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Soft Drinks Fail Pop Quiz

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By MARILYN BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 11, 2008

TAMPA - Sugared soft drinks will disappear from school vending machines in Hillsborough County schools during the 2008-09 school year.

Instead, vending machines at elementary schools will be limited to water, and middle schools to water and 100 percent fruit juice. High schools will sell water, diet sodas and teas, low-calorie juices and sport drinks.

The move is part of a national agreement between a health alliance and major soft drink companies to stem soaring obesity rates linked to diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments among children.

By 2010, all sugared soft drinks produced by those companies will be removed from schools across the country. In Hillsborough that will happen this coming school year, district officials said Thursday.

Exactly when is still being negotiated with Pepsi, which is entering the sixth year of a 12-year, $50 million contract with the district that bans competitive soft drink companies from selling on school grounds.

The pact was brokered in May 2006 by the William J. Clinton Foundation and American Heart Association with PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Cadbury Schweppes, which have contracts in schools across the country.

The soft drink companies agreed to stop sales of sugared soft drinks to 75 percent of schools by 2008-09 and to all of them a year later.

"We're getting there," said David DeCecco, spokesman for PepsiCo in New York. The agreement with Hillsborough mirrors what Pepsi is negotiating with other districts, DeCecco said.

How much money the ban might cost the district is not known.

The potential loss of millions of dollars has caused district officials to delay negotiating a ban, despite a recommendation to do so from a district wellness committee two years ago.

In 2006-07, the sale of Pepsi beverages netted a combined $836,000 in commissions for schools and the district, district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said. The district was paid $4 million upfront when it signed with Pepsi in 2003.

In addition, the company provides athletic scoreboards that bear its advertising logos and has donated thousands of cases of free beverages to the district.

Some high schools have collected more than $50,000 in a single year from Pepsi commissions. Others, such as Hillsborough and Robinson high schools and some middle schools, decided years ago to ban sodas in favor of water and other drinks.

Sugared drinks long have been banned from Hillsborough elementary schools.

Pepsi has agreed to fill high school vending machines with more water, diet soda and low-calorie juices than sport drinks and 100 percent juices, Cobbe said.

"They're the customer, so they can select the lineup," Pepsi spokesman DeCecco said.

Districts across the nation, including Miami-Dade, already have banned sodas from schools.

Bolstering the effort was support in 2004 from the American Academy of Pediatrics to ban sales of soda to children and a national report requested by Congress and released in April 2007.

That report from the Institute of Medicine recommended strict standards to cut calories, fat and sugar in all snacks and drinks sold in school vending machines, at fundraisers and as a la carte items in school cafeterias.

WHAT'S LEFT?

Under an agreement with Pepsi, vending machines for students will convert to these drinks sometime during the 2008-09 school year:
Elementary schools: Water only
Middle schools: Water, 100 percent fruit juices
High schools: Water, diet soft drinks and teas, low-calorie juices, Gatorade and Propel
Source: Hillsborough County Schools

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069 or mbrown@tampatrib.com.

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