Not crazy about the news coming from my local school system about soda machines.
A bit of background first: I’m from Atlanta, so all soft drinks are “cokes” to me. Now I live in North Carolina, where all soft drinks are “pepsis,” but we manage to understand each other. Growing up, a coke was a weekend lunch treat. Just about every Saturday I’d get to fetch a glass bottle of Coca-Cola from the pantry, pop off the top, pour the drink over ice, and let the fizz tickle my nose before I drank the yummy treat with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Once in great while, I’d get to order a Coca-Cola at a restaurant.
Call me old-fashioned, but I want Baby A’s experience with soft drinks to be like mine—infrequent and appreciated as a treat, not an everyday beverage. So imagine my dismay...
when our local school board recently agreed to continue putting soft-drink vending machines in our schools.
The vote was 5-3 in favor of continuing the exclusive deal with Pepsi, which can net as much as $20,000 a year for each school. In an attempt at mitigation, the board also voted 5-3 to turn the machines off until the end of the school day, meaning kids can’t buy soft drinks until after school.
What gets me, really, are the roll-over-and-play-dead comments in our local paper, the Raleigh N&O, from education leaders…things like:
"Kids are buying it anyway," said board member Rosa Gill. "I'd rather see the profits going to schools than the corner store."
"Children will make choices," said Jim Palermo, principal of Lufkin Road Middle School near Apex. "If we can derive added revenue from that choice, the school system will benefit."
If our schools need money that badly, heck, I’ll gladly pay an extra dollar or two in property taxes to buy back some control over my child’s nutrition at school, and the messages she receives there.
Or, here’s an idea: Let’s spend more federal tax money on our children’s schools and give multi-millionaires a smaller tax break. But that’s a whole other post.
Bottom line is my child is not a market force, making market-force decisions, when she’s 12 and has some quarters in her pocket and access to an enticing treat at school. I know I’m not the only parent out here who’s feeling this way. This was a hot topic among moms who met up the other day at a local coffee shop. But one mom said she'd talked with a school board member, who said she had received absolutely zero feedback on the soda machines question, even though it’s been in the papers and on TV. The board member said she doesn’t think parents care about this issue.
So far, Baby A doesn’t know Coke exists, which is funny because it was her daddy’s first word. (My mother-in-law will love me for posting that bit of family history.) The sweetest thing she’s had to drink so far is lemonade, so that’s what she asks for—uh, loudly whines and begs for—when we go to a quick-serve restaurant.
How about other parents? Am I the only one delaying my child’s awareness of soft drinks and trying to shape her perception of them?
Now that chain restaurants offer milk and juices to kids, are you encouraging them to choose milk over soda? Is that hard?
Please use the Comments feature to let me know. Baby A and I are just getting started on this journey, and I need to hear from other parents about what’s ahead.