Competitive food and beverage environment of one state's largest school district significantly falls short of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's nutritional criteria

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the competitive food and beverage environment of Utah's largest school district using the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's (AFHG) nutritional guidelines. With the data collected the year prior to the adoption of the USDA mandated School Wellness Policy, the assessment serves as a good baseline from which to measure progress in implementing nutritional standards for competitive foods.

Food and beverage inventories of all vending machine and a la carte lunch items in Jordan School District were conducted. 8067 items were recorded. Nutrition analysis was performed on all the unique food (n=328) and beverage (n=122) items. Unique foods were grouped into food (n = 14) and beverage (n = 8) categories using the AFHG outline and comparisons were made between nutritional content of district's foods and recommendations from AFHG.

Snacks including baked goods, bars, candy, chips and crackers (48.8%) followed by regular (non-diet) soda pop (16.5%) made up the majority of district foods. The AFHG recommends that snacks must provide no more than 35% calories from total fat, no more than 10% of calories from saturated fat, and be no more than 35% sugar by weight. Snack means exceed AFHG guidelines for total fat calories (mean = 31.3%), saturated fat calories (mean = 11.5%) and for sugar by weight (mean = 40.7%). AFHG recommends that no sodas over 10 calories per 8 ounce be offered in the high schools. Regular soda mean was 306.2 calories.