Schools have been considering and enacting bans on unhealthy snacks, from eliminating soda machines to setting strict nutritional standards for foods that are brought in to sell to the cafeteria at lunch. The goal is to avoid putting students into situations where, perhaps due to peer pressure, they choose nutritionally poor foods over healthier ones. Some obesity-conscious educators want to take things even further and ban outside snacks from the school yard. This would not only effect the treats that teachers bring in to celebrate birthdays and other events, which would no longer include cupcakes or cookies, but could potentially change the way that parents pack lunches for their children. A few schools even have bans of sweet foods at school parties, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"Every bite counts because of concerns over childhood obesity, experts say," but they also should look at the amount of time children spend in school, and what they're doing with that time. Suggesting that parents provide smaller or healthier treats is certainly a positive step towards combatting childhood obesity, but it is not a suitable solution to the obesity problem when schools are also cutting the length of and funding for sports programs and recesses. Nutritionists say that diet and exercise together are the keys to a healthy lifestyle, not diet alone. That standard is the one that should be enacted in more schools before kids are left with only celery and raisins at snack time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-27-2006 @ 12:21PM
Matt said...
So we all know that too many kids are obese, and there are too many empty calories in the typical kids' party food, yet your headline is about "Sugar-phobic schools," something not supported by the linked article at all.
We all agree that the solution to physical fitness is better diet and more exercise, but you say that if the schools can't do both, they shouldn't do either? Heaven forfend that they do something if they can't do everything!
Stuff like this is no better than the restaurant industry calling CSPI the "food police" for simply asking to know what's in the food those restaurants serve. It's attempting to paint a picture of deprivation and fear that your kids can't enjoy the same birthday cupcake parties you did when you were in grade school because some mean nasty "nutritionists" are employees of the nanny state, or similar nonsensical rhetoric.
The facts are that more than twice as many kids age 6-11 were overweight in 2002 than in 1980. It's a fast food nation, and a lot of kids don't get a home-cooked meal with two vegetables every night. They have vending machines in the schools, they have fast food in the cafeteria, and with class sizes of 30-35 kids, they'll have anywhere from 3 to 4 "birthday parties" per month, and that's not counting Halloween and other holidays where I remember school cupcakes.
Kids are consuming empty calories at epidemic proportions, largely because their parents do the same. Schools are supposed to be places where healthy things happen - the teachers don't smoke or drink around the students even if the parents do, etc.
Yeah, it's sad that the pervasiveness of junk food in American culture means that we have to teach the kids earlier and earlier what to resist, but the alternative is for the schools to throw up their hands and let another generation become even more obese than their predecessors because it's "just too hard" to keep the sugar away, or because then you become the "food police."
The schools are not "sugar-phobic," they're not "banning snacks," and your proposed solution is straight from an industry handbook that never wants to deny any junk food to any child. I expected more from Slashfood.
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3-28-2006 @ 4:54PM
L. said...
Wow, Matt, I came away from Nicole`s post with a totally opposite reaction than yours. I agreed with her conclusion, that obesity is a lifestyle problem, not just a food problem, and that "diet and exercise together are the keys to a healthy lifestyle, not diet alone," and "that standard is the one that should be enacted in more schools before kids are left with only celery and raisins at snack time." (By the way, some of my friends won`t give their kids raisins anymore, because dried fruit is bad for teeth.)
My youngest son`s preschool is indeed "sugar-phobic" and has banned snacks like cookies and chips. I will be relieved when he joins his older siblings, at a school that allows cupcakes and candy at parties, and the "sugar police" are no longer inspecting the contents of his lunch bag.
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4-05-2006 @ 3:50PM
Fallon said...
I'm a high schooler, who after years of growing up with coke machines down the hall next to the wonderful machine with candy bars, just recently live the experience of becoming a "healhty school". They didn't take out the machines, nor did they demand everyone take another PE class other than the half a semester already mandatory.
What they did instead, was they simply replaced it with other choices. Instead of cokes we have snapple machines, diet drinks and juices. And instead of snickers and hershey's we have special k bars and pretzels.
Now I'm not saying that they won't lose money, but a thirsty or hungry person will buy a tasty snack whether it has sugar in it or not.
And that includes me
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