fhspress.com Mustang Stampede Foothill High School

Students buy food at the lunch kiosk near the library. The kiosk offers an alternative to the lines in the cafeteria and the snack bar. Photo by Shenghai Vang.

Food sales restricted on FHS campus

New food sale regulations make fundraising harder for school clubs.

KAT McDERMOTT
fhspress.com Editor
Posted October 19, 2015

School clubs, classes, and ASB assemblies are struggling to find funds because of new acts and laws that restrict food sales.

California Smart Snacks in School is an act that has been effective as of July 1, 2014. Its nutritional requirements are the strictest in the country.

This is a big problem for some programs; multicultural fairs are nearly impossible because only store bought food can be sold during school. They also have to meet certain nutritional requirements.

Leadership and ASB feel the pain too; food sales used to be major fundraisers for California schools. The nutritional requirements and legalities are too narrow to allow any sort of creativity with their food, and any favorable snacks that do meet the state requirements are usually sold by snack bars during lunch.

“It’s really hard to sell food because it can’t be candy or fast food,” says Sarah Xiong, the junior class president at Foothill High School.”

Electives like AVID also have a hard time finding food to sell.

“For AVID we’re selling Butter Braid baked goods from a catalogue,” added Xiong. “I feel like they [lawmakers] didn’t include our opinion on it [creation of new laws].”

Why were these laws passed?

Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic in California and the rest of the United States. Obesity can lead to other physical and mental health problems. By putting restrictions on food sold at school, schools are forced to offer healthier choices for students.

Lawmakers had good intentions, but now fundraising is harder than ever.

There are loopholes to this problem. Food can be paid for and ordered at school but be delivered to an off campus location, like being delivered to the customers home. Students can sell products out of school and turn in the money during the school day. Food that doesn’t meet requirements can be sold during non-school days at school or 30 minutes after school. Some companies even make snacks that are specially made to meet the requirements; you just have to look for them. Programs are available online to help calculate if a snack is eligible for sale.
So maybe these new laws aren’t the end of all food sales; we just have to put in a lot more work in finding ways to sell food.

kat.mcdermott@fhspress.com

FOOTHILL HIGH SCHOOL fhspress.com SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA