Open Letter to Toronto District School Board Trustees:

We are writing to ask you to defer making a decision tonight, June 23, 2004 which would lock the Toronto District School Board into a five year deal with the Pepsi Bottling Group.

Who could argue that it is a good idea for teenagers to consume more sugary pop at school? And yet that is what you will be doing if you vote for the Pepsi contract tonight.

More time is needed to assess what the majority of parents, students and teachers actually think about this issue. More time is needed to hear from health professionals, and experts like the members of Toronto’s Board of Health, who took a position last fall against putting more pop in the schools. More time is needed to find out how much money each school could generate if they filled their own drink machines instead of going through Pepsi or Coke, and to compare that amount to the very small amount of money that the Pepsi deal will give the schools. This is a bad deal and we hope you as Trustees will consider all the options before you sign another five-year contract.

Why defer?

The deal is a bad deal financially:
It only provides the TDSB $5,886,640 over five years. In a budget of over 2.1 billion per year, the Pepsi deal will only provide 0.056% (a fiftieth of one percent) of the TDSB annual budget, not enough to make a difference and certainly not enough money to justify a deal that is bad for the health of our students. However cash-strapped you may be, you don’t have to make a long term promotional deal that provides Pepsi or Coke with vending machines that are essentially advertising billboards for their products in schools. FoodShare is suggesting an alternative that could generate revenues for schools. Before the exclusive deal signed a decade ago, each school owned its own vending machine, deciding on a school-by-school basis, what products to sell -- water, milk or limited amounts of juice or no-name pop.

The deal is a bad deal from a health point of view:
Did you ever wonder how much sugar is in one can of Pepsi or Coke? Each can has 9 teaspoons of sugar!. For the average North American teen-age boy who drinks two cans a day, that means consuming a full large mason jar of sugar a week, from pop alone! Research shows a strong link between pop consumption and obesity. One study found that each can of sugar-sweetened drink consumed each day increases a child's risk of becoming obese by 60%. A Harvard School of Public Health study found that active girls who drink soft drinks are five times more likely to break bones than those who do not. The Centre for Science in the Public Interest has reported that youth in the US now drink twice as much pop as milk (the reverse of twenty years ago). In case anyone can possibly have missed the message, nutritionists and educators are unanimous. Our children do not need increased access to sugar and caffeine as a substitute for food. Pepsi is candy and should have limited access in the same way candy does.

The deal is a bad deal because it increasing the corporatization of the schools:
Students United, a group of concerned students doesn’t buy the argument that all students want Pepsi machines in their schools. Allison Elwell-Shallhorn, Chair, Students United says: “Many of us are angry at having corporate logos all over our schools because we believe public schools should use public money. Students should be offered a real choice for what is in their schools. Regular vs. diet is not one of them.” Adam Chaleff-Frendenthaler of Students United adds: “The Toronto Parent Network’s tracking report showed a two-tiered education system in which private deals like this one mean that affluent schools got a larger share of the money, and therefore a more affluent education.”

The deal is a bad deal because there has been inadequate and poor process:
The Board has only consulted with a small group of students and principals about the deal. “Many decisions are being made at the staff level without looking to community experts to flesh out policy and make good decisions,” says Cathy Dandy, spokesperson for the Toronto Parent Network. “This is just one more example of why the process needs to be opened up and radically improved.”

For all these reasons please reject this deal,

Debbie Field, Executive Director, FoodShare Toronto
416 392-1628

Allison Elwell-Shallhorn, Chair, Students United
416 893-3959

Adam Chaleff-Frendenthaler, Students United
416 833-2954

Cathy Dandy, Toronto Parent Network
416 738-8116