Due to contracts and up front money, schools across the country are finding themselves stuck between the vending machine and a hard place.
Less than a year after the nation's largest beverage companies pledged to remove high-calorie drinks and limit sugary beverages in all schools, districts across the country are finding that they may not be able to afford the switch because of contracts they signed several years ago with bottlers for the companies.
When Portland, Ore., recently wanted to remove diet soda and sports drinks from high school vending machines and cafeterias, school officials found that they would have to pay the local Coca-Cola bottling company $600,000 to do so. In Racine, Wis., officials decided not to remove high-calorie drinks from high schools earlier this year after they learned they would have to pay the local Pepsi bottler $200,000.
Contracts with bottling companies usually give the company exclusive rights to advertise on scoreboards and market their brands in the school's vending machines. The three largest companies, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Cadbury Schweppes, signed a voluntary agreement last May to remove sugary sodas from schools by 2009. They are working with bottlers so that future contracts follow a set of voluntary guidelines.
The guidelines include offering elementary school students milk, water and fruit juice instead of high-calorie soda; and offering high school students water, no-calorie or low-calorie drinks, such as diet soda, milk and light juices, including sports drinks.
Those don't sounds like exciting choices to me. There are so many healthy drinks that didn't exist when the contracts were made. I am always impressed by the new products that I see in the store that are geared towards young people. If they want kids to take them up on the healthier options, they need to make them as tasty as a cold soda.