Slush Puppies offered in schools get mixed reviews

School districts are now adding slush puppies, a soft frozen drink, as a new item in their lunch menu for students to purchase.

JohnMacDonald, the director of finance administration for Anglophone South School District, said the drinks that are now available in schools are "certainly not the slushies you would see in convenience stores."

"They are a product that is made of 99 per cent apple juice," he said.

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Stephanie Baxter, the director of communications at Compass Group, the company that provides cafeteria lunches for schools in New Brunswick, said the drink was developed by the supplier to help "promote healthy eating programs and choices, as well as offering increased on-site variety to high school students."

Although it may be almost pure apple juice, the nutritional facts, provided by the company Slush Puppie, state that every 300 millilitreserving of the slush contains 36 grams of sugar, which is 3.5 grams more than Coke.

Kelly McCarthy, a registered holistic nutritionist and owner of Corn Crib Natural Foods, said it sounds like the drinks are being made fromjuice from concentrate.

"So it's sugar content is going to be really high and since you are not getting any proteins or fibres or fats in it, those things are going to spike up their sugar, even with the vitamins, it will spike up their sugar and they are going to crash," McCarthy said.

The item was added to the school lunch menu to provide the students with another option to purchase, according to MacDonald.

The nutrition guide also states that the drink contains no fat or cholesterol and include 75 per cent of a person's daily dose of vitamin C.

GenevieveDrisdelle, another nutritionist at the Corn Crib, said the amount of vitamin C is low and that teens need other nutritional elements, such as fat.

Drisdelle says the Slush Puppie drink is still a better option compared to any soda but a smoothie would have been a healthier choice.

"I think they are trying to do a good thing but they are not really," she said.