Federal lawmakers are considering the broadest effort ever to limit what children eat: a national ban on selling candy, sugary soda and salty, fatty food in school snack bars, vending machines and cafeteria lines.
Whether the measure, an amendment to the farm bill, can survive the convoluted politics that have bogged down that legislation in the Senate is one issue. Whether it can survive the battle among factions in the fight to improve school food is another.
Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, has twice introduced bills to deal with foods other than the standard school lunch, which is regulated by Department of Agriculture.
Several lawmakers and advocates for changes in school food believe that an amendment to the $286 billion farm bill is the best chance to get control of the mountain of high-calorie snacks and sodas available to schoolchildren. Even if the farm bill does not pass, Mr. Harkin and Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, a sponsor of the amendment, vow to keep reintroducing it in other forms until it sticks.
They are optimistic about their chances because there is more public interest than ever in improving school food and because leaders in the food and beverage industry have had a hand in creating the new standards.
I do not understand why some groups would try to stand in the way of legislation that is going to get soda, snack cakes and other high-fat, high-salt food out of virtually all schools,†she said.
Maybe its because we believe in freedom, and do not trust that the high almighty mucka mucks in Washington should be mandating what children eat in our local schools. Local school districts are perfectly capable of making decisions, without mandates from Washington. No one points a gun to anyones head and forces them in buy anything. My dietary habits, and those of my children, are for me to decide, and for them to decide, not unelected government beaucrats.
Next thing you know, the great all knowing all powerful Father in Washington will be mandating the size and flow rates of shower heads. Oh yeah, they already do.
Strange. It would be unacceptable to for a school to provide Pepsi or Coke to children, but completely acceptable for a school to provide birth control pills. It only remains to ask which is more destructive – the marginal soft drink, or the marginal sexual encounter? The answer to that question pretty much sums up the respective sides of the culture war in this country.
carl
Argh, this is so frustrating. They can give us the power to drive a motor vehicle that could possibly injure another person, they give us contraceptives so our teenage decisions don’t impact the rest of our high school world but when it comes to us eating, they decide what we can and cannot eat? Something about this doesn’t add up! I’m a high school senior and I’ve had to watch over the past four years as this little plan has been put into play. We still have pop machines but they’ve been slowly disappearing and they’re turned off from 10:30 until 1:15 each day.
It’s also spread into our school lunches. My freshmen year, we had an amazing assortment of food to chose from but after this idea of no fat foods in schools was introduced, affordable fufilling food started disappearing. You could get a cheese burger and fries for a buck eighty five my freshmen year which included an apple/celery and peanut butter, but now you can only get this bundle twice a week and it’s two dollars and thirty cents and the fries have been cut in half. There’s no apple or celery with this new bundle either. There’s nothing under two dollars anymore that’s appetizing AND fills your stomach because everything that was that cheap and in good stomach-filling proportions has been changed to be healthier. For instance, the Peanut Butter and Celery? Now it’s SunButter (Sunflower Seed based peanut butter which I assure you is as nasty as it sounds) and the celery has been reduced from twelve pieces to six and it’s still the same price as it was before. They’ve even taken out a seventy cent hand-sized dill pickle because the salt intake was “too much†for us kids.
Washington says they’re preparing a thinner generation that isn’t going to have the obesity problem the current generation has but in reality they’re just making us fatter by telling us no. Kids are going other places to get the food that tastes good and actually fills their bellies for the same price as the ‘good food’ at school. They bring it from home and if their school has an open campus like mine, they burn the gas and go get food worth paying five bucks for and nothing Washington can say or do will change that.
Why is this an issue for the federal government? Can someone point to the article in the Constitution that confers this power on Congress?
I am familiar with a school system that after much discussion put in a Soda Pop machine. Now they are appalled that students are actually drinking the stuff and they are know that suggestions not to imbibe would show the hypocracy of their situation. OH! What to do, what to do now??
We are soooo dumb!
As much as I dislike our children drinking flavored sugarwater, I detest and protest some bureaucrat in Washington mandating what our students eat!
We are sooooo dumb!
#4
It is right there next to the penumbras and emanations that constitutionally guarantees the to the right to privacy that makes abortion a constitutionally protected right.
Also nearby may be found the words “separation of church and state” upon which hangs much law regarding public displays of mythical Biblical figures that some fundamentalist sects seem to insist on displaying around the holidays.
Can’t find that phrase “separation of church and state” in the Constitution? Surely it must be there somewhere because we hear it repeated so frequently. Well, how about that, it is not in the Constitution after all.
Well, at least our property rights are secure. The Constitution plainly says that private property can only be taken for public use and that just compensation must be paid. Oops, it seems that the words “public use” have morphed to mean “public purpose” despite the fact that the words in the document itself still say “public use”
There is one sure thing in this life, that we all know that we can count on, come what may. The Canons of TEC are ironclad and mean exactly what they say, and may not be violated, or reinterpreted, and must be respected as the Will of the People and will be defended down to the last penny you have.
Agree with 4, the is not the business of the Federal Government. Thay should stay out.
With 3 kids eating (or mostly not eating) public school lunches, I have a bit of “insider” knowledge:
–The reason schools have switched to sunflower butter rather than peanut butter is due to the fact that there is an increasing number of students with severe peanut allergies (I’m not sure why) and most schools are now not allowed to offer peanut butter in the cafeteria. (I have a friend with a son who has a peanut allergy so severe that a reaction can start if he even touches peanut butter.)
–Regarding soft drink and snack machines: This was a huge source of income for schools. They would make tons of money for athletics and other expenses from the revenue from the sales of soft drinks, chips, candy, etc. Many districts were very opposed to removing them from the schools because they didn’t want to lose that money.
Often parents of students did not realize how much money school were making from their kids purchase of junk food.
–There seems to be this perception that kids (especially those in middle and high schools) won’t choose healthy food. Schools continue to offer chicken fingers, fries, burgers, etc. now made in an unappealing, tasteless “healthy” way because they say that students won’t eat salads, fruit, yogurt, etc. This is certainly not the case but this information, unfortunately, seems to fall on deaf ears.
I hope you and your school serve whatever you and your school district want. However, we should all resist mandates from a group of bureaucrats in Washington who want to impose their preferences on the rest of us. In this particular case the issue is food, but the principle applies broadly.
Next, big government will tell us that we have to wear clean underwear…
bl