Soda and candy machines will soon be a thing of the past in Maine schools.

The Maine Department of Education is moving to ban junk food vending machines from school grounds in an effort to trim Maine’s high number of overweight children.

The ban will affect all areas in Maine schools, including teacher prep rooms unless employee contracts require machines there.

“Public schools will be promoting healthy choices in Maine and that’s a great victory,” said state Rep. Sean Faircloth, a Bangor Democrat who submitted a bill to ban soda, sweets and fatty food from Maine schools last winter.

The Legislature’s Education Committee held that bill over until this session, Faircloth said. During the summer, an education commissioner’s roundtable of students, teachers and others looked into the junk food situation in schools. It recommended that the department get rid of vending machines that sell unhealthy foods and drinks.

The department agreed.

Because it already has a rule governing school food sales and vending machines, the department can amend its regulation and prohibit the vending machines without legislative approval.

The new rule will bar the sale of regular and diet sodas, gum, candy and other items with “minimal nutritious value.” It will allow vending machines that offer water, juice and healthy snacks.

The existing rule prohibits junk food sales during school hours only.

Some school systems opposed a vending machine ban last February when Faircloth’s bill came up for debate. Cash-strapped administrators said they used the money generated by their vending machines to pay for field trips, student awards and other extras that the state and taxpayers couldn’t afford.

Many Maine school systems, however, have already passed bans on vending machine junk food and say it’s worked out all right for them.

In Lewiston, water, juice and milk machines flank school cafeterias. Other machines carry fresh fruits, crackers and healthy snacks.

“We don’t even offer potato chips in our vending machines,” said Food Services Director Michael Sanborn.

He said he’s never had a student complain to him about the selection. And the machines make money.

“Does it take creativity? It does. But it’s doable,” he said.

In Union 44, which serves Sabattus, Litchfield and Wales, Assistant Superintendent Susan Hodgdon agreed. She said she has been a longtime advocate “for getting some of the junk out of the machines.”

But while bottled water outsells soda at Oak Hill High School, she worries that sugar-craving kids who stay after school will take one look at an all-healthy vending machine and try walking to the local convenience store.

Traveling along the high traffic road to get there could get them injured.

“I think that it’s a good idea as an idea,” she said. “I think the execution of it is what’s troublesome.”

She said her schools might look into allowing a school organization to sell “middle of the road” snacks after school. “Snacks that are would appeal to them but aren’t pure junk food,” she said.

That would be allowed under the department’s new rule.

Hodgdon also wonders whether removing all junk foods will teach students – particularly older students – how to make wise decisions on their own.

“I’d much rather work with them on choices and what are good choices,” she said.

Faircloth believes students get plenty of opportunities to choose between foods: at the grocery store, in the convenience store and at home.

“This is a step in the right direction,” he said.

But even Faircloth and other proponents of the change say a sugar and soda ban won’t fix Maine’s obesity problem by itself.

Oakley Jones, head of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Maine, ardently supports the ban. He said more than 80 percent of the vending machine items he sells are healthy, including Dasani water and Minute Maid juices, both owned by Coca-Cola.

“We’ve had no problem with backing out, trying to do the right thing, providing healthy choices,” he said.

He believes Maine needs to look at the amount of television kids watch and the amount of exercise they get as well.

The Department of Education will likely hold public hearings on the rule change early next year. It could go into effect next fall.

ltice@sunjournal.com

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