A healthy menu — and bottom line

Doughnuts contain precious little nutritional value, but the deep-fried pastries are worth quite a lot to the Baker School District.

A lot of dollars, specifically.

However, district officials have until July 1 to devise a solution to this dilemma: How to maintain a healthy bottom line in the meal budget for Baker High School even after deleting from the menu the least nutritious, but most popular, foods.

The aforementioned doughnuts, for instance.

During the first three months of this school year, BHS students shelled out $1,004 for doughnuts. That's almost 5 percent of the total — slightly more than $20,000 — the district collected from the BHS a la carte menu during that period. The district spent $19,895 on food, so the a la carte menu barely broke even.

But on July 1 a state law takes effect that requires schools to stop selling high-fat, high-calorie snacks, including doughnuts. The district also must cut from its menu other top sellers such as pepperoni-stuffed pocket sandwiches, cheese-filled soft pretzels, and certain flavors of Pop Tarts.

The Oregon Legislature passed the law, known as the "Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids" act, in 2007.

It's a good law. And, based on the growing prevalence of obesity among students, a necessary one.

Yet the potential budgetary problems that the law poses for school districts are real.

We hope food suppliers will respond by offering foods that meet the dietary standards of the law, but that also will entice the taste buds of teenagers.

We fear, though, that this might be a vain hope. After all, students don't have to buy food at school, and a veritable cornucopia of decadent choices — including, of course, doughnuts — is readily available off campus.

Eventually district officials might have to choose between subsidizing a healthy menu with money from academic programs, or paring the menu to the bare minimum.

If it comes to that, we'll urge the district to focus on nourishing students' brains.