS?

Soft drinks are the quintessential "junk" food. For the pur-poses of this discussion, a soft drink is a soda made fromcarbonated water, added sugar, and flavors (diet sodas sub-stitute artificial sweeteners for the sugar but are not cur-rently consumed by children to any great extent9). A 12-ounce can of regular soda contains 40 grams of addedsugar-and provides about 160 calories-but little else ofnutritional value. This nutrient composition readilyexplains why the Center for Science in the Public Interestrefers to soft drinks as "liquid candy"'0 As shown in the

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Table, 12 ounces of orange juice-even when reconsti-tuted from concentrate-provides substantial amounts ofvitamin A, vitamin C, folate, potassium, and other essen-tial vitamins and minerals along with its sugar and calories;an equivalent amount of 1% low-fat milk is also a superiornutritional option."'112

If soft drinks were occasional treats, no public healthnutritionist would be the slightest bit concerned aboutthem. But they are produced in vast quantities. From 1970to 1997, the production of sugar-sweetened sodasincreased from 22.2 to 41.4 gallons per person per year,and the production of diet sodas increased from 2.1 to11.6 gallons per person per year. 4 These amounts meanthat the annual per capita supply of 12-ounce soft drinksin the US is equivalent to 442 regular and 124 diet drinks(total: 566). On average, enough regular soda is producedto supply every American of every age-with 1.2 daily12-ounce drinks, or just under 200 calories per day fromthis source alone. These are production figures, however;they do not necessarily reflect consumption and may over-estimate amounts actually consumed.

Dietary intake surveys, on the other hand, tend tounderestimate actual consumption, but such surveys alsoindicate increasing levels of consumption of soft drinks bychildren, and especially by teenagers. A national surveyreported that children ages 2 to 17 increased their averagedaily intake of sugar-sweetened soft drinks from just under7 ounces to 9.5 ounces from 1989-1991 to 1994-1995.1'USDA data for 1994-1995 show that children begin con-suming soft drinks early in life and steadily increase theamounts they drink through adolescence and young adult-hood.9 Girls ages 12 to 19 drank 12 ounces of regular soda(160 calories) per day on average in 1994-1995, and boysdrank an average of 21 ounces (280 calories). Girls drankan additional 2 ounces per day of diet soda, and boys oneounce per day on average.9

For children at the higher levels of consumption, softdrinks can contribute many hundreds of "empty" calories aday.'0 These extra calories replace calories from morenutritious foods'9 and could be more than sufficient toaccount for rising rates of obesity'6 and obesity-relatedchronic-disease risk factors among American school-children.17 One recent study found that nearly one-fourthof adolescents consume 26 or more ounces of soft drinksper day (350 or more calories) and that these heavy userstake in 600 daily calories more from all sources than non-users and drink much less milk or fruit juice.'8

Frequent consumption of soft drinks has long beenknown to contribute to tooth decay,'9 and at least onestudy suggests that adolescents who consume soft drinksare at greater risk for bone fractures than those who donot.20 Soft drinks are the single greatest source of caffeinein children's diets2'; a 12-ounce cola contains about 45milligrams, but the amounts in more potent soft drinks

can exceed 100 milligrams.22 Parents of teenagers tell methat their children are deliberately using caffeinated softdrinks to stay awake in school; they worry about theeffects of caffeine on their children's behavior23 and thepotential for "addiction," particularly because companiesare deliberately marketing caffeinated sodas to children asyoung as age 9.22

MARKETING SOFT DRINKS TO CHILDREN

Carbonated soft drinks are big business in the US; theygenerated $54 billion a year in sales in 1998.24 The marketis dominated by just two companies-Coca-Cola andPepsiCo. Their ongoing competition for market share is sofierce that it has come to be known as the "Cola Wars."25Competition drives marketing strategies. Coca-Cola, forexample, aims to put a can of Coke within arm's reach ofas many people in the world as possible26; the company'sadvertising expenditure-just in the US-for ClassicCoke was $115.5 million in 1998. The advertising budgetfor Pepsi that year was $82.7 million.27

Competition among soft drink companies and increas-ing competition from sweetened juice drinks'5 have forcedsoft drink companies to seek new markets among youngerand younger children.28 They approach this task throughthe various methods shown on page 311 (see "Examples ofMethods Used By Soft Drink Companies..."). Becausethe overall strategy is to establish brand loyalty as early inlife as possible,29 marketing efforts begin with the parentsof young infants. Some soft drink companies have evenlicensed their logos to makers of baby bottles. One manu-facturer explains that the bottles are "designed to be funand enjoyable for the parents and the baby... [such that]the positive effects of the bonding experience will beincreased for both parent and child" (Personal communi-cation, Steven B. Dunn, President, Munchkin Bottling,Inc., August 1993) Studies show that parents who buysuch bottles are significantly more likely to feed soft drinksto infants.30 PepsiCo states explicitly that its strategy is toexpand soft drink consumption among children ages6-1 1.3'

POURING RIGHTS CONTRACTS: THELOGICAL NEXT STEP

In the early 1990s, having sold their products for manyyears through vending machines on school and collegecampuses, soft drink companies increased their efforts toreach the student market, initially focusing on collegesand universities5'6 and later turning to elementary, middle,and high schools. Pouring rights contracts have become animportant part of their marketing strategy. These contractsusually involve lump-sum payments to school districts andadditional payments over 5 to 10 years in return for exclu-


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sive sales of one company's products in vending machinesand at all school events. For soft drink companies, a stableschool sales base is only the most evident of benefits ofsuch contracts; the agreements also result in constantadvertising through display of company logos on vendingmachines, cups, sportswear, brochures, and school build-ings. The logos and products are seen by all students in aschool, even those too young or too difficult to reach byconventional advertising methods, and the focus on a sin-gle brand creates loyalty among young people who have alifetime of soft drink purchases ahead of them.28

While the effects of these contracts on schools may bequestionable, the advantages to the companies are quiteunambiguous. The New York State contracts typically callfor a charge of $1.00 for a drink purchased from a vendingmachine, an amount higher than usual retail costs. As of

this writing, for example, the inflated price at my localManhattan convenience store for a case containing 2412-oz cans is $9.96. Given a wholesale cost of $4.99,32 atthe rates charged to schoolchildren, $19.01 would be leftover to cover supply, labor, overhead, and funds donated tothe school district. Even taking the large initial lump sumpayments into consideration, it is difficult to imagine thatsoft drink companies lose money on these deals.

Most unsettling, the profits to the companies and theschools depend on the amounts students drink. I have notbeen able to obtain reliable sales figures, but school foodservice directors tell me that an average purchase of onedrink per student per day is a realistic estimate for highschool students. The quoted comments of a marketingconsultant hired by 63 school systems to negotiate suchcontracts support that estimate.33 An official from oneschool district in New York State told me that studentsdrink so many sodas it is difficult to keep vendingmachines fully stocked, and teachers of my acquaintancegive similar accounts. If just half the students in a districtof 10,000 students consume one soda per day, gross salesshould exceed $25,000 per week. To such figures must beadded sales of drinks at sports and community events. Yetin one New York State contract, the amount that Coca-Cola guarantees to the District over the entire 10-yearperiod comes to a total of only $15 per student. Thesecomparative figures explain why a Pepsi-Cola companyofficial described marketing to schoolchildren as "a prettyhigh stakes business development" and a Coca-Cola offi-cial said that his company would "continue to be veryaggressive and proactive" in going after school business.34

It is not difficult to understand why administrators offinancially strapped school districts would also find thesecontracts desirable. As the American population has aged,as the gap between rich and poor has widened, and as theproportion of low-income schoolchildren has increased,the tax base for public schools has consistently eroded.Schools struggle to provide for basic educational needs, letalone activities that might appear as frills. Larger schooldistricts have auctioned pouring rights to the highest bid-der, and some school districts have hired consultants tohelp them negotiate the best deals with soft drink compa-nies.33 In the benchmark "deal," a 53-school Colorado dis-trict relinquished its Pepsi vending machines when itsigned an $8 million, 10-year agreement with Coca-Colathat included cash bonuses for exceeding sales targets andincentives such as a new car for a senior with perfectattendance and high grades.28

Pouring rights contracts provide sports, arts, or com-puter facilities not otherwise available through state orlocal resources. The 1998 contract between the NorthSyracuse Central School District in New York State andCoca-Cola, for example, is a 10-year agreement thatrequires all 10 of the district's schools and preschool pro-

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grams-with a combined total of 10,100 students-to useCoca-Cola products exclusively in all vending machinesand at all athletic contests, booster club activities, andschool-sponsored community events. The contract speci-fies that the company will install, maintain, and stock atleast 135 vending machines in schools throughout the dis-trict, for which it guarantees a payment of $1.53 million-$900,000 upon signing and the rest distributed in annualinstallments of $70,000. The company agrees to pay addi-tional commissions on purchases that exceed the guaran-teed minimum, and will donate 150 free cases of Fruitopiadrinks, provide drinks to fundraising groups for resale, andprovide 10,000 books of redeemable coupons along withother premiums such as scholarships or software. With theassistance of a powerful state legislator, the District wasable to leverage this contract to obtain state aid for a $6.5million sports facility for the high school.35 The New YorkState Education Department considered these terms sofavorable that it used them to develop a prototype ModelContract to "ensure that children...are not subject to com-mercial exploitation in school" and to help schools balanceeducational goals against "the search for new revenuestreams."36

At first glance, the financial advantages to the schoolsof pouring rights contracts seem impressive, not leastbecause a significant part of the funding comes in animmediate lump sum and is not tied to sales. Most schoolsuse the funds for sports facilities-scoreboards seem aparticular favorite-but some buy furniture, sound sys-tems, or computers, and occasionally pay for scholar-ships.28 But because the contracts provide additional ben-efits for consumption levels that surpass quotas, schooladministrators can find themselves in the position of"pushing" soft drinks to faculty, staff, and students. In anow infamous letter circulated on the Internet and pub-lished in a national magazine, a Colorado district adminis-

trator referring to himself as the "Coke Dude" announcedpayments of $3000 to elementary principals, $15,000 tomiddle school principals, and $25,000 to high school prin-cipals who sold enough sodas:

[W]e must sell 70,000 cases of product...at leastonce during the first three years of the contract. Ifwe reach this goal, your school allotments will beguaranteed for the next seven years.... If 35,439staff and students buy one Coke product everyother day for a school year, we will double therequired quota. Here is how we can do it: ... Allowstudents to purchase and consume vended prod-ucts throughout the day.... I know this is "just onemore thing from downtown," but the long-termbenefits are worth it.37

Given the financial benefits of such contracts, it isunderstandable that many school administrators wouldfind it convenient to avoid considering their health or ethi-cal implications. They justify the contracts as breaking nonew ground and argue that soft drink vending machinesalready exist in schools, soft drinks already pervade Ameri-can culture, children are not forced to drink them, andcontracts can be written with safeguards that protect stu-dents' rights to drink other kinds of soda.35 From thisstandpoint, the benefits of soft drink pouring rights con-tracts would seem to outweigh any concerns they mightraise. The administrator of an Ohio school district with anew PepsiCo contract explained this reasoning:

We have worried about whether we're forcing stu-dents to pay for their education through the pur-chase of soft drinks. In the end, though, we havedecided that is not the case, because each studenthas the option to buy or not to buy.... Americans


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drink 13.15 billion gallons of carbonated drinksevery year-which means somebody is making a lotof money. Why shouldn't schools get their share?In the end, everyone wins: the students, theschools, the community. And for once, even tax-payers get a break.38

Early in 1999, I attended a conference of New YorkState school food service directors at which participantsexpressed strong disagreement with such views. They weredeeply troubled by a broad range of issues related to thelength, exclusivity, and financial terms of contracts, to thelack of adequate federal oversight of foods sold in compe-tition with school meals, and to the widespread failure ofschools to enforce even the weak rules that do exist. Theyalso viewed the contracts as threatening the economic via-bility of school food service operations, the integrity ofschools' educational mission, and-not least-children'shealth. These opinions grew out of their understanding ofthe lengthy history of attempts to obtain adequate federalregulations to deal with the nutritional quality of foodsserved in schools.

REGULATORY HISTORY

Soft drink pouring rights contracts are permitted byamendments to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966,39 whichin turn amended provisions of the National School LunchAct of 1946.40 As outlined on page 315 (see "SelectedEvents in the History of Regulations Governing Sales ofSoft Drinks and Other Competitive "Foods of MinimalNutritional Value" in Elementary and SecondarySchools"), the history of regulations dealing with sales ofsoft drinks and other "junk" foods defined by Congress as"foods of minimal nutritional value" is part of a 50-yearsaga of nearly annual congressional tinkering with therules governing the school lunch and breakfast programs.The regulations for sales of soft drinks and other "compet-itive" foods-foods that children might buy instead of fed-erally supported meals served in the school cafeteria-constitute a minuscule part of the saga, but they illustratethe ways commercial concerns influence congressionaldecisions about matters that affect the health of children.

For more than 30 years, to protect the nutritional andeconomic integrity of the federally subsidized school mealprograms, school food service personnel, nutritionists, andadvocates have sought regulations to control sales of com-petitive foods in public schools. Throughout thesedecades, soft drink companies-often joined by principals,school boards, and state education departments-haveopposed any "time-and-place" restrictions on when orwhere competitive foods might be sold. The results of thishistoric conflict readily reveal why advocates view the cur-rent regulations as promoting the commercial interests of

soft drink companies far more than they do children'shealth.

By the late 1960s, coin-operated vending machinesselling soft drinks and snacks were already well establishedin schools, and parents, school officials, health authorities,and even Congress could see that the sales of such foodsdirectly competed with federally supported meal programs"for the children's coins and appetites.' Congress, there-fore, asked the Secretary of Agriculture "to take a hard lookat some of the competition to the balanced meal offeredwithin schools...the availability of candy bars, soft drinksand a snack line in the school cafeterias."42 In 1970, Con-gress passed amendments that allowed the USDA to blocksales of competitive foods at the same time and place asschool meals were offered (meaning: in the school cafete-ria during lunch periods) but permitted any food everserved as part of a school lunch to be sold at other timesand places.43 This arcane distinction meant, for example,that cake could be sold but soft drinks could not.44

From: General Accounting Office Pub. No.: GAO/HEHS-00- 156; Sept. 2000.

As a result of these rules, soft drink companies lostrevenue, but so did the schools.3 To protect their stream ofincome from sales of snack foods, school officials joinedsoft drink companies in pressuring Congress to allow com-petitive foods to be sold at any time and place (again, thismeant in the cafeteria during lunch periods) provided thatthe proceeds went to the schools or to approved studentorganizations.45 They also induced Congress to remove theUSDA's authority to regulate sales of competitive foodsand, instead, to delegate decisions about such sales tostate and local boards of education.4446 These decisionseffectively deregulated competitive foods,44 leading criticsto state that "profit had triumphed over nutrition."4' After

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1972, sales from vending machines and other competingvenues increased in many schools.' In 1977, during theCarter administration, Congress viewed sales of competi-tive foods as an abuse of the school meals program andrestored the USDA's regulatory authority.4' Yet, in doing so,Congress demanded and received assurances from theUSDA that the agency would not actually ban competitivefoods but would only restrict sales of soft drinks and otherfoods of minimal nutritional value that "did not make apositive contribution to children's diets."4

With its newly regained authority, the USDAattempted to ban sales of foods of minimal nutritionalvalue until after the end of the last lunch period. Becausethis proposal elicited a deluge of angry public comments,the USDA withdrew it and solicited additional input. In1979, the USDA again proposed this idea, this time defin-ing foods of minimal nutritional value as those containingless than 5% of the Recommended Dietary Allowances foreight nutrients (protein, vitamin A, ascorbic acid, niacin,riboflavin, thiamin, calcium, and iron)" per 100 calories orper serving, a definition then meaning that the restrictionswould apply only to carbonated soft drinks, water ices, cer-tain candies, and chewing gum.44 The revised proposalelicited more than 3000 comments, of which 562 could betraced directly to a PepsiCo directive suggesting that itsemployees write letters to the USDA arguing that suchobjectives would be better achieved through nutrition edu-cation.48 Despite these pressures, the USDA held firm; its1980 final rules continued to ban vending of soft drinksuntil the end of the school lunch period.48

In the early 1980s, encouraged by the election of amore conservative administration, soft drink producerstried another tactic-they took the USDA to court on thegrounds that agency regulations were "arbitrary, capri-cious, and an abuse of discretion...and in excess of statu-tory jurisdiction." The District Court dismissed the com-plaint, stating that "it is an obvious fact of life that a ...

vending machine, no matter where located, can act as amagnet for any child who inclines toward the non-nutri-tious." Soft drink producers appealed the decision, andwon. The US Appeals Court ruled that the intent of Con-gress was simply to control sales of "junk" foods duringmeal service and that the USDA had no right to otherwiserestrict the time and place of sales of competitive foods-even those of minimal nutritional value.4' The court didallow one exception; competitive foods other than those ofminimal nutritional value could be sold in the cafeteriaduring meal service if the proceeds went to approvedschool groups. In practice, the court decision meant thatthe USDA could only prohibit the selling of soft drinks inthe cafeteria during meal service periods but soft drinkscould be sold at other times and places.49

As might be expected, this ruling stimulated sales ofcompetitive foods, with the equally to be expected result

that school food service operations lost revenue.3 Thus,advocacy groups renewed efforts to restrict such sales.2'9"They encouraged Senator Patrick Leahy (Dem-VT), thenchair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and ForestryCommittee, to introduce a bill to reinstate the ban onsales of competitive foods of minimal nutritional value inschools until the end of the last lunch period. Predictably,the Coca-Cola company opposed the bill and organized aletter-writing campaign among school principals, superin-tendents, and coaches who feared losing revenues fromvending machines.

According to the Ncew7 Ybrk Tinmes, a spokesperson forCoca-Cola argued that his company made "no nutritionalclaims for soft drinks" but said that "they can be part of abalanced diet." He went on to say, "Our strategy is ubiq-uity. We want to put soft drinks within arm's reach ofdesire.... [S]chools are one channel we want to makethem available in."'" A lobbyist for the soft drink industrytold a reporter, "[Y]ou haxe no evidence that the consump-tion of soft drinks is in any way harmful."9" He told a Sen-ate Committee: "[We] question whether there is a need for'Big Brother' in the form of USDA injecting itself into...decisions when it comes to refreshment choices.""

Companies' and school officials' objections succeededin convincing Congress to retain the permissive regula-tions. In discussions of amendments to the School LunchAct passed in 1994, a Senate committee suggested thatthe USDA should instead develop "model language" torestrict sales of soft drinks and other such foods in elemlen-tary schools before the end of the last lunch period, butleft the decision about whether to adopt that language tothe discretion of state and local school authorities.94 Con-gress advised the USDA to remind secondary schools thatfederal laws restricted profit-making sales of soft drinks infood service areas during lunch periods.99 When advocacygroups called on the USDA to impose tighter controls onvended and competitive foods, officials explained thatCongress had given the agency "no authority to regulatethe sale of foods outside the food service area."9i6

As had been the case since 1972, the 1994 amend-ments explicitly invited state and local school authoritiesto impose more stringent restrictions on sales of competi-tive foods, and several have done so. New York State regu-lations enacted in 1987, for example, follow the earlier,more restrictive USDA proposals:

From the beginning of the school day until the endof the last scheduled meal period, no sweetenedsoda water, no chewing gum, no candy includinghard candy, jellies, gums, marshmallow candies,fondant, licorice, spun candy and candy coatedpopcorn, and no water ices except those whichcontain fruit or fruit juices, shall be sold in anypublic school within the state."57

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Although reliable data on the question are difficult toobtain, advocates, teachers, and school officials have toldme that state and federal rules are routinely ignored. Tobegin with, soft drink companies circumvent sales rulesby donating sodas to schools for free distribution duringschool meal periods, a development that prompted Sena-tor Leahy to introduce additional legislation to stop suchpractices. Nutrition Week quoted him as saying, "Nutri-tion doesn't go better with Coke or Pepsi at lunchtime....[T]his is a loophole-big enough to drive a truckthrough-that hurts our children.... [I]t's not unlike theold days when the tobacco companies would hand outfree cigarettes to kids.58 Furthermore, the companieshave now developed sweetened fruit "drinks" that can be

sold on lunch lines; these contain just enough juice (5%)to circumvent definition as a food of minimal nutritionalvalue.

Research provides suggestive evidence for rule-break-ing. A survey of 55 Minnesota high schools found that95% of schools that had vending machines left themunlocked and thus accessible during some school hours,29% left them unlocked all day, and 15% of them left themopen during the lunch period-despite state regulationsthat discourage sales of soft drinks during lunch periods.The survey also found that 60% of the vending machineswere located in cafeterias, and another 33% near cafete-rias.4 A nationwide survey by the federal General Account-ing Office found that 20% of US schools gave students



access to vended snacks and drinks during lunch periodsand two-thirds allowed other competitive foods to be soldduring lunchtimes.59

Advocates in New York City have organized a classaction suit against the Board of Education, Chancellor ofEducation, and five school principals to enforce what theyview as a universally ignored city regulation that flatly pro-hibits "the sale of non-nutritious food, either directly orthrough vending machines" in public schools. Noting thatthe money for competitive "junk" foods in schools "comesfrom the poorest section of New York City public schoolparents who can least afford it," the suit argues that offi-cials are obligated to comply with existing laws.60 At thetime of this writing, this suit is still pending.

COMPETING WITH SCHOOL MEALS

Advocates maintain that if schools are doing their jobproperly, the meals programs should contribute to health-ful eating habits, be fully integrated into educational activ-ities, and receive adequate financial support. They believesuch purposes would be best served if all sales of food inschools were managed by food service departments ratherthan administrators or sports officials, for whom nutritionand health are not necessarily a high priority.i0 Advocatesespecially fear that competitive foods jeopardize the eco-nomic viability of school meal programs, as these programsare expected to be self-supporting with federal reimburse-ments and must have adequate sales volume to survive.2'3The short time devoted to lunch periods in many schoolsalso discourages students from eating full meals andencourages purchase of competitive foods that can beeaten on the run.

That soft drink companies deliberately compete withschool meals seems quite evident from testimony at Con-gressional hearings. During hearings for the 1994 SchoolLunch amendments, for example, a high school food ser-vice director testified that when the Coca-Cola companydistributed free 20-ounce bottles of soda, participation inthe school lunch program declined by half. She reportedthat Coca-Cola had provided cash incentives, bicycles,computers, and catered events to her school, and that itwould be difficult for her principal to give up suchperquisites. She concluded that "without government reg-ulations, Coca-Cola will always win."53 Soft drink industrylobbyists, however, consistently argue that no scientificevidence links the sale of their products to poor nutrition,any other health problems, or low participation rates inschool lunch programs. "52

From its inception, the purpose of the School LunchProgram was to improve the nutritional status of childrenwhile providing an outlet for surplus agricultural com-modities. Figuring out how to use school meals to promotenutritional goals has not been easy, however, and has occu-

pied Congress since 1966.39 In implementing the provi-sions of the 1994 School Lunch amendments, the USDAaccepted improved nutrition as a goal when it recognizedthat school meal programs could establish "childhood eat-ing patterns that influence lifelong habits" and specifiedreductions in the fat, sugar, and salt content of thelunches to bring them into compliance with federal dietaryguidelines.61

Healthy People 2010 objectives call for informationabout healthful dietary patterns to be included as part ofcomprehensive health education curricula in middle,junior high, and senior high schools.' Part of the reason forattention to school nutrition education is that it has beendemonstrably effective, especially when supported bymeals served in school cafeterias.62 Participants in schoolmeal programs have been shown to consume better dietsthan non-participants; if they replace school meals withcompetitive foods of minimal nutritional value, the qualityof their diets can be expected to deteriorate.18'63

THE PUBLIC HEALTH CHALLENGE

Soft drink companies' more recent attention to children ingrades K-12 can be seen as part of the increasing intru-siveness of commercial interests into US schools.3"64Companies routinely use the methods summarized onpage 311 (see "Examples of Methods Used by Soft DrinkCompanies...") to market food products to children inschool; these activities are now so common as to be takenfor granted. Soft drink companies-and school officialswho contract with them implicitly assume that softdrinks are appropriate fare for school-age children ratherthan milk, juice, or water, any of which would be a betternutritional choice.

The level of cynicism revealed in these marketingefforts is especially disturbing. What are we to make ofstatements like the one attributed to a consultant whohelps schools obtain soft drink contracts? In his view,pouring rights contracts make schools more realistic forchildren. "If you have no advertising in schools at all, itdoesn't give our young people an accurate picture of oursociety. "3 Pouring rights contracts clearly teach studentsthat school officials are willing to compromise nutritionalprinciples for financial reasons,2 even when the linking ofpayments to higher consumption goals puts them in theposition of advocates for soft drink consumption. When aschool administrator tells a reporter that nutrition isimportant, but he is "ambivalent about it," 65 he says a lotabout his priorities; this kind of ambivalence contributesto student attitudes that nutrition and health are notimportant concerns. It is an all too rare school administra-tor who is willing to state that "matters involving moneyproperly stop at the schoolhouse door."66

The well-financed promotion in schools of soft drinks

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and other foods of poor nutritional quality directly under-mines federal efforts to improve the dietary intake of chil-dren and reduce rates of obesity.' Even though colleges(and now even cities such as Huntington Beach, Califor-nia67'68) have become advertising vehicles for soft drinkcompanies, elementary and secondary school studentsdeserve some protection against commercial interests thatcontribute to poor nutrition.

Public health professionals could reverse such trendsthrough policy interventions in several areas. We couldpromote changes in dietary guidelines to more stronglyencourage consumption of water, juices, and low-fat milkand discourage consumption of sodas and sweetened fruitdrinks-both in guidelines targeting children 2 to 6 yearsold69 and those targeting the rest of the population. Theyear 2000 edition of the Dietary GuidelinesforAmericans,the official policy statement on nutrition and health jointlyissued by the USDA and the Department of Health andHuman Services is a case in point.70 Reportedly underintense pressure from sugar and soft drink producers,71'72the agencies successively changed the guideline on sugarintake from "Go easy on beverages and foods high in addedsugars"73 to "Choose beverages and foods that limit yourintake of sugars"74 to the final "Choose beverages andfoods to moderate your intake of sugars" (all emphasesadded).70 Despite industry pressures, the text accompany-ing the guideline identifies soft drinks as the leadingsource of added sugars in US diets, and as a source ofexcess calories that might contribute to weight gain orreplace intake of more nutritious foods. This guidelinecould be stated much more explicitly to make it consistentwith its intended meaning: "Limit intake of soft drinks as asource of added sugar."

Public health professionals could also support commu-nity and state efforts to organize students to identify andresist commercialism,7 to require firm adherence to exist-ing regulations,60 to disallow exclusivity agreements,75 andto refuse pouring rights contracts altogether.286576 Schooldistricts in California, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, forexample, have refused to enter into such contracts afterprotests by parents, students, and school officials,77 and theCenter for Commercial-Free Public Education reports that31 school districts have refused pouring rights contracts inthe past two years (Personal communication, AndrewHagelshaw, July 2000). Clearly, such efforts can be suc-cessful. At the national level, we could join advocates forfederal regulations to restrict sales of competitive foods ingeneral,2'3 and those of minimal nutritional value in partic-ular, expanding the definition of such foods to include thenew "juice" products and other such foods.50 We also couldconsider a range of pricing, tax, and other "environmental"strategies to improve the diets of schoolchildren, similar tothose that have been proposed by the present author and

Although pouring rights contracts are only one compo-nent of an arsenal of food company marketing

29 1techniques, issues related to societal inequities are cen-tral to the significance of these contracts as a publichealth concern. Congressional reluctance to favor chil-dren's health above the rights of soft drink producers is adirect result of election laws that require legislators toobtain corporate funding for their campaigns.80 Like mostcorporations, soft drink companies donate funds to localand national candidates. Although research findings havenot proved that such contributions buy influence, theycertainly suggest a strong correlation between contribu-tions and desired outcomes. Most "hard money" contribu-tions are distributed to incumbents. The largest contribu-tions go to representatives who vote in the donors'interests, and the larger the contribution, the more likelythe representative is to support industry positions.8"-83Nearly everyone who has examined this question con-cludes that campaign contributions have an importanteffect on voting decisions. Thus, more rational campaignfinancing laws might permit Congress to take positionsbased on public good rather than private greed.

Similarly, if American public schools were funded ade-quately, the blatant commercialism inherent in pouringrights contracts would almost certainly be subjected togreater scrutiny, and departments of education, schoolboards, principals, and coaches would be less likely toenter into such agreements without far more publicdebate than is now the case.

Pouring rights contracts may solve immediate prob-lems of school funding, but their social cost is high, notleast because they undermine efforts to establish adequatefederal, state, and local funding for public education.These contracts, therefore, point to the need for publichealth professionals to pay much greater attention to com-mercial pressures on children and to initiate a muchhigher level of critical analysis of such pressures fromschool officials, legislators, and the public.

The author thanks Donna Barth and Agnes Molnar for pointing outthe significance of "pouring rights"; Dorothy Caldwell for an edu-cation in federal regulations; Jon Moss for background informationon school practices; and Suzanne Rostler and Stacey Freis forresearch assistance. This work was supported in part by researchchallenge grants from New York University and its School ofEducation.

Dr. Nestle is Professor and Chair, Department of Nutrition andFood Studies, New York University.

Address correspondence to Dr. Nestle, Dept. of Nutrition and FoodStudies, New York Univ., 35 W. 4th Street, 0th Floor, New York NY10012; tel. 212-998-5595; fax 212-995-4194; e-mail<marion.nestle~nyu.edu>.

others to address current trends in obesity.78'79



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