Does Box Tops For Education Promote Junk Food?

By Dalia Colón -

Food and education have long been linked.

Schools profit from cafeteria vending machines. Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program rewards young readers with personal pan pizzas. And boy, did I love the Jolly Ranchers my third-grade teacher doled out for good behavior.

Last year, about 75,000 schools participated nationwide. They earned an average of about $787 per school. (Logo courtesy of Tunheim Partners.)

Perhaps one of the best-known links between food and academics is Box Tops for Education. Since the program started in 1996, it has contributed about $400 million to American schools. But does Box Tops for Education encourage families to buy junk food?

Here’s how the program works: Parents buy a participating product – say, a box of cereal. They cut out the Box Tops coupon on the package and send it to school with their child. Then a community volunteer collects all the students’ coupons and mails them to the Box Tops central office near Minneapolis. Each coupon is worth 10 cents; Box Tops sends a check to the child’s school to spend however administrators see fit.

Box Tops started with General Mills cereals and has expanded to include more than 200 food and non-food products, from Green Giant broccoli to Bisquick baking mix to Hi-Liter markers.

But many of the participating products are far from a health teacher’s dream: Betty Crocker SuperMoist cake mixes, Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch, Pillsbury Big Deluxe Cookies, Spider-Man Fruit Flavored Shapes.

Still, Box Tops coupons are free money. Last year, about 75,000 schools participated in the program, earning $59 million – an average of about $787 per school. (The actual amount each school earns varies widely based on parental involvement; some raked in thousands, while others hovered in the double-digits.) Administrators spent the earnings on everything from books to art supplies to air conditioning repairs.

Hillsborough County Public Schools spokeswoman Linda Cobbe says Box Tops does not encourage unhealthy purchases.

“I give our parents more credit than that for being able to make wise decisions,” Cobbe wrote in an email to HealthyState.org. “There appear to be enough reasonably healthy products and non-food products from which to choose that parents can easily help raise funds for their schools without making what some consider unhealthy choices.”

But Margo Wootan says this argument is disingenuous. Wootan is director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit that educates the public about food choices. She says food-based fundraisers are disingenuous.

“Of course it’s up to people what to buy, but it’s not responsible for companies to be marketing unhealthy foods to children,” Wootan said. “The companies try to say they’re not marketing, but they clearly are. At my daughter’s elementary school, there’s a big box right in the front of the school, in the hallway, that has ‘Labels for Education’.”

Wootan praises companies that voluntarily limit junk food ads to kids; she’d like to see food-based fundraisers adopt the same standards.

Registered dietitian, nutritionist, mother of three and Box Tops collector Sarah Krieger acknowledges Box Tops includes some healthy offerings. But “the program is sponsored by large companies, so small farms that provide dairy or produce are not in the program,” Krieger, of St. Petersburg, told HealthyState.org via email. “There are so many foods listed with a lot of added sugar and fats with minimal nutritional value.”

Zack Ruderman, director of Box Tops for Education, says the program merely takes advantage of products families are already buying.

“I guess I won’t claim that cakes are the healthiest food out there. But the fact that Betty Crocker cake mixes participate in Box Tops for Education, I don’t believe that that drives more people to bake cakes,” Ruderman told HealthyState.org, noting that cereals continue to be the biggest money-makers for the program. “But what we do hope is that when people are going to make a cake and they’re buying a cake mix, that they’ll choose the Betty Crocker cake mix over other cake mixes because the Betty Crocker cake mix is the one that participates in Box Tops for Education.”

That’s the philosophy Merlina Glass uses. She began collecting Box Tops in August when her son, Bryten, started kindergarten at a Title I school.

“They’re obviously hurting for money,” said Glass, of Tampa. “I won’t lie. Most of (the Box Top coupons I submit) are from cake mixes, only because I make desserts for my husband’s office every Monday morning.” In other words, she was already buying cake mix, as just Ruderman theorized. Glass says her son generally eats healthy, so she doesn’t worry about the occasional treat.

Likewise for Christa Watson, whose family has an entire drawer devoted to coupons for Box Tops and two similar programs – Campbell’s Labels for Education and Tyson Project A+. Watson points out that some fundraisers go much further in promoting junk food.

“A lot of fundraisers we do with youth sports and even school, they’re promoting candy,” Watson said. “Candy and cookie dough.”

But Wootan, of the food education nonprofit, says sweets aren’t the only options.

Wootan says schools rely on food-based fundraisers out of habit; bake sales were around long before the childhood obesity crisis. But non-food fundraisers can be just as profitable, Wootan says. Her suggestions? Schools could sell bottled water, plants, Christmas trees, wrapping paper, discount cards or calendars. They could also organize fun runs or auctions to bring in lots of money at once, as opposed to letting the dimes trickle in from Box Tops.

Here’s good news for Wootan: The percentage of American schools that sold junk food for fundraisers during lunch periods decreased to 23.4% in 2006 from 38.7% in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Then there are programs that go out of their way to promote fresh foods. This fall, Publix Super Markets and Produce for Kids partnered to support the Healthy Schools, Healthy Minds campaign. When shoppers buy a participating fruit or vegetable, their purchase will benefit Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, whose goal is to install 6,000 school salad bars over the next three years.

Still, moms Watson and Glass say programs like Box Tops for Education are a practical way to contribute to school fundraisers.

“I know they bring in money,” Glass said. “But this to me is bringing in money without having to buy something I don’t need.”

This reporter can be reached at daliacolon@wusf.org.