Sugar in School Breakfasts: A School District′s Perspective

Introduction

It used to be a cup of coffee, small juice, milk, and a piece or two of toast off the list. Now children choose among the processed and fast food options with far too much sugar for an active, healthy learning day. Some of the identifiably sugary choices are chocolate milk, apple slices, three varieties of frozen pop-tarts, and two varieties of grahamfuls. The non-recognizable foods are more of the same: sugary choices include cinnamon apples, two varieties of string cheese sticks, miniature powdered donuts, vanilla graham cracker sticks, cookies, sugar frosted flakes, and two varieties of milk bars. These are very high sugar amounts for breakfast foods before the children drink their juice and coffee, hot chocolate, milk, or chocolate milk sold separately or with the coffee and juice meals.

It is not advantageous for the healthy development and learning of all students and children to have them eating such local breakfast foods. When parents and educators are making local decisions regarding the amount of sugar for a child to consume for the first meal of the day, that decision impacts children's learning outcomes. High sugar meals quickly assimilate into the blood, causing blood sugar to rise above optimal levels for learning. The reading scores of students are affected by long-term moderate fluctuations to high ranges of blood sugar. For children overall, early high blood sugar makes students lose focus, become sluggish, and experience behavioral problems. Moreover, two formed food and juice options could deliver a significant amount of sugar before non-sugared coffee and milk are consumed.

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Health Risks of High Sugar

One in four Australian children and young people are overweight or obese. While for many young people, obesity becomes apparent in pre-pubescent children, evidence is growing that obese children are at high risk of developing diabetes. In an age of inactivity, diets are full of discretionary foods. These poor diets see young children showing signs of metabolic syndrome. Excess consumption of added sugars is also related to a greater risk of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, fatty pancreas disease, and high urinary albumin. At the other end of the developmental scale, adults are consuming 50% of discretionary sugars in drinks alone.

A dozen countries have nutritional standards for their school meals, and they are sugar limit standards. Research shows that a child's diet high in added sugars causes their brains to release less brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This harms the brain's learning and memory development. It also causes inflammation, which is related to the development of anxiety, depression, as well as increased aggression. We do know that children with diets high in added sugars (as well as low physical activity) don't perform well academically. This includes both math and English testing. Furthermore, high school students who eat more commercially acquired food do worse in tests. This also includes vocational education testing done in schools. They are also more likely not to graduate. After school, students are less likely to gain employment. They are also not in apprenticeships as much as the low consumers alongside those leaving the school system at 18 years. The children who consume more commercial food in school and sugar indeed have worse educational outcomes. These children then have difficulty gaining employment as well as not meeting the community's needs.

Sugar Policies in Schools

This district and other districts and states have been working to improve the nutrition provided in school breakfast. Updated nutrition guidelines now require nutrient standards for grades K-12. School districts can choose to follow the USDA School Breakfast Program, with the Bend-La Pine Schools Nutrition Services providing breakfast options that follow these nutritional guidelines. The district also provides breakfast free of charge to all students in schools that receive the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). This guarantee of free breakfasts for all children has increased the number of students participating in the breakfast program. Changes in guidelines and nutritional standards create challenges for the district on behalf of the students and communities served. School districts are currently making decisions that are designed to ensure that children are being provided with a breakfast that will help them to function in class while keeping board policies and food regulations in mind.

School districts typically comply with stricter local policies by following broader state or federal guidelines developed to promote a reduction of sugars and sweet intake, with the intention to develop a more nutritional breakfast menu. The nutrition profiles, food choices, healthy growth, and body weight goals of middle and high school students are significantly different from breakfast choices preferred by students in elementary schools. These breakfast preferences are given consideration when finalizing breakfast menus. The district works with a registered dietitian to help maximize a child’s nutrition within the day’s meal selections. Federal food regulations ensure that the breakfast menus are nutritious and align with the national dietary guidelines. They also take scientific knowledge into consideration when making recommendations and requirements. By using a professional, the district can continue to offer high-quality educational food choices with a nutritive benefit that we know students will want to eat in the proper portion. Policies are rooted in science and not in public opinion or political outcome. Federal, statewide, and local breakfast policies and food guidelines are in place, based in part to decrease childhood obesity rates, increase well-nourished breakfast participation rates in school breakfast programs, increase after-breakfast academic engagement, and improve classroom behavior. The policies generally steer a reduction in the amount of sugar and sweet intake in daily breakfast. Some charter and public schools go further to recommend no sweet options or frozen processed food selections to students in school breakfast, as well as limited juice and cereal options. Federal regulations also require that half of the grain servings at breakfast are designated as whole grain. The KBCHD and BVSD breakfast program and food guidelines vary but are generally stricter than those enforced in a public elementary school where it is serving large breakfasts prior to the school day.

Low-Sugar Breakfast Case Study

The top two breakfast foods are both cold cereals. Both boast high protein and fiber. Both are new leaf concepts in recipe-randomized trials.

The superintendent of a suburban public school district with three elementary buildings of approximately 800 students sought to incrementally adjust the culture of breakfast by seeking a carbohydrate-limitation philosophy that met with regulations for nutritional content at the free breakfast level. As cafeteria manager, one had previously noticed fewer student behavioral challenges at the start of the schools in the district alongside comparably competitive schools. They had scones, put a couple in a double layer of half-sheet pans, delegated a stack to cafeteria-like equipment, and held it at 150° overnight. They do not have a school-run, as we do, emphasizing the importance of physical activities in every class for a minimum caloric impact, but I could not resist improving on perfection. Scone haystacks will be one of the low-sugar alternatives to snow shovels.

From the beginning of implementing low-sugar breakfast alternatives in the cafeteria, much attention and ample focus groups were centered around how to maintain nutritional balance, compliance, and children’s schools’ interest. As the prototypes became four and five, carts of ultra-low glycemic breakfast variables were shown for sampling to early classroom teachers and parents, and nutritionists on the logical call. Snackhouse operators sent around a tray full of differently colored muffins and things and an anonymous feedback collection printed on poster sheets. Each stakeholder demographic also received a message with a survey link. A section or three was a single, of far too much. Peers were leaned on in the hallways. Nothing further will be forthcoming here about the many, mostly funny, failed attempts at achieving the goals beyond the work-up of the final results.

Balancing Nutrition & Appeal

It is difficult to say what the overall sugar content of nonperishable school breakfast products should be; we were able to find no consensus around this issue among nutritionists, and indeed they sometimes gave conflicting advice. The answer likely does not lie at one extreme end of the nutritional spectrum or the other but somewhere in between. What is clear is that we must address the impact of sugar in school breakfasts.

According to our findings, sugar in breakfast, when children are likely to be receiving a day’s worth of added sugar, represents a public health concern. Consequently, the nutritionists and school food professionals we consulted recommended that schools continue offering nonperishable foods at breakfast and throughout the day. However, they recommended that schools consider the sugar content of nonperishable foods when planning menus and that schools situate any changes they make to the breakfast menu within a broader commitment to improving children’s health. The nutritionists and school food service directors who stress continuing to offer healthy types of food also emphasize that offering less sugary foods is not incompatible with offering items children enjoy. They report increasingly offering new and possibly unfamiliar healthy foods while continuing to offer well-liked foods to represent this approach. If today’s school breakfast foods already provide the opportunity for students to consume whole grains, lean proteins, and low-fat dairy items, essential parts of a healthy school breakfast, then reducing the sugar content of these foods may make them less appealing to students, given the results of the student taste tests. In short, improving the nutritional value of a product perceived as less appealing on any dimension will be no guarantee that it will be chosen by students.

Given that 36% of student taste testers liked the current cinnamon graham cereal and that it scored the least healthy on our multi-criteria analysis, a simple strategy might be to try to test alternative versions of this cereal, and paying particular attention to its sugar content is likely necessary. If the alternative version presented in taste tests is as much of a hit in terms of appeal as the current cinnamon graham cereal, is perceived as healthier, and is not over-budget, it is likely worth changing the recipe. It is essential that we continue to give nutrition the same explicit attention as we do appeal in both the products we create and the policies we develop, and that ultimately attempt to alter the behavior of our intended audience. We hope that, by gathering as much information and making it available as a tool for further inquiry, we can help, to a small degree, those millions of people working to turn a healthy school breakfast dream into a reality. We encourage those who are participating in breakfast in the classroom programs to continue to try to gather feedback to guide the design of helmet-friendly foods and to document the sometimes-quick changes to students’ diet as the novel program becomes more a part of everyday life.

We also encourage anyone developing policy – whether at the district, state, or federal level – to seek guidance from nutrition experts and the other stakeholders in developing that policy and to take the time to consider the policy’s potential impact on the ground. With the valuable lessons learned in gathering the information outlined in this report and additional thoughtful inquiry, we can together brush away the cobwebs from the digressive ground that is today’s public health discourse and allow us to state and focus on our objectives: to increase child participation in the School Breakfast Program and to encourage healthy eating habits.