School Nutrition Magazine Filled with Meat and Dairy Ads

An exposé in the summer 2015 issue of Good Medicine, the print magazine of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), found that meat and dairy junk food takes up the majority of advertising space in all 2014 issues of the School Nutrition Association’s (SNA) magazine. Despite the increase in fruit and vegetable requirements of The Child Nutrition Act, the publication of SNA—a national non-profit organization “recognized as the authority on school nutrition”—contained 106 meat and dairy ads, of which 23 were full pages promoting food such as pizza, corndogs, and chicken nuggets. One such ad, paid for by Domino’s Pizza, showed a slice of pepperoni pizza, a food linked to colorectal cancer and the second highest source of saturated fat for school-aged children, along with the slogan, “Help us take a slice out of cancer.” According to PCRM’s report, $500 million of USDA school meal payments went directly to meat and dairy producers.