A school food crackdown looming in Congress that aims to reduce childhood obesity went over like a wet potato chip at a suburban Denver elementary school where federal agriculture officials pitched the plan Tuesday.
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comNo candy? Pitching nutrition bill at schools
Seeded on Tue Apr 6, 2010 7:12 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
— Filed under: health, diet-and-nutrition, lifestyle, social-affairs, nutrition, agricultural-science, education-standards
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I've seen this happen at our local district -- and there is no discernable change in obesity from my observations.
However it DOES impact fund raising for student organizations (no more Girl Scout cookie orders on campus, no more candy sales for cheerleaders, no more frozen cookie dough for band, etc). How do the organizations make up the difference? Charge more to the students to be involved and/or sell more expensive items like gift wrap. Either that or cut extracurricular things like competitions and out-of-state trips.
Small (if any) nutritional gain, big headache for fundraising!
Dear Congress and all liberal do-gooders who think you know how we ought to live every little facet of our lives: F**K OFF!
What a joke!! There is no way that is a balanced meal. That menu is loaded with carbs.
I for one am glad to see all the snacks and deep fried garbage go. My son is in middle school and complains about how unhealthy the school lunch food is. Yes there are a lot of options, but nothing really healthy. Kids will adapt and learn to like it and it will be much healthier for them in the long run.
if your kid complains about the crap at lunch why dont you provide your child with a health packed lunch, its cheaper (unless you like the taxpayers to pay for you) and your kid gets a healthy lunch, why cant parents pack a packed lunch, i do for my husband, myself and my kids
At least with the schools that our sons went to, the schools didn't have a good (or any) place for them to keep their lunch in the classroom where it would be safe. It seemed like the school was actually discouraging parents from packing lunches for their children.
I pack a lunch for my husband and myself, but my son won't hear of it. At his school it's uncool and downright nerdy to bring your lunch. He already gets ignored by alot of the kids because he is so much smarter than them, he doesn't want to give them more ammunition. Luckily, the school district plans to go with more healthy and local foods next school year as I have talked to them about the foods that are offered now. They have added some so called healthy stuff to the menu but the kids say it tastes awful. They are making an effort to try new things with school lunches.
Little to nothing positive will come from removing all choice from the population in general, kids in school included.
Think the drug war; apply it to all food deemed "unhealthy". How much misery will it take to end the "war on food"??
Man it sucks to be a kid nowadays in so many way.. Candy and soda being outlawed, tag being banned (too dangerous) copious amounts of homework , lengthening school days/year and zero tolerance policies...Let's not forget standardized testing (we had something called Iowa test of basic skills when I was in grade school) but nothing like what goes on now. No wonder so many kids are cracking under the pressure and turning to food for comfort.. Thank goodness the majority of them are on ritalin.. It takes the edge off...
I was right with you until you had to throw in the Ritalin comment. Most kids in school are not on Ritalin and most that should be, aren't. I have A.D.D. and I can only guess how much better I would have done in school in the 60s and 70s if Ritalin had been available to me back then.
I didn't find out how bad that I have A.D.D. until I had two sons doing poorly in school and was diagnosed at the same time as them. By then, I was 42 years old.
Oh dear Lord. Just what we need. I'm all in favor of developing healthy eating habits, but banning sweets? Come on let children be children. Let them have their favorite snacks once in awhile. What the hell's wrong with sweetened apple sauce? Big @!$%#ing deal. These @!$%#s are going to end up turning every kid into health freaks. Then when they're all grown up they'll ban red meat and even the slightest trace of sugar in their food will send them into emotional shock: "Oh God!! There's sugar in this!!" ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!! *faints*. Leave kids alone, let them be children. There's nothing wrong with sugar now and then.
The problem is it's not now and then, it's on a daily basis for many kids. Processed food is loaded with it.
If it's on a daily basis, then yes, that is a problem, but every once in awhile, kids deserve a treat. Hell, everyone does. But don't take them away completely.
You can have treats, of course! But they should also be healthy and not continue the awful practices we now have loading children with chemicals, preservatives, colorants, sodium and much more. I'm all for cookies, so make them from the real ingredients (like they used to be), did you know flavored milk has more sugar than soda pop? Why can't you have milk taste the way it was meant to? Why does everything have to have hidden sugars and salt? Don't even look at the unnatural ingredients in food now..... PLUS kids need to be active, that's the key to the whole thing. If you need to limit something, let it be TV, video games and everything else that keeps them inside and not running around playing... what ever happened to that? Now it's all "organized sports" with Godzilla parents running around trying to run things- give me a break! The parents are making their kids pay for all their neurosis and it's making them into neurotic people.... on this I say let's turn back time, things are really screwed up now.
You make a good point but if there are hidden sugars in supposedly healthy drinks and foods, then I guess parents are going to have to pay even more attention to the ingredients in the food they give their children.
The food is pretty sick these days. Stuff I could eat without hesitation as a kid makes me gag a bit when it comes to the sweet tooth. And I'm not that far gone from my youth.
If I could find some old nutrition labels I'd love to look up the changes in sugar levels. This I will say though:
I wasn't the most sportsplaying kid in elementary school, but we got plenty of exercise. It dropped off at high school, where we had PE only up to the tenth grade. I imagine PE time goes down with the pressure to do well on standardized exams; but in the end we are what we eat.
Less parents these days cook fresh food. There's tremendous pressure to buy it from a box restaurant or to prep from a box. Kids are trained to recognize brands and prepared food types more than chicken. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to pasta and eats chicken nuggets over drumsticks; fried foods over baked foods, and shirking the vegetably part of the food chain. Combined with the powerful allure of cable television, what is a parent to do?
Kids are more sedentary now, or at least have more sedentary recreational activities. Combined with changes in our diet, it's a critical mass issue. Many countries across the globe are hitting this particular issue in stride, and even China and India are slowly joining us and our health epidemics.
Instead of banning snickers bars, I would propose the following:
-Decrease the calories, sugar content and fat contents, at a set percentage of each, every year for a set period of time. They can decrease at different rates. Wean children very gradually onto reducing their sugar uptake. Artificial sweeteners won't work, as a kid I hated the stuff and it'll be a product death sentence. Buttered popcorn, really? Nuts. But nobody mess with the ice cream, asides from portion management.
-Bring back recess and more physical activity on school campuses. More sports for PE is good, as would be making an outreach to the non-athletic kids, some of which without intervention will start down the road of ill health. PE instructors are great at their sports, but not exactly great at integrating less athletic kids into the mix of things, and this leads to them giving up on physical activity when they don't make enough free throws or are too clumsy on their feet for a game of soccer.
-Start asking questions: Why is HFCS so cheap? Why is it in our diet? Why is it cheaper and easier to make processed foods like gall bladder chicken mcnuggets than to give people fresh food? I know that mcnuggets are the refuse, but is it so hard to make a "real" product at an affordable price? Is there some subsidy or anti-competitive issue that has to be addressed in agriculture?
-Lifestyle. I believe in free-will; so I don't see how we can change lifestyles to more running the dog in the dog park compared to sitting at home in front of cable TV or a few hours of pizza-laden LAN parties. But it'd be a good place for people to think about self-change.
I remember eating Snowballs (I can't think of hardly any other snack with more sugar and calories than a Snowball!), Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes in the 60s, along with a variety of ice creams during school lunches. I never had a weight or health problem during (or after) my school years. But then we still had recess in elementary school and PE in all grades through high school. Carories aren't the problem, as long as they get burned off during the day. I also rarely got driven to or from school, even when it rained. (No, I didn't walk uphill both ways through the snow to school!)
Proper nutrition begins at home. Ooops, I forgot, the American family is all but gone. We don't count same sex couples either.
The problem is not "junk food", it's the fact that schools (and most parents) have practically eliminated all exercise from the schools. Considering that most students get driven to and from school and that recess and physical education have been mostly eliminated to focus on standardized testing, the only exercise is from walking between classes. The schools need to understand that exercise is also an important life lesson that can't be ignored and then place the blame elsewhere for the obesity problem that comes from that neglect!
We had ice cream, candy and sodas while I was in school in the 60s and 70s. There wasn't an obesity problem anything like now, simply because we walked to and from school and got plenty of exercise during the school day.
You also didn't eat mostly highly proceesed foods loaded with trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, and salt. Most foods were cooked from scratch back then. Next time you're at the grocery store, read the ingredients on the food you buy, half the words you can't even pronounce. There's a big piece of the obesity puzzle. Recent studies show how all the garbage we are putting in our food is slowly killing us with cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
why does the school need to provide exercise and good food, whats wrong with parental responsibility - walk the dog before school, exercise after school, go for a walk at lunch, take a packed lunch to school filled with healthy food, geez thinking for yourself is sooo hard
Woa now! When I was a kid, I had to walk or run a mile to the candy store. That was the way it was, and we liked it! OOhhhhh, my oh my, how times have changed. I almost cannot believe this whole vending machine thing. It was hard enough to resist candy from a mile away. How on earth can they resist it now? Hell, they expect it. If a treat becomes the norm, what becomes a treat? A hooker and a shot of jack? I remember the teacher giving us treats, and by god, no matter what it was, you smiled and ate it, and said thank you. Signed, ur neighborhood crotchety ol man.
With my daughter and her friends, I've found it often takes nothing more than a little bit of information to bring change.
I found a heart-shaped food guide at http://menurx.com/PortionsGuide.htm that actually got them paying attention to their food groups.
Lecturing doesn't work, but subtle guidance definitely does.
Growing up, my public school never had vending machines. The only sweets they had were in the cafeteria. However, my mother always packed my lunch and never gave me any money to be able to spend at school. There was no need for me to have money on me. If I wanted water, I drank from the fountain. We didn't have fruit juices and energy drinks to keep us going. I don't understand why kids are given all of this money? They have cell phones these days, so they don't need 25 cents to make a phone call. They aren't taking cabs to and from school, their mom's are the ones who drive them.
The schools shouldn't have vending machines because they are too much of a temptation. Who doesn't love sugar and other junk once in a while. However, people these days don't know how to eat anything in moderation and will overdo it and not exercise to compensate for the extra calories.
The responsibility comes from both the parents and the schools. It isn't hard to figure out that an apple is going to be far better than a bag of Cheetos and a cookie. For people to claim they don't know what is healthy is a crock. When a bag of food has a list of 50 ingredients, it is probably a good indicator it is not all that healthy for you. If something has to be "fortified" with vitamins and minerals, it probably isn't all that healthy for you. Seriously people, quit blaming everyone else for why you choose to turn a blind eye. We have all become a society of victims instead of taking responsibility.
THIS. I totally agree.
I am so tired of people whining that the school and the government are taking away their options. THEY ARE NOT TAKING AWAY OPTIONS. Kids can still bring in a bagged lunch like they did back in the day. The only thing the schools are doing is regulating what they will SELL to kids. That's it. If it's more important to have the freedom to stop others from taking responsibility for you than it is to take responsibility in the first place, then remember you still have the option to stuff a dozen Snickers bars in your little hambeast's bookbag.
You ever wonder why the schools like the vending machines and fast food outlets in schools? THEY GET PAID TO HAVE THEM THERE! Duh! Like everything else it's all about the money, never mind the kids.
When my daughter went to school in Las Vegas there was a Pizza Hut, McD's, Taco Bell outlets IN THE CAFETERIA - sure there was the option of the school lunch which everyone hated because it was SO bad and a small salad bar. Guess where the kids ate? My daughter brought nutritious lunches to school but most didn't..... how did this become like this? Kids get used to these "tastes" and lived with them and then we wonder why they won't ear "regular" food?
We need active kids - that's the solution plus healthy food for everyone. Just leave food alone! People need to cook too and stop using fast food and delivery as their second kitchen option.
They're coming at this from the wrong angle. It's not the treats in the machines that are the culprits. And an above post is right, this is going to kill fund-raising. The problem is the chicken mc nuggets and pizza that kids are fed every day. Schools went along fine for years serving casseroles. Now all they're feeding kids are carbs and sugars. They need to stop the chocolate and strawberry milk that has more sugar than soda. They need to put teachers in the lunch room. They need to give the kids butter knives and forks so that they can eat their food. Breads need to be whole grain. Corn is not a vegetable it is a grain.
be a parent and send your kid to school with a packed lunch
The public schools that our sons went to discouraged children from bringing lunches to school. They didn't have a safe place to keep them and they attracted ants that the school didn't want to deal with. Basically, the schools were giving parents little choice besides eating their school lunches. Actually, our boys often came home hungry, because they either didn't like the food or it took longer to get through the lunch line than they had available for lunch.
Then the school couldn't understand that part of the reason for the poor afternoon class performance was due to trying to concentrate with a starved brain.
Where is the parents' responsibilty in this? I don't really agree with the government stepping in to control what my children are being fed at school, but really...who sends their 7 year old to school with money to buy junk food out of vending machines? I have a 7, 5, and 3 year old, and it's never crossed my mind to send them money for junk food during school hours. I understand that the lunches that the school provides are probably not the most nutritious meals in the world, but I make up for it at home, and we have a monthly menu that is sent home from the school, and if I see something that I really think the kids should not be eating I send them a good lunch to school. Parents need to take a little more care when trying to raise their kids to be responsible adults. Just because the child wants it, does NOT mean it is in their best interest. So be the adult in the situation!
It's a step in the right direction, however, the real danger here is hidden and/or bad sugars. 2% milk has 12g of sugar, ditch that and come up with an alternative. Bad sugars include splenda, equal, sweet n low (found in 'diet' sodas/drinks), a better alternative would be SoBe Lifewater as it is naturally sweetned with PureVia (stevia plant). A good milk alternative with more nutritional benefits and no sugar is Almond milk. A good rule of thumb is no more than 15g of sugar a day & 6 servings of 'good' carbs a day. Parents and students should be educated on nutrition lables and pay attention to the ridiculous amount of 'bad' sugars (includes algave nectar and high fructose corn syrup), that are found in just about anything you pick up at the store. The sad part is that the average person consumes 47 teaspoons of sugar a day. Educate, educate, educate. Sugar kills and is linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
I don't totally disagree with this idea. There really is NO need for soda machines in schools. I recall we had a vending machine with 100% juice in jr high, that was only available during lunch.
We moved to a new district last summer, and right now I'd say the lunches tend to be a bit fat heavy, but not really that bad. They also offer a daily snack that is relatively decent compared to a lot of places (yogurt, fruit, the occasional sugary stuff). At the previous district though it was a nightmare! Each LUNCH had over 700 calories and was pure crap, added to the breakfast that averaged 500-600 calories. For an elementary aged child! On top of that you had the kindergarten classes requesting parents send in additional snacks AND a box of cereal for an am snack. Do I need to get into what giving a bunch of 5 yr olds something like Fruity Pebbles at 10am does to their concentration and focus? (And before someone says it, yes we packed our kids lunches most days. However, we couldn't do anything about the cereal and "snacks" that other parents brought in.)
I don't think they should remove all sweets, but definitely, at the least, ban high fructose corn syrup! Other than the minor issue of it containing mercury, it's hell on the system and has finally been proven to contribute to weight gain. Keep desserts but slide in things like oatmeal cookies that do have some nutritional value. Leave fundraising alone. This won't affect the obesity levels much, but eating healthy foods is always a good thing!