School Wellness Programs

Background

Rising levels of childhood obesity in the 1990s in the United States and in many developed nations focused popular and legislative attention on the topic of health and spurred the creation of many programs to combat the increasing problem. At the same time, this period saw the development of popular American fascination with cuisine and all things food related, followed closely by a growing popular and scientific awareness of the pitfalls in our modern food system. These phenomena converged in public discourse in the early 2000s and resulted in a series of policy and legislative updates affecting, among other programs, the beleaguered federally funded National School Lunch Program (NSLP), a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Nascent school wellness programs and school food improvement activism were finally given an institutional foundation in the United States in 2004, when federal laws were passed that required school districts to develop “wellness policies.” Such policies would be used to govern the foods available on school campuses across the country. The wellness policy mandate was spurred, in part, by the successes and frustrations of earlier advocacy campaigns aimed at banning soft drinks in schools. Thus, the earliest school wellness policies often targeted the sale of items with sugar as their first ingredient, such as candy and soda. The creation of a federally legislated wellness policy mandate was partly in response to public health advocates’ and local activists’ campaigns against unhealthy foods sold outside of school meals: in cafeterias, school stores, and school vending machines. Especially problematic were those items sold via contract in which large food companies provided financial incentives in return for stocking their products exclusively. Sales of “competitive foods” (outside of the federally funded school meals) had made soft drinks and calorie-, fat-, and sodium-laden snack items widely available to students.

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