Well, let's start with when the standards apply... Princeton has adopted the rules for "all sales of food and beverages to students in all Princeton City Schools during the regular and extended school day setting." Also from my Springdale note, "we will no longer permit cupcakes, cookies, or candy of any kind that do not meet the nutritional standards. As of today, please do not send in sweet treats of any kind. Teachers will be following these guidelines as well when we have our classroom celebrations." So, while Bill 210 seems to only apply to sales of food and food provided by the school, Princeton has adopted the standards for foods sent in from home for the class. So, we need to follow the guidelines for birthdays as well as the 4 classroom seasonal parties during the year. **The rules do not apply to packed lunches.** That's probably the number one question I've heard from parents.
The official standards came in the form of a chart with several columns and each box had information for elementary school, middle school and high school students. It also had breakfast standards, lunch standards, beverage standards and more! I started my adventure with the elementary school snack standards. In plain English (well, as plain as I can make it) there are 2 major goals for the snacks. One is that they can't be bad for you and the other is that it also has to be good for you. To avoid being bad, a snack must be under 150 calories. Of those calories 35% can be from total fat, only 10% can be from saturated fat, and none can be from trans fats. The snack must also have less than 230 mg of sodium and less than 35% of the snack, by weight, can be from sugar. That's my favorite (heavy on the sarcasm) one to figure out. I've never heard of this before and hopefully I'm figuring it correctly. Here's how I do it. Under carbohydrates there is a breakout of sugar, insoluble fiber and soluble fiber all measured in grams. The serving size at the top of the nutrition label is also measured in grams (usually). So you can estimate by making sure the total sugar in grams is a third or less of the total serving size in grams. If the serving size is 100 grams and the snack has 50 grams of sugar, don't send it school. If the serving size is 100 grams and the sugar is 35 grams or less (and it meets all the other standards) send it in.
Now, moving on to the part about how it must also be good for you. The snack must meet 1 of the following nutritional standards: contain 10% or more of vitamin A or C or E or folate, calcium, magnesium, potassium or iron, or contain 5 grams of protein or 2 grams of fiber or be 1/2 serving of a fruit or vegetable.
So, write that down and take it with you to the grocery store. (Leave the kids at home, because you're going to be reading a lot of labels!) I'll be posting some of the easy-to-buy ready-to-eat food that meets the guidelines that I find and also some recipes that work and taste good. So, keep reading. We'll talk about beverages next time!
These links have all the details and are where I found the charts and guidelines.
http://www.watchusthrive.org/includes/documents/princeton_food_guidelines.pdf
http://www.watchusthrive.org/Libraries/blog_documents/AllianceFoodGuidelines.sflb.ashx
http://www.watchusthrive.org/Libraries/blog_documents/AllianceBeverageGuidelines.sflb.ashx
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