In an effort to fight childhood obesity, several food manufacturers, Kraft Foods Inc., Mars Inc., Campbell Soup Co., Dannon, and PepsiCo Inc., have agreed to make healthy changes in the snacks foods that are sold to schools.  Specifically:

- Mars has created a new line of nutritious snacks.

- Frito-Lay, a unit of PepsiCo, is reformulating several products to meet new the guidelines.

-  Kraft is decreasing the sodium and calories in products it sells for school vending machines.

-Campbell is promoting soups that are lower in calories, fat and sodium and offering additional products with less sodium.

- Dannon is reducing the sugar content of its Danimals drinkable yogurt by 25 percent.

   This is a voluntary agreement that is to take effect next school year between the food companies and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.  I suspect this will be difficult to implement because we will be relying on the vendors of the products to be educated on promoting the healthier snack items.

At the news conference announcing the new initiative, former President Bill Clinton said: "The companies are going to work to convince distributors and even their competitors to follow suit.  I think after today, their competitors are going to have a very difficult time explaining whey they won't."

   Vendors and distributors' main concern will remain their bottom line, for they are in business to make money.  Schools, on the other hand, are working on behalf of our children's best interests.  Ultimately, it will remain up to the schools to make informed decisions of what products will be in their vending machines.