Drive to get junk food off menu at Scottish schools

Published on Saturday 3 July 2004 12:37

A BID to ban junk food from being sold in schools is to go before the Scottish Parliament.

The move comes after Edinburgh City Council pledged to ban schools from selling fizzy drinks by 2007.

Shadow health minister Shona Robison has launched a Bill calling for the Food Standards Agency to categorise foods as healthy or unhealthy.

Categories would then be used to stop schools selling foods such as fizzy juice, crisps and sweets.

Ms Robison also wants categorisation of foods to be used to improve supermarket labelling, giving parents a guide to which foods are healthy and unhealthy.

She said: "My Bill is to ensure there is a common approach across Scotland. A number of local authorities are getting off the mark and banning fizzy drinks themselves, but my Bill would make sure that all local authorities were following the same rules.

"We are constantly getting reports showing the levels of obesity and the consumption of fizzy drinks among children.

"I think there is an appetite among the Scottish public to tackle some of the public health challenges.

"When schools are telling children about healthy eating, you can’t have children coming out of the classroom and into a corridor with crisps and fizzy drinks being sold. We need some consistency."

Shocking figures out last month revealed that thousands of Scottish children are having their teeth removed because they are rotting. And a major international study found Scots teenagers were the second top consumers of fizzy drinks in the Western world, after Israel.

The Private Members’ Bill, which has won the backing of MSPs including GP Dr Jean Turner and SNP leadership candidate Nicola Sturgeon, will now go out to consultation.

Other measures included in the proposals would be a ban on advertising certain foods in newspapers, magazines, billboards and in cinemas.

Better labelling of super- market foods would include a "traffic light" system, where products are labelled red, amber or green according to how healthy they are.

Ms Robison added: "Parents do get confused, as supermarkets have never been very good at labelling and have sometimes misled.

"What we need is an independent arbiter to tell the truth on what should be avoided."

The Dundee East MSP’s Bill comes as she and SNP education spokeswoman Fiona Hyslop launch an 80 million childhood obesity action plan.

The plan, set to be discussed at the SNP conference in September, sets out measures including annual fitness checks for pupils, extending free school meals and making two hours of PE a week compulsory.

A study into how the fizzy juice ban will be implemented in Edinburgh is being carried out, but city leaders have no plans to extend the ban to crisps, sweets or other unhealthy foods.

City education leader Ewan Aitken said: "I believe that the banning of fizzy drinks will make a significant difference in schools. It’s about us choosing the things that we as an education authority have control over.

"When they [the children] are in school, we want them drinking things that won’t be rotting their teeth or stomachs."

Last year, Chief Medical Officer Mac Armstrong called for a ban on the sale of carbonated sugared drinks in schools.