KEY POINTS:
The traditional fundraising chocolate bar is under threat as schools switch to dried fruit as a healthy alternative.
But some health experts say the fruit snack packs being promoted as a alternative to high-fat chocolate bars can be just as bad for children's teeth.
An Auckland company set up by two mothers frustrated by boxes of fundraising chocolates coming home has signed up 40 schools and two kindergartens to sell its sun-dried fruit, which it also promotes as suitable for school lunches.
The company is trying to capitalise on the state push for healthier foods in schools - although the Government, keen to avoid the "nanny state" tag, emphasises that it is not banning chocolate fundraisers.
From next June, education guidelines will discourage schools from selling chocolate, deep-fried items and other "occasional foods" more than once each term.
All Black hooker Keven Mealamu was at Bucklands Beach Intermediate School yesterday to kick off its Parent-Teacher Association fun-raiser with the Heart Foundation-endorsed Grazers dried apricots, pears and nectarines from Natures Foods.
"Natures Foods are doing a great thing by getting more healthy options into the schools and in front of our kids," said the rugby star, a father of two.
The Obesity Action Coalition, which has long railed against high-fat/high-sugar fund-raisers, praised the scheme.
"Anything has to be better than selling chocolate as a fundraiser," said executive director Leigh Sturgiss.
But dentist Dr Susan Cartwright, head of oral health at the Auckland University of Technology, said dried fruit, with its concentrated sugar, was no better for teeth than chocolate and some research showed it was worse.
"Dried fruit is, by and large, much stickier than chocolate and it has a natural sugar in it.
"Unfortunately it doesn't make any difference to the oral bacteria whether it is natural sugar or not. They still metabolise the sugar to acids which dissolve the teeth."
Children were unlikely to brush their teeth at school and she recommended swishing water in the mouth after eating sugary foods.
Bucklands Beach Intermediate assistant principal Lenva Shearing said that until yesterday the school did not engage in any fund-raising involving food, relying instead on children's trivia quizzes, ice skating and discos.
"We try to do healthy-option things."
Natures Foods co-owner Lisa Beuvink said the fundraising idea grew out of the popularity of high-quality dried fruit with her daughter, now aged 5, when she was at kindergarten, and concerns over chocolate fundraisers.
