School Commercialism Hurts All Children, Ethnic Minority Group Children Most of All

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 2003 by Molnar, Alex

A number of recent analyses underscore the pervasiveness of the marketing of unhealthy food to young people. They include the books Fast Food Nation (Schlosser, 2001) and Food Politics (Nestle, 2002); several reports from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, among them, "Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health" (Jacobson, 1998); the U.S. General Accounting Office's September 2000 report on school commercialism; and a pair of reports "Kids, Commercials, and Fitness" and "Buying Access-The Commercialization of America's Schools," both of which aired in October 2002 on PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers (Firestone, 2002a, 2002b).

The CDC's School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) 2000 found that, of schools surveyed, 80.7% offered for sale to students in school lunch programs baked goods not low in fat, while only 22% offered fruits and vegetables and 49% offered low-fat baked goods. The same study found that 76.4% sold chocolate candy, while only 12% sold fruit or vegetable juice (CDC, 2001). Such trends demand an examination, not merely of school policies on what foods and other products are offered to students, but the extent to which marketers, by placing materials in schools, may be driving up the demand for unhealthy food choices and undermining school curricula seeking to educate students in healthy food choices.

A study in 2001 that examined students confirmed an association between rising softdrink consumption and obesity (Ludwig, Peterson, & Gortmaker, 2001). In addition, some studies have found higher rates of fractures in female high school athletes who consume larger amounts of soft drinks, suggesting that the decrease of milk in their diets may be contributing to symptoms of osteoporosis even in adolescence. In September 2002, the respected British medical journal The Lancet editorialized:

The soaring increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes among children is a public-health crisis, plausibly linked to the "toxic environment" created in large part by the food industry. Supersize or extra-value portions mean that a single meal can provide more calories than most children require for an entire day. ("Selling to," 2002, p. 959)

COMMERCIALISM AND IMPOVERISHED CHILDREN

Although commercialism has negative effects across the board, its impact would appear to be most severe among the poor. Schoolhouse commercialism thrives because public schools lack resources, and those resources are most absent in the central city schools attended by poor children of ethnic minorities. To understand what drives schools to open their doors to commercial entities, one merely has to consider the words of a school superintendent in Brooklawn, New Jersey, whose district named a new gymnasium for a local supermarket. The naming agreement is for a period of 20 years, in return for $100,000-a donation that amounted to little more than enough each year to cover maintenance costs (Russakoff, 2001). Defending his decision to sell the naming rights of the building, Brooklawn Superintendent John Kellmayer, said, "American corporations spend billions of dollars on the Olympics. all we're saying is: Why don't you spend some of that on our public schools?" (Graham, 2001, p. Al).