Philadelphia School Battles Students’ Bad Eating Habits, on Campus and Off

By MICHAEL MOSS

PHILADELPHIA — Tatyana Gray bolted from her house and headed toward her elementary school. But when she reached the corner store where she usually gets her morning snack of chips or a sweet drink, she encountered a protective phalanx of parents with bright-colored safety vests and walkie-talkies.

The scourge the parents were combating was neither the drugs nor the violence that plagues this North Philadelphia neighborhood. It was bad eating habits.

“Candy!” said one of the parents, McKinley Harris, peering into a small bag one child carried out of the store. “That’s not food.”

The parents standing guard outside the Oxford Food Shop are foot soldiers in a national battle over the diets of children that has taken on new fervor. With 20 percent of the nation’s children obese, the United States Department of Agriculture has proposed new standards for federally subsidized school meals that call for more balanced meals and, for the first time, a limit on calories. The current standard specifies only a minimum calorie count, which some schools meet by adding sweet foods.

Earlier this year, when Michelle Obama, as part of her campaign against childhood obesity, announced that Wal-Mart would reduce salt and sugar in its packaged foods, she said, “We’re beginning to see the ripple effects on the choices folks are making about how they feed their kids.”

But this effort is up against an array of powerful forces, from economics to biology, all of which are playing out in Philadelphia, where the obesity rate is among the nation’s highest. At the intersection of North 28th and West Oxford Streets, the Oxford Food Shop and the William D. Kelley School are in a tug of war over the cravings of kids.

Amelia Brown, the principal of the kindergarten through eighth grade school, said that deplorable diets caused headaches and stomachaches that undermine academic achievement, and that older students showed a steady progression of flab. So inside the school, the nutrition bug is rampant.

The gym teacher, Beverly Griffin, teaches healthy eating using a toy model of the federal food pyramid and rewritten children’s songs. “And on his farm he had some carrots,” Tatyana, a first grader, belted out one recent morning, skipping around the gym with her classmates.

Like schools throughout the nation, Kelley has expelled soda and sweet snacks. Instead of high-calorie fruit juices, the school nurse, Wendy Fine, said, “I push water.”

The Agriculture Department wants to change the content of federally subsidized school meals — 33 million lunches and 9 million breakfasts a day — by the fall of 2012. Beyond the calorie cap, the new standards would emphasize whole grains, vegetables and fruits and set tighter limits on sodium and fats.

“This will mean a huge shift in school meals,” said Margo G. Wootan, the director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.

Fernando Gallard, a spokesman for the Philadelphia School District, said schools were meeting the new federal meal proposals by using more dark green and orange vegetables, as well as fruits, whole grains and legumes.

The food industry is defending products by focusing on their mineral and vitamin content. The National Potato Council, for example, is warning against cutting starch, saying children need potatoes’ potassium and fiber.

Some companies are adjusting their recipes, although hardly drastically. After Philadelphia schools stopped buying the sugary products of the local bakery icon Tastykake, the company created a 190-calorie muffin, reducing sugar enough to move it below flour on the list of ingredients. The new formulation, which uses whole grains, got Tastykake muffins back on the school breakfast menu and classified as bread. “It is sweet,” said Autumn R. Bayles, a company senior vice president. “Sugar is just not the first ingredient.”

To match the efforts inside the school, one of Ms. Brown’s first acts as principal last August was to ask owners of nearby corner stores to stop selling to students in the morning.

There was a reason for this. While research suggests that as little as an extra 200 calories a day can make an adult overweight, a recent study led by Gary D. Foster, the director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, found that children were getting 360 calories a day from chips, candy and sugary drinks — all for an average of $1.06.

Gladys Tejada, who owns the Oxford shop, said, “It’s a good thing, what they’re trying to do, but I can’t control who comes in.”

Nor can she control what they buy. “They like it sweet,” she said. “They like it cheap.”

Since 2001, a Philadelphia organization called Food Trust has worked to get corner stores to offer healthier foods, including fresh fruit, vegetables and water, as well as products with reduced sugar, salt and fat. But just 507 of the city’s estimated 2,500 corner stores have signed on.

Jetro Cash and Carry, which supplies many corner stores, joined the effort. But Jack Sagen, a Jetro sales and marketing director, said he recently lost $500 buying several dozen cases of 15-cent bags of sliced apples that perished before they could catch on with the stores. Walking through his warehouse, he stopped at a display of stuffed tortilla snacks. “These will kill you,” Mr. Sagen said. “They are one of our best sellers.”

Scientists have demonstrated the power of sugar since at least 1974, when a Brooklyn College professor, Anthony Sclafani, found that lab rats were so drawn to Froot Loops that they would suppress their natural fear to eat in the exposed areas of their cages. Researchers using brain imagining technology have since found that foods high in sugar or fat activate the same reward system as cocaine and other drugs, and can also set off the release of the neural chemical dopamine, which can cause the brain to override the biological brakes that prevent overeating.

The challenge of reducing calories for children becomes clear at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, an institute in Philadelphia that does research for both government and industry, which is testing the sweet and salty preferences of children, using several hundred subjects, including Tatyana, the Kelley first grader.

Monell researchers demonstrated the so-called bliss point — the level of sweetness that makes products most desirable — by having Tatyana taste several puddings with differing levels of sweetness. She settled on one that was 24 percent sucrose, twice the sweetness adults typically like.

“Childhood teaches us what to eat, how to eat, when to eat and what food should taste like,” said Julie Mennella, the scientist conducting the research. “Children don’t have to learn to like sweet. But what they will be learning is what food should taste sweet.”

Breakfast is a particular battleground.

Tatyana’s mother keeps a basket of fruit on the dining table, but her daughter’s favorite cereal is Cinnamon Toast Crunch, whose 10 grams of sugar per serving is 10 times as much as that of Cheerios.

And even after eating cereal, Tatyana, like many Kelley students, stops for a snack on the way to the school.

Frustrated that her pressure on stores had not worked, Ms. Brown called on parents and Operation Town Watch Integrated Services, which typically helps neighborhoods fight crime and drugs.

“I need you to go to those stores and say, ‘Look, can you not sell to our kids between 8:15 and 8:30?’ ”Ms. Brown said, kicking off the effort in January. “ ‘We don’t want them to eat sugary items. There is a breakfast program right here. And if you don’t do this, we’re going to have to boycott for a while.’ ”

Mr. Harris, a Navy veteran with six children in the school, and three other parents took the first corner store watch, with mixed results. Tatyana continued past the store without stopping, but others bought the usual fare.

“Ha, ha, ha,” one young girl said, scoffing at Mr. Harris.

“I bought everything!” another bragged.

But after several weeks of parent intervention, Ms. Brown said more children were skipping the corner stores, showing progress against the pull of sweet snacks.

“It does what they need it to do for that moment,” she said of the snacks. “It hits them in the stomach. They feel full. It’s cheap and fast.”