![]() ![]() According to Alyssa Moran, lead author and doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, “The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act aimed to protect kids from food industry marketing in the classroom, but brand marketing programs, like Box Tops, slipped through the cracks. The list of products advertised to kids under this program includes foods such as Reese’s Puff Cereal, Toaster Strudel and Gushers. While they tended to be okay in terms of sugar, trans fat, and calories, they also tended to be high-sodium and devoid of healthy ingredients. The Harvard Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Nutrition collaborated with MassGeneral Hospital for Children to examine almost 1,000 foods and beverages that participate in the Box Tops program, and found that fewer than one third of these products met Smart Snacks guidelines. ![]() ![]() General Mills’ “Box Tops for Education” is one of the largest of these programs, in which over 90,000 schools have participated to earn money by collecting Box Tops from select products.” However, school-based brand marketing programs that encourage students and families to purchase specific products in exchange for rewards were not covered by this ruling. “…the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 provided guidelines for schools involved in the National School Lunch Program to stop the sale or advertising of foods and beverages that do not meet federal “Smart Snacks” standards. So what’s going on? As the article explains, Box Tops for Education was a consistent part of my childhood, so imagine my surprise when I found out that less than a third of participating foods in this program meet federal Smart Snacks in School standards. I clicked on it because I have memories of cutting along the dotted lines of those coupons on my cereal boxes with scissors (or, when I didn’t feel like getting scissors, attempting to rip the cardboard), and how we used to store them in plastic baggies in the kitchen drawer. ![]() As I was searching for information on nutrition, I found not only healthy eating tips but an interesting and fairly recent article (August 2017) from Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, which focused on food marketing, specifically the Box Tops for Education program. Luckily November, falling right between Halloween and the holidays, is good nutrition month. 31, 1297–1309 (2016).Struggling to avoid the temptations of leftover Halloween candy? (I know there’s a handful of Reese’s cups still living in my purse). Petrosino, A., Turpin-Petrosino, C., Hollis-Peel, M. Enhancing the Use of Scientific Evidence to Judge the Potential Benefits and Harms of Medicines (Academy of Medical Sciences, 2017). F1000Resea(2018).Īcademy of Medical Sciences. The State of Critical Thinking: A New Look at Reasoning at Home, School, and Work (Reboot Foundation, 2018). ![]()
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