“We believe that this transformation of school food and food skills is critical to the health of a generation of children and will have a significant impact on our economy. Obesity in children is rapidly increasing, children’s knowledge of where food comes from has diminished and cooking skills across communities are declining. Unless we act now the next generation faces a bleak future of ill-health,” said a spokesperson.

Socio-economic conditions largely determine someone’s chances of becoming obese - combine a poor education with a lack of money and often the result is a family raised on economy burgers and fries. Experts predict that if the current rate of growth continues, three-quarters of the population could suffer the effects of obesity within 10-15 years. Research published three years ago by the Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest found that nearly 50% of children spent more than three hours a day watching television or playing computer games. More than a third never played outside the survey found. Schools have a tough job, as they are, of course, only partly responsible for the health of the next generation - parents, the wider community, the government and industry need to take greater responsibility too.

The School Food Trust aims to:

• Ensure all schools meet the food based and nutrient based standards for lunch and non-lunch food
• Increase the uptake of school meals
• Reduce diet-related inequalities in childhood through food education and school-based initiatives
• Improve food skills through food education, and school and community initiatives.

Where does the vending industry fit in - or rather, does it fit in?

As ever, a big area of concern is the consumption of unhealthy foods from vending machines as an alternative to a full, nutritious meal. Vending services are only usually found in secondary schools. The standards being introduced in September 2007 could potentially have the most impact on these services says the Trust, as chocolate, crisps, ‘crisp like’ products and some drinks have been banned from school vending machines under the new regulations.

Some schools, and no doubt a good few suppliers, are concerned about a loss of income when making a transition to healthy vending. An interim guide, called ‘A fresh look at vending in schools’ was published in July this year, in the hope of answering questions about how the industry might survive these changes.

A report issued by Mintel claims that 2007 is set to be a significant year in more ways than one for the industry, with substantial numbers of machines being withdrawn from the educational sector following the introduction of new nutritional standards for food and drink sold in secondary schools. Judy Hargadon, the School Food Trust’s CEO, refutes this claim: “Vending is a great way to provide a broad selection of food and drinks for children and young people throughout the day. Managed well it can ease the pressures on catering staff during the lunchtime as well as extend the catering service to outside school hours.

“Many schools have successfully implemented healthier vending in their schools and made money from it to invest back into their catering service. With the new standards arriving for school food other than lunch, we want to share the ways you can make vending successful in your school while meeting the new criteria.”

According to the Trust, the school food standards for vending will apply to the whole-day food and drink service from September 2007. This is to ensure children are given every opportunity to consume foods that offer them positive nutrition, while educating them on the importance of a healthy varied and balanced diet (coupled with regular physical activity) and reflecting lessons taught in the classroom. The trust is right to highlight that with our current snacking culture it is essential that vending meet children’s nutritional needs.

The Trust claims that vending options which meet the Government’s school food standards, can:

• Have a positive impact on eating in schools
• Encourage children to eat a balanced diet
• Help reduce congestion and queuing around lunchtimes
• Help sustain the catering service
• Extend the catering service beyond school hours offering a 24/7, service provision.

Says the Trust optimistically on its website: “Vending in Schools is changing; previously vending provided nutrient poor, high fat, sugar and salt drinks and snacks, the standards provide an opportunity to change this.”

So beyond the rhetoric, does vending really have a future in schools?

Despite what the Trust says, for many suppliers this could well spell the end of its business in schools. Examples of food and drink not meeting the new standards include:

• Dried fruit or dried vegetables with added fat, sugar or salt
• Cereals coated with chocolate
• Any type of confectionery e.g chocolate products, sweets and sugar free chewing gum
• Cereal bars
• Processed fruit bars
• Crisps and crisp-like products such as Tortilla chips, potato sticks, puffs, crackers, corn chips, prawn crackers, potato wafers
• Japanese rice crackers
• Pretzels
• Bombay mix
• Nuts with added salt/and or sugar
• Cakes
• Buns
• Pastries
• All types of biscuits
• Fruit pies surrounded by pastry
• Flavoured water
• Squash/cordial
• Soft drinks including fizzy drinks containing less than 50% fruit or vegetable juice
• Hot chocolate containing more than 20 calories per 100ml
• Flavoured milk unless it contains fruit juice or cocoa

Interestingly however, I found this information not in ‘A fresh look at vending in schools’ but in another of the Trust’s publications ‘Eat better, do better - A guide to introducing the Government’s new food based standards for all school food other than lunches.’

A survey of vending provision in secondary schools is to be carried out before and after the implementation of the food other than lunch standards in September 2007.

This study will enable the impact of the new standards on vending provision to be monitored, including assessing the nutritional quality of vended products and determine their effect on the number and type of vending machines in schools. A baseline report will be available in September 2007 and the final report will be available in April 2008. This study is being carried out by Oxford University on behalf of the School Food Trust.

The backlash

In the meantime, all schools and the vending industry have had to go on are the two guides published by the Trust. Whilst ‘A fresh look at vending in schools’ is positive in its outlook, the harsh reality is made clear in ‘Eat Better, Do Better’, which clearly highlights a list of banned foods traditionally popular with the vending machine consumer.

Janette Gledhill from the Automatic Vending Association is not happy with the level of support provided so far: “The School Food Trust (SFT) commissioned the Health Education Trust (HET) to produce guidance for schools. Inevitably their draft drew heavily on their earlier trials relating to the sale of fresh products in schools.

“The AVA was disappointed with the help which the resulting SFT publication ‘A fresh look at vending in schools’ offered to schools and caterers who are looking to continue to offer vending when the new standards for food in schools other than lunch, and for lunch, come into effect in September.

“This publication which appears on the SFT’s website was designed as interim guidance with the full report coming out in September. This gave the AVA the opportunity to offer help and support with the second edition.

“A meeting has been held with the SFT and the author (from HET) and the AVA is offering help and advice including urging them to refer readers to the AVA website (www.avavending.org) and especially the AVA publication, ‘Explaining Vending’.

“The mission of the SFT document is to help schools and caterers who wish to use vending as a support to their food offer. The opportunity for vending is two fold - drinks vending to the standards and the supply of machines and service. The machines will be used to sell sandwiches, wraps, pasta pots, fruit and drinks during breaks and lunch to cut down on queues at the cafeteria.”

In response to concerns about a lack of clarification, Trust CEO Judy Hargadon sent a letter to stakeholders to announce both the approval of the regulations and to clear up any misunderstandings that had arisen from the interim booklet. Dated August 20th, it read:

“When I wrote to you in April this year, I said that it had taken some time to get the Regulations right… We would like to reassure all of you that the Trust has heard loud and clear the challenges being faced with implementing the Regulations and recognises the concerns expressed by local authorities and caterers about the threat to the viability of the service in some areas. We have actively communicated these messages to Ministers who are eager to work with all of us to help ensure a sustainable service… At present there is no intention to significantly alter any particular aspect of the reform agenda. However, the Trust is continuing to work closely with DCSF ministers and officials to ensure that action is being taken to increase the numbers eating school food. We are jointly developing a programme of support activity and will send more details about this to stakeholders in the early autumn.”

Judy's choice of words is interesting; she is obviously under no illusion that the industry needs reassurance. In fact, she hears us ‘loud and clear’ - indicative of the enormous pressure she faces from all corners; the government, schools and of course the catering and vending industry each has a vested interest. How do you please us all? The answer it would seem would be to sit on the fence and hide behind rhetoric. Judy has told ministers our concerns… and passed the buck in one fell swoop! She goes on to say that the Trust will continue to encourage the increased consumption of ‘school food’, but does not specify whether or not that includes vended products. Once again, the Trust is vague in its response. ‘Support activity’ Judy says, will be available in the autumn and clearly we are going to need it, but is it too little, too late? Time will tell…

AVA

The AVA, and the EVA at European Level, has worked very hard to ensure the Government understands how vending works. The AVA has been involved from when this issue first began to emerge, and even held a workshop with a number of operator members to explain it to the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

The AVA published its own position document called the ‘Educated Choice Initiative’ which was sent to every school in the UK. The AVA has attended further meetings at the FSA and has presented to the School Foods Trust. It is well worth checking out the AVA website to clear up any confusion. www.avavending.org

Health Education Trust

Eligible Vending Operators can register with the HET to adopt the Real Choice School vending criteria. As such they will be agreeing to only supply products for school vending that have been approved by the HET Nutritionist as suitable for inclusion in the Real Choice scheme. This will provide schools with the reassurance that their vending service will be contributing to its overall healthy school policy and reflect best practice. It will mean too that schools do not need to spend valuable resources researching and trying to keep up to date with the many and varied products now on the market in order to determine what might be suitable for a ‘healthy’ school vending provision.

Vending operators that are registered with the HET will be able to carry the Real Choice logo on their school vending machines and they will be listed on the website.

To help schools implement cost effective and successful healthy drinks vending, a practical guide for schools is now available FREE to download on the HET website: www.healthedtrust.com. This guide is based on the findings of the pilot drinks vending project and, written by Joe Harvey (HET) has been produced by the FSA and the Dairy Council.

Joe Harvey has been advocating a rational position for a healthy approach to school vending for some years now. The publication of this guide by the FSA is the result of his determination to illustrate just how healthy options can be vended, with profits for the school. Joe explains:

“Clearly the situation where vending in our secondary schools, is dominated by confectionery and soft drinks cannot and will not continue. We can expect serious government pressure to move rapidly to healthier drinks and food vending in order to meet the demand for consistent messages from the curriculum and the food service. There is nothing inherently evil in vending machines, what matters, is how they are used. They can be a very useful and healthy extension of the food service, especially at times when the dining rooms are busy or closed throughout the day.”

To clarify…

The Trust’s advice is that the following mandatory standards should apply to all foods sold in schools throughout the day:

• No confectionery should be sold in schools
• No bagged savoury snacks other than nuts and seeds (without added salt or sugar) should be sold in schools
• A variety of fruit and vegetables should be available in all school food outlets. This could include fresh, dried, frozen, canned and juiced varieties
• Children and young people must have easy access at all times to free, fresh, preferably chilled, water in schools so that children do not have to depend on going to the lavatory to get water
• The only other drinks available should be bottled water (still or sparkling), skimmed or semi-skimmed milk, pure fruit juices, yoghurt and milk drinks (with less than 5 per cent added sugar), drinks made from combinations of these e.g. smoothies, low calorie hot chocolate, tea and coffee. Artificial sweeteners could be used in yoghurt and milk drinks
• Every school should have a whole school food and nutrition policy, preferably reflected in its single School Plan.