FREDERICTON -As a growing number of Canadian schools move to ban the sale of junk food in cafeterias, some students are turning up their noses at the new healthy menu options and heading for nearby fast-food joints to get their fix of fatty foods.
"It's not good," says 14-year-old Max Greer, a student at Fredericton High School who doesn't care for the food now offered at his school. "They'd have to serve Big Macs for me to stay at school."
He was among a crowd of students packed into a McDonalds restaurant just a few metres from the school's property.
"There's not a lot of stuff at the school that tastes good," says George Hanna, also 14.
New Brunswick is the latest province to ban junk food in schools and offer more nutritious choices, including salads, fruits and vegetables.
In Nova Scotia, the provincial government is working on a draft policy, although some schools have already begun to remove junk food.
The B.C. government has announced it will ban junk food in schools by 2009.
The Ontario government has urged school boards to ban junk food, but recently said it had no plans to do so in high schools where students are free to leave school property to buy lunches.
Pamela Monkhouse, a nutritionist with the Dietitions of Canada, says she supports banning junk food, but bad habits won't change unless there is a change in attitudes.
"You have to have education, starting in elementary school with respect to good choices and poor choices," she said in an interview.
"When you reach your teens, you think you're invincible . . . you're never going to get sick, you're never going to die or get heart disease.
"It's also a control issue. Teens will refuse to eat something simply because people tell them it's healthy and good for them."
In Manitoba, a legislative committee that looked into ways to make children more fit decided earlier this year that banning junk food wasn't a good idea. Instead, the committee concluded that gentle persuasion should be used to get kids to improve their diets.
Kevin Lamoureux, a Liberal member of the Manitoba legislature, said governments must ensure junk food in schools isn't more enticing than healthy items.
"If you go to a (school) cafeteria, you'll pay $1.25 for french fries, but you'll pay $3 for a salad," he said in a recent interview.
In New Brunswick, Education Minister Madeleine Dube admits it will take time to educate students about the benefits of healthy eating.
"We know there's french fries and other kinds of food that they can eat elsewhere, but at the same time, at school we have a role to play, to support the role of parents and to educate them," she says.
High schools in the province have two years to fully implement a healthy eating program.
But it's clear that getting rid of junk food will be a challenge.
Earlier this year, two students at Bernice MacNaughton High School in Moncton, N.B., decided to capitalize on their classmates' cravings by selling soda pop and chips from their lockers. The principal shut down the operation after someone complained about warm pop.
In Newfoundland, a coalition of health and education groups recently appealed to the provincial government to implement a three-year strategy to remove junk food from schools. But some of the province's larger schools complained they could lose up to $15,000 a year from deals with vending machine operators.
"We shouldn't be forced to choose between supplies for the school and whether or not we have a healthy lifestyle," Denise Pike, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of School Councils, said in a recent interview.
"You have to properly fund the education system."
Still, health experts say it's clear something has to be done about access to junk food, not to mention lack of exercise.
Up to a quarter of Canadian children are overweight, half of them obese, according to studies.
The problem is particularly bad in Atlantic Canada, where children are more than twice as likely to be overweight than those in the Prairie provinces, according to Statistics Canada.
