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But Kim Bealle, director of strategy and innovation with the consulting firm Just Kids Inc., thinks kids in some areas have already changed their habits. Bealle recently visited schools in Connecticut – where the state has implemented tougher guidelines than those agreed to by the ABA – and kids seem to be doing okay with it. Connecticut’s policy allows only five kinds of beverages to be sold in schools: water, 100% juice, juice drinks, milk and non-dairy milk products, and all drinks must submit to strict guidelines on sugars and artificial sweeteners. Bealle said the mantra of healthy beverage seemed to have made it out of the vending machines and into student’s homes.
“When I saw kids with brown bag lunches they tended to have a water, or a vitamin water or a Capri Sun,” Bealle said.
That doesn’t mean that all of the school’s health-conscious decisions went over like fireworks on the 4th of July. The state also revamped food offerings, and students disapproved of the new low-fat cookies – so much that one student leaned over to Bealle and said “Bring back the fat.”
The lesson here, Bealle said, is that kids won’t eat something if it doesn’t taste good – and that rule applies just as readily with beverages as it does with cookies, chicken strips and butterscotch pudding. She said retailers near schools could use that knowledge to lasso a loyal customer base. Kids leave school hungry, Bealle said, and stores could draw them in by stocking an after-school refueling station with healthy drinks and healthy snacks. But Bealle’s healthy-kids ambitions might collide with convenience store realities.
Jeff Lenard, vice president of communications for the National Association of Convenience Stores, said store operators have to remove a product from their shelves for each item that they add.
“Our stores aren’t accordions,” he said.