Tuesday morning I was at a Brains & Bodies workshop conducted by Advocates for Health in Action, a consortium of local public and private sector groups “shaping a community where healthful eating and physical activity are the way of life.” Brains & Bodies is a program of the Wake County PTA designed to encourage healthy habits in our schools. Healthy habits such as PTA fundraisers that eschew cookie dough sales in favor of fun runs. That kind of thing.

Tuesday’s meeting, attended by 16 parents, teachers and health agency reps, was generally upbeat. There was a considerable exchange of ideas: parents from Rolesville Elementary talked about their morning walking club for students, a parent from Martin Middle School described a walking club for parents dropping off their kids in the morning, mention was made of the popular Rocket Run at Fuquay-Varina Elementary. There was talk of successful rewards programs that substitute throwing candy at the kids when they do something good to awarding them bracelet charms or taking a walk with the principal. (The latter struck me as curious as the walks I recall taking with my principals weren’t what would typically be described as rewards.) It’s obvious that the Wake County PTAs recognize and are responding to the childhood obesity epidemic. (Sobering fact of the day: 67 percent of adults in Wake County are either obese or overweight, as are 34 percent of the county’s 2- to 4-year-olds, 45.5 percent of the 5- to 11-year-olds and 46.6 percent of the 12- to 18-year-olds.)

The lone pall of the morning was cast when the topic turned to school lunches.  A Wake kindergarten teacher became apoplectic (or as apoplectic as a kindergarten teacher can become) describing what passes for lunch at her school. The parents were quick to pile on. Perhaps the only thing that makes less sense than giving an 8-year-old one day a week of PE is serving them an all-yellow lunch (corn dog and fries). The mood dimmed even more when AHA’s Laura Bridges said this will be a difficult problem to overcome as long as school cafeteria’s have to pay for themselves, a situation school officials don’t seem eager to change. As long as the cafeterias have to rely on foods that are sugary and laden with fat — but are tasty and thus, sell — the situation isn’t likely to change.

So who would have guessed that the answer to this problem may come from the very companies that profit from the situation.

Yesterday, PepsiCo announced a global policy to stop selling full-sugar soft drinks to primary and secondary schools by 2012. Granted, the move comes as a growing number of school districts — among them Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia — have already banned sugary sodas.  Plus, PepsiCo competitor Coca-Cola earlier announced that it, too, would stop selling full-sugar sodas in schools — unless parents requested them.

PepsiCo’s it’s a well-intentioned move nonetheless, and one that purveyors of other snack-type foods, which are sold in school vending machines and cafeterias, should heed, especially in light of a just-released study from the UNC-Chapel Hill. That study found that American kids now eat three snacks a day, on average, and that those snacks account for nearly a third of all calories consumed by kids on a daily basis. (The study surveyed 31,000 kids ages 2 to 18 over a two-year period.)

Most popular were salty, high-fat snacks. Cakes and cookies were popular, too. All these can be found in most public school cafeterias. PepsiCo is already enjoying a PR boost from yesterday’s announcement. Snack food makers could benefit likewise by offering only baked chips, for instance, or cookies and snack cakes with reduced sugar and fat.

One parent at Tuesday morning’s workshop said the school cafeteria issue is really a non-issue. “If you take out the junk food and just serve them healthy food, they’re kids, they’re hungry! They’re going to eat it.”

And they will.