Seminole County’s Candy Drama
I believe we should re-open the School Store.
Information (background)
LMHS’s PTSA School Store has been shut down semi-permanently, as have similar stores across Seminole County. Allegedly due to a parent complaint, officials recognized that these stores have been breaking federal standards for the food that is allowed to be sold and served in schools. Despite rumors, this is not a new rule. “Smart Snack Standards” have been around since 2014.
The Official Smart Snacks Nutrition Standards starts by defining several important terms:
“Competitive Foods” are any foods that are for sale to students, on the school campus, during the school day. [includes cafeterias, vending machines, school stores, fundraisers, and more]
For “Sale” means that the food is exchanged for money or an equivalent (such as tickets, coupons, or tokens).
The “school day” ranges from the midnight before to 30 minutes after school dismissal. So, no, you cannot sell candy at 2:21pm. But, concession sales at school events do not count. So our football games and plays are safe.
There are no exceptions in the rules that would allow for candy (chocolate bars, skittles, m&ms, etc) to be sold. Sorry snackers… However, there are several exceptions that would allow for some brands of chips, drinks, and many other kinds of snack foods.
Opinion/Rant (conclusion: BYOS)
I think there is a lot of hypocrisy involved with this issue. No one party is at fault for childhood obesity. Parents give their kids fast food and school cafeterias aren’t really known for having the healthiest food options plus school stores and fundraisers make sugar readily available to any child with a $5 bill. But, rules are rules. Our county’s schools have to follow federal law, even if we don’t like it.
In conclusion, I believe we should re-open the school store, this time in compliance with the Smart Snack Standards. We can still have many of our favorite snacks at lunch and the PTSA can still get fundraiser money. This is not as big of an issue as it has been made to be. We’re in high school. If you really want candy that bad, go to the store?? This isn’t about us. This is about the kids in elementary and middle school who are seriously lacking in self control when it comes to sugar. Bring Your Own Snacks.
Chris Karel • Apr 26, 2023 at 9:49 am
Chris Karel here. My wife and I started all this and I just wanted to say thank you for such a well-researched, well-reasoned article. It was refreshing to read something that highlighted the facts about the standards and ES and MS kids not having self-control when it comes to candy. The one thing I would correct is that the Florida smart snacks rules do allow for junk food to be sold for fundraising on a certain number of “exempt” occassions each school year. For MS in Seminole County, it’s ten days. For high schools, it’s 15. So, on fifteen days per school year, junk food can be sold on campus for fundraising purposes. I would also add that the fact that the childhood obesity problem has many causes doesn’t mean we should just throw up our hands and ignore one of them. There are kids under 18 who smoke cigarettes even though they can’t buy them, but the problem would be much worse if we just said, “Well, if the kids can get them from other sources, we may as well just allow kids to buy them themselves.” Finally, the big difference between candy bought at Publix and candy bought at school is parental consent. As a society, we’ve been brainwashed into viewing junk food as both a comfort on bad days and a reward on good days. Since they were born, we’ve encouraged our kids to challenge that mindset and be mindful of what they eat. Then, they get to sixth grade and they’ve got adults who they see as authority figures – other parents, administrators, teachers – telling them every day that junk food is unequivocally good and that buying and consuming it will help their school, their teachers and their classmates. And neither the PTSA nor the school gets permission from individual parents to do that – they’ve just taken it on themselves. That’s what we were really fighting against when we started this, and I think that’s reflected in the original Orlando Sentinel article, but it’s been lost in the subsequent pieces on Fox 35 and Channel 9. Almost a third of kids in Seminole County are overweight or obese, and chances are the majority of those kids will go on to suffer lifelong conditions and disease as a result. But somehow that’s gotten lost in this narrative that it’s OK to set kids up for chronic illness in twenty years if it buys you a new scoreboard or chairs for the computer lab today.
CC • Dec 14, 2023 at 10:05 am
I feel like it’s not fair to say that teachers are telling students to buy snacks and candy, they don’t care that much if at all. If your child/student can’t control themselves when they’re buying candy I think that is an issue that has more to do with them rather than the school. It’s also quite a leap to say that these stores are contributing to the issue with childhood obesity, when the habits and behaviors that contribute to that are built at home.