PORTLAND, Maine — Portland’s public schools are joining a national trend and barring the sale of soda and other unhealthy beverages and snacks on school grounds.
City schools will implement a policy this fall that applies to food and beverages sold and served by any school or school organization. Food served on field trips, sold by sports teams and offered at events sponsored by parent-teacher organizations must comply with the policy. Fans won’t even be able to buy a soda at sports events.
Chanda Turner, Portland’s school health coordinator, tells The Portland Press Herald the policy doesn’t prevent a student or teacher from bringing a soda to school. They just won’t be able to buy one from a machine.
The new rules also don’t apply to non-school groups that use school facilities.
Plenty of 2 liters in the teachers lounge.
Maybe they should increase P.E. instead and make them actually do something. It is not the soda at school that is the weight problem.. I imagine next they will stop bus trips at BK, MCD’S or other fast food places. Being politically correct will not cure the problem.
Providing healthful food instead of junk with no nutritional value is now called “politically correct”?
I thought it was called promoting the health of our children.
Letting kids out of PE or not having it, would be promoting health. Eating more healthy meals at home might help. Activity over so much electronics might help also.
You are correct-not selling these food products probably won’t make much of difference. However-it’s difficult to take kids into health class and tell them that Coke is full of sugar and contributes to obesity and diabetes-and then park a soda machine down the hall. That would three faced-far worse than two faced.
How is not allowing soda sales in school politically correct? Selling and serving junk food to a captive market of children is justifiable how? Soda is not banned, it’s just not sold.
Doing what everyone else thinks will work. Next they will have them eating only lettece. No one drank more coke than I did, and I am not obese.
What is the upside of soda machines in school? If it’s for focus, 5 hour energy and ritalin dispensers and smoke breaks will also help. And again, soda’s not banned. Bully for you on bucking the odds, but high fructose corn syrup isn’t the nectar of the gods. Your slippery slope is lined with arterial fat. This is a far cry from mandatory lettuce.
I guess making them pay for water, so the soda companies get their money either way, just a bigger portion of the money. Ritalin, there is probably more of that in the school then soda.
Stopping people you love from eating S#*T hasn’t got a thing to do with PC ……
Some schools barely doing and you get almost get out with an ingrown toenail. Neither will taking soda machines out of schools stop them from drinking soda.
Excellent. I am floored that they sold that junk in schools to begin with. Why would we give our kids the option of sugar and water when we have healthy choices available?