Moonlit_Angel said:
For one thing, one other major reason kids are becoming obese is because gym class isn't a requirement anymore, and parents aren't making their kids get out and get exercise.
Dread can correct me if I'm wrong here, but actually, I think it's the case that as of now, 90%+ of the country's school districts DO have Phys Ed requirements--it's more that they're poorly enforced, and with the expansion of the academic curriculum in recent years, schools have found it harder and harder to make time for gym classes. I think better nutrition and better exercise are complementary goals, though, and I doubt that many people who support restricting junk food in schools are opposed in principle to increasing PE time. Adressing one doesn't cancel out the importance of addressing the other.
And I also find it really strange that adults are trying to restrict kids' eating habits, yet I've seen a commercial for one of those diet plans where an adult is all excited because she can lose weight and still have her chocolate foods in this plan as well. Uh...what?
The difference is that when you're an adult monitoring your own diet, or a parent monitoring your child's diet, the entire budget for that food is coming out of your own individual pocket, and the effort of putting it on the table is yours alone as well. You can, of course, expand that to your children's school lunches by having them bring their own--and to judge from the article at least, the proposed legislation would have no effect on what home-packed lunches might include. But traditionally, it's been seen as both valuable and necessary for schools themselves to offer prepared meals to students--not for the purpose of establishing an in-school 'marketplace' where students can buy whatever they feel like eating, but to help ensure their nourishment, especially for children whose parents might be on tight food budgets, or negligent about providing meals themselves. It's a function of the school in its capacity as provider of social goods, drawing on funds supplied by the total community it serves.
(One implementation problem the proposed reforms might have, though, is that for many schools their 'a la carte' sales are effectively subsidizing their insufficiently-government-subsidized 'standard' meals, which could lead to problems if changes in the a la carte offerings caused profits in that area to drop. Presumably that's what all these negotiations with corporations referred to in the article are about.)
I do agree that the most important influences are those that come from home. If parents are routinely letting their kids eat junk food and sit around on their butts all day when not in school, then for schools to ban sales of junk food and require more PE is unlikely to adequately lay the foundation for a lifetime of good eating and exercise habits. But again, I don't think that's a good reason for schools to
not prioritize what's in the longterm best interests of public health--whether that takes the form of promoting better nutrition, or promoting more exercise; and whether every individual student and parent are happy about it or not.
. Tastes like crap. 
