Feature

Today’s lesson: get munching!

One packet of crisps isn’t going to do any harm – but should schools be encouraging the systematic manipulation of children’s diets in order to afford basic materials? Geof Rayner investigates

America this year, Britain the next? This old saying doesn’t apply to everything (think of the death penalty), but it does seem to apply to much social policy, consumer trends – and diet. Just as the enormously profitable snacks and fast-food industry has expanded profits – and waistlines – on the other side of the Atlantic so we on this side have witnessed our own ballooning consumption of junk food and the obesity that goes with it. We now spend more on snack food than all vegetables and fruit combined, and the consumption of these are well below recommended guidelines. The driver of all of this is commercialisation, whether of food culture or the fast food restaurants which spread like a rash across the countryside, and even of schooling and child nutrition.

Let’s begin with the US. For several years now the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Education has been tracking commercialisation in schools, identifying a four-fold increase in press reports of this trend between 1990 and 2000. Researchers there found that commercialisation of schools has taken eight separate forms, ranging from apparently innocuous subsidies to more worrisome exclusive agreements to market or advertise goods to pupils.¹

Last September, US Congress’s General Accounting Office (similar to our National Audit Office) explained why this happens: ‘In general, schools want cash, equipment, or other assistance in providing services and technology during a period when revenues from traditional tax sources are, for many school districts, essentially flat. Businesses want to increase their sales, generate product loyalty, and develop climates favourable to their products, although some businesses are involved with schools primarily to help local communities.’²

Not all business support to schools need be harmful, but in many cases deals take advantage of apparently ‘good causes’ to push products onto vulnerable children. Exclusive agreements with soft drink companies, in which schools take a share in the profits, is perhaps the most insidious and the most harmful to children’s health. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee cites a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation of a deal between Coca Cola and one school district which stipulated that pupils purchase 9.5 million cans of Coke over 10 years, equivalent to 1.7 per pupil per day. Similar schemes around the country were based on the premise that schools only got cash when they boosted soft drink consumption.

But PepsiCo, Coke’s main rival, has an even better strategy. Its approach is based on the dual demand principle: get young people to buy Pepsi’s salty snacks – such as Dorritos – and then sell them another product, like Pepsi, to quench their thirst. This has worked wonders for sales. On average, each American consumes almost 14 pounds of crisps or similar snack foods annually, half of which are sold by PepsiCo. (The UK comes next in the global munching league at 12 pounds per person, 40 per cent provided by PepsiCo-Walkers; the Netherlands comes in a distant third with 7 pounds).

As far as schools-based marketing goes, it’s local school boards who must shoulder the blame. As education writer Jane Levine points out: ‘A major barrier to adoption of effective school policies that support and promote a healthful eating environment is the widely held notion that marketing to elementary school children is an acceptable trade-off for needed funds and materials. But children’s health is never an acceptable “trade-off”, no matter how severe the budgetary constraints. School health professionals need to actively work for implementation and support of school policies that put children’s well-being before business interests’.³

The problem is that the same thing is happening in the UK. What is truly shocking is that the Department of Education (DfEE) has been helping Walkers Crisps – Pepsico’s UK division (and in alliance with Rupert Murdoch’s News International) – to get so-called ‘free’ books into schools as a way of helping to stretch limited budgets. In the jargon this is called ‘cause-related marketing’ (CRM) – a euphemism for boosting a company’s image or products under the guise of ‘doing good’. Not only has this campaign attracted Business in the Community’s Excellence Award for 2000, but it has also gained the endorsement of David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, who claims that it makes a ‘massive contribution’ meeting to pupils’ literacy needs. Are the books really free? Of course not: parents pay for them in the price of a packet of crisps.

Before the election I protested to a junior education minister and to Sir Peter Davis, the chair of Business in the Community, that DfEE support undermined the government’s healthy schools strategy. The reply from DfEE was that the campaign had been a great success and that crisps were not unhealthy. Quite right – but only on the first point. In 1999 over 2.3 million books, worth £12m, were distributed to schools with over 98 per cent of UK schools taking part. On average each school has received over 70 free books. By June 2000, the second consecutive year of the partnership, another half a million books had already been ‘given away’.

Of course, one packet of crisps isn’t going to do much harm. But this entirely misses the point. The message to parents and children is that purchasing crisps benefits the school. Furthermore, Free Books for Schools cleverly pre-empts much government guidance on healthy schools by making headteachers, schools governors and parents into de facto marketing reps for Pepsico. One headteacher wrote to parents in the school magazine: ‘Get Munching!’

If Free Books for Schools frustrates the work of the Department of Health – as well as teachers and parents who care about what children eat – it also flies in the face of the view of another government agency. The National Audit Office recently highlighted the epidemic of obesity in Britain.⁴ In 1980, 8 per cent of women and 6 per cent of men were classed as obese; by 1998, the figures had almost trebled to 21 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men. If present trends continue, by 2010 over a quarter of all adults in the UK will be obese, and the UK will rank equal first with the US as the most obese advanced nation in the world.

The NAO says that obesity among schoolchildren is increasing, which carries major risks for the health of the future adult population. It is also clear on the effects of Walkers-type CRM schemes: ‘This type of commercial involvement, which has the effect of directly promoting sales of particular products, may encourage children and their families to buy more snack foods with a high fat, salt and sugar content. This would act directly in opposition to initiatives to discourage over-dependence on such energy-dense snack foods in favour of balanced meals and increased consumption of fruit and vegetables’.

It is interesting to note that those who dissent from the ‘Let children eat junk’ line risk press attack. In a Mail on Sunday story on 17 February 2001 reporter Alison Gordon, under the strapline Is your child a victim of food fascism?, attacked Sylvia Trafford, headmistress of Catton First and Nursery School in Norwich for her ‘dogmatic’ approach to snacks in break. Ms Trafford’s sensible guidance ruled out fatty foods like biscuits and promoted fresh vegetables and fruit. According to the Mail, ‘Parents have been bombarded with new rules and regulations on children’s diets since New Labour came to power’. (While the Mail on Sunday attacked teachers Femail readers were warned in another article: ‘DON’T: Be tempted to a mid-afternoon treat such as chocolate or biscuits. Regular consumption can seriously increase your cholesterol levels’).

Not all business support to schools need be harmful. But for each good CRM scheme (such as Sainsbury’s school fruit delivery tie-up in Glasgow) there is the potential for many more – if we continue to follow US trend – promoting artificially coloured and flavoured, high fat, high sugar, or high salt rubbish, alongside other marketing materials foisting brand-building strategies on our children.

For people opposed to the commercialisation of schools, now is the right time to start asking questions. At their annual conference in April, the ATL teachers’ union called on the government to address the serious under-funding of primary schools and to commission an independent audit of the extent to which primary schools have been forced to rely on subsidies from teachers themselves, volunteer support, parental donations, voucher schemes, and other fundraising endeavours. The lesson is that all of us — government, parents, head teachers, teaching unions — have to be a bit more discerning about who or what we allow through the school gates. If the government is really committed to a healthy schools programme it should withdraw support for these schemes. If school governors are really committed to nurturing healthy children they should introduce commercial sponsorship policies, like the one already in operation in Seattle schools.⁵ And if we as a society are really concerned about our the impact of commerce on children then we should act to block the advertising of junk food to them, as the Swedes have already done.