Candy out, granola in across nation’s schools

WASHINGTON — Kids, your days of blowing off those healthier school lunches and filling up on cookies from the vending machine are numbered. The government is onto you.

For the first time, the U.S. Agriculture Department is telling schools what sorts of snacks they can sell. The new restrictions announced Thursday fill a gap in nutrition rules that allowed many students to load up on fat, sugar and salt despite the existing guidelines for healthy meals.

“Parents will no longer have to worry that their kids are using their lunch money to buy junk food and junk drinks at school,” said Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest who pushed for the new rules.

That doesn’t mean schools will be limited to doling out broccoli and brussels sprouts.

Snacks that still make the grade include granola bars, low-fat tortilla chips, fruit cups and 100 percent fruit juice. And high school students can buy diet versions of soda, sports drinks and iced tea.

But say goodbye to some beloved school standbys, such as doughy pretzels, chocolate chip cookies and those little ice cream cups with their own spoons. Some may survive in lowfat or whole wheat versions. The idea is to weed out junk food and replace it with something with nutritional merit.

The bottom line, says Wootan: “There has to be some food in the food.”

Still, 17-year-old Vanessa Herrera is partial to the Cheez-It crackers and sugar-laden Vitaminwater in her high school’s vending machine. Granola bars and bags of peanuts? Not so much.

“I don’t think anyone would eat it,” said Herrera of Rockaway, N.J.

There are no vending machines at Lauren Jones’ middle school in Hoover, Ala., but she said there’s an “a la carte” stand that sells chips, ice cream and other snacks.

“Having something sweet to go with your meal is good sometimes,” the 13year-old said, although she also thinks that encouraging kids to eat healthier is worthwhile.

The federal snack rules don’t take effect until the 2014-15 school year, but there’s nothing to stop schools from making changes earlier.

Some students won’t notice much difference. Many schools already are working to improve their offerings. Thirty-nine states have some sort of snack food policy in place.

Rachel Snyder, 17, said earlier this year her school in Washington, Ill., stripped its vending ma- chines of sweets. She misses the pretzel-filled M&M’s.

The federal rules put calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits on almost everything sold during the day at 100,000 schools — expanding on the previous rules for meals. The Agriculture Department sets nutritional standards for schools that receive federal funds to help pay for lunches, and that covers nearly every public school and about half of private ones.

One oasis of sweetness and fat will remain: Anything students bring from home, from bagged lunches to birthday cupcakes, is exempt from the rules.

The Agriculture Department was required to draw up the rules under a law passed by Congress in 2010, championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as part of the government’s effort to combat childhood obesity.

Nutritional guidelines for subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall.

Last year’s rules making main lunch fare more nutritious faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn’t be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department left one of the more controversial parts of the rule, the regulation of inschool fundraisers like bake sales, up to the states.

JEEP DEAL IS CONTROVERSIAL

DETROIT — A deal between the government and Chrysler over Jeeps linked to deadly fires isn’t sitting well with many Jeep owners and auto safety advocates. In early June, after a nearly three-year investigation, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration recommended that Chrysler recall 2.7 million older Jeep SUVs because the fuel tanks could rupture, leak and cause fires in rear-end crashes. But last week, after talks between outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, the agency compromised, letting Chrysler limit the recall to about 1.5 million vehicles.

FORMER CEO ACCUSED

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have accused former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine of misusing customer money while he was CEO of brokerage firm MF Global, which collapsed in 2011. The lawsuit charges that MF Global violated U.S. commodity laws in the weeks before it collapsed by using customer funds to support its own trading operations.

SPENDING WAS UP IN MAY

WASHINGTON — U.S. consumers spent more in May as their income rose, encouraging signs after a slow start to the year. But spending was weaker in April, February and January than previously estimated. The Commerce Department said Thursday that consumer spending rose 0.3 percent last month, nearly erasing a similar decline in April.

PAYPAL SHOOTS FOR STARS

NEW YORK — PayPal wants to explore space — or at least begin to figure out how payments and commerce will work beyond Earth’s realm once space travel and tourism take off. PayPal, which is eBay Inc.’s payments business, says it is launching an initiative called PayPal Galactic with the help of the nonprofit SETI Institute and the Space Tourism Society, an industry group focused on space travel. Its goal, PayPal says, is to work out how commerce will work in space. Questions to be answered include how commerce will be regulated and what currency will be used. PayPal President David Marcus said that while space tourism was once science fiction, it’s now becoming a reality.

GOOGLE GOES VOLCANIC

HONOLULU — Hawaii’s volcanoes will soon be visible on Google Street View. The Mountain View, Calif., company is lending its backpack cameras to a Hawaii trail guide company to capture panoramic images of Big Island hiking trails. Photos will be loaded to Google Maps and the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau website, gohawaii.com. Google has already taken Street View images of the Grand Canyon and other sites popular with travelers. Hawaii Forest & Trail hikers plan to walk along more than 20 state and national park trails on the Big Island by September. The images should be online by the end of the year or early next year. The Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau plans to expand the project to other Hawaii islands afterward.

JOB MARKET SHOWS GROWTH

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 346,000 last week, evidence that the job market is still improving modestly, despite signs of slower growth. The four-week average, a less volatile figure, declined 2,750 to 345,750, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s near the five-year low of 338,000 that the average touched last month. Applications are a proxy for layoffs. Since March, they have fluctuated between 340,000 and 360,000, a level consistent with steady hiring. Employers added 175,000 jobs in May, almost matching the average monthly gain for the past year. The unemployment rate was 7.6 percent, down from 8.2 percent a year earlier.

SIKORSKY LAYS OFF 200

STRATFORD, Conn. — Helicopter maker Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. is laying off 200 workers due to military spending cuts and the uneven economic recovery. Spokesman Paul Jackson said Thursday that the subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. is responding to reduced spending by the U.S. and other governments. In addition, he says costs to compete are increasing, and many customers are delaying buying decisions due to what he says is economic uncertainty. Most of the job cuts are in Connecticut and represent about 1 percent of all jobs at the company. The rest are in eight other states. Sikorsky, based in Stratford, Conn., is best known for its Black Hawk helicopter. It also makes helicopters for commercial use.