The director of the English School District says they are getting better at nutrition and health, but still have a ways to go.
Tony Stack was reacting to the Auditor General’s report on items being offered to our children where they spend a large chunk of their daytime hours. As an example, Julia Mullaley found that 62 per cent of the items in snack machines should not be there.
Stack says it is up to individual schools to comply with nutritional guidelines, but schools are busy places and monitoring everything is difficult. It would also be helpful, he says, if the guidelines were a little more clear instead of being broken down into categories such as “served frequently” and “served moderately.”
He says ridding schools of vending machines would be a drastic measure. The current guidelines were put in place 10 years ago so the district and government departments are working on a new nutrition policy.
The nutrition policy will be tried in 10 schools come the fall so that administrators will have data to work with.