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Bottlers Agree To a School Ban On Sweet Drinks
The country's top three soft-drink companies announced yesterday that beginning this fall they would start removing sweetened drinks like Coke, Pepsi and iced teas from school cafeterias and vending machines in response to the growing threat of lawsuits and state legislation. Under an agreement between beverage makers and health advocates, students in elementary school would be served only bottled water, low-fat and nonfat milk, and 100 percent fruit juice in servings no bigger than eight ounces. Serving sizes would increase to 10 ounces in middle school. In high school, low-calorie juice drinks, sports drinks and diet sodas would be permitted; serving sizes would be limited to 12 ounces. The agreement, which includes parochial and private schools contracts, is voluntary, and the beverage industry said its school sales would not be affected because it expected to replace sugary drinks with other ones. … While the soft-drink industry was negotiating the deal, it was discussing a similar accord with the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a group of lawyers who had successfully sued tobacco companies. Richard A. Daynard, associate dean at Northeastern University School of Law, a tobacco-lawsuit veteran, called the agreement ''the first major victory for the obesity-litigation strategy.'' ''This would not have happened but for the threat of litigation,'' Professor Daynard said.
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