St. Paul to Make All Government Schools "Sweet-Free Zones"

If they don't understand why it's being done, and learn waaaaay more about diet/nutrition, it won't really make a difference.

 

What govt. health care are you referring to? Medicare?

 

Children are not subject to the same rights as adults. I don't care if an adult, with years of anti-smoking, anti-drinking messages hammered into them, goes out and smokes and drinks. They are able to make the decision about what to put into their bodies.

There's a reason we don't allow children to purchase tobacco and alcohol; childhood is a very important time for bodily development and those substances, among other things, harm the ability to grow into a healthy adult. They may lack the judgment to see this, so we prohibit them from consuming these things. The same should be done with these types of foods.

Eating sweets and fat-laden foods over time does enough damage to a child to warrant this type of action. You are so susceptible to doing things for the rest of your life the same way that you did them as a child. If you are constantly rewarded with sweets, you will continue to do that as an adult. We, as a country, have the responsibility to make sure that our citizenry is healthy and capable of running things one day. If they are too fat to serve in the army and too diabetic to live a normal life, what good have we done them? What good can they do us?

Do you bemoan the lack of PE classes in schools these days? Coupled with such a terrible diet, American children begin their lives at a distinct disadvantage with the rest of the world. Parents can serve all the cake they want at home if they genuinely believe that this impedes on their "freedom." The moment you allow something as dumb as this to degrade your definition of "freedom" is the moment you check out of rational discussion.

School is about instructing children in order to live their lives. In addition to reading and writing, they should know about nutrition. If they learn that certain things are bad for you (fast food, sweets, etc.) they will become part of a growing trend that actually wants to eat well and not fill a void in your stomach.

 

I support this 100% only if nutrition is taught in elementary school as say a part of gym class. If there is no educational aspect then the kids aren't learning anything and for the betterment of their lives and costs on society kids need to learn this stuff. Parents certainly can't be relied upon with that 25% of children obese. Our society sucks ass.

 

This is a fairly complex issue. There is a definitive relationship between what ones eat and school performance and children's behaviors. Sugary foods does aggravate behavioral problems such as ADD and alertness levels (the "crash" after lunch).

However, this program is about controlling obesity. And that's a bit outside of the grounds of the purpose of education in my opinion.

It's one thing to say that school lunches should be optimized for better grade - which is totally legitimate. But it's totally another to say kids should be told what to eat in order to control out fat they are.

If schools want to eliminate obesity they should do it through education on obesity and all the negative affects and link that to what children eat. They need to educate the children and the parents of children on obesity.

A school can control what they serve in the cafeteria or what fundraisers sell to make money, but parents should control if a kid is allowed to bring a candy bar to school and eat it during their lunch or whenever.

 

As an elementary educator, with years of experience teaching in public schools (which, I'm willing to wager, NONE of the blowhards pontificating about the state of our schools is able to say about themselves), I can tell you that nutrition is most DEFINITELY part of the TEKS (that's the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, seen here ), and is part of the day-to-day curriculum in our school. The childhood obesity problem can be attributed to straight-up lazy, piss poor parenting, and the kids are the ones paying the price. If parents aren't going to advocate for the well-being of their kids, then I'm all for the government standing up and saying they won't contribute to the problem by allowing junk food in schools.

 

Nice. Wasn't aware that Texas schools had taken a proactive educational approach to nutrition. I remember taking nutrition in high school but nobody took it serious. I think this is one of those topics that should be drilled in at an early age to help develop and promote healthier trends and choices later on. You can't teach this to a teenager expecting to make a difference.

Agreed. Piss poor parenting is the reason for probably every negative trend seen in our society.

 

Are you serious? 40% WTF are they fed, fast food for breakfast, lunch and dinner? sounds like they need to start doing PE lessons as well......

 

When kids are at school, the administration and faculty are acting as de facto parents. If they want to ban sweets, I'm all for it.

 

Yup, pretty much. It's easier, faster, and cheaper than actually preparing a healthy meal for your kids. And when schools try to make a positive difference in the diet of the students, they get ridiculed by people like rtsy and da Whopper.

They get PE. The problem is that the amount of exercise they get is offset by the crap they're fed before and after school, as well as the fact that Mom and Dad plop them in front of an Xbox because it's easier than actually parenting.

Buy, hey... It's their right to make their kids obese. Let freedom ring.

 

As other would say . . i worry about mission creep
This descending into to other things
this being said

Schools are suppose to be places of learning
not just THE THREE Rs
but Life
They should teach social interaction and healthy habits

A ounce of prevention > Pound of cure

Rocket River

 

I have an idea for a sketch called "Scared Skinny" where really morbidly obese people in Tea Party Scooters err....mobility scooters and on the back of flatbed trucks teach kids what happens if they eat too much crap food.

 

I remember in my days it was pretty much just fast food all over the cafeteria, especially where the long line are. So while I'm not particularly fond of cutting bad stuff out of everything, a healthier menu is never a bad thing.

 

Exactly. Some people want to pretend the world is as they wish it to be rather than how it really exists. Parents should be responsible for the well being of their children except many times they're not and there is a societal cost to that. Using government to curb childhood epidemics is horrible but ignoring childhood epidemics in favor of slogans about freedom and personal responsibility is golden.

 

Absolutely agree. There's a double standard toward children, in a positive way. Its plainly obvious kids don't get the same rights and LIBERTIES as adults, yet at times that can get overlooked.

Its strange, I think there is some overprotection of kids from physical danger, along with some passivity towards kids in sympathizing with their feelings. We don't want our kids getting sick and getting molested by a lurker in the bushes, but we'll allow them to eat what they want, watch what they want, dress loosely and curse how they want.

I don't see anything wrong with school UNIFORMS even. F**k kids feelings They are in school to LEARN. Everything else is BS distraction.

That said, I agree with healthy food advocacy but I think its a little bit of elitist foodie snobbery of all this "epidemic" of obese people. I AGREE that we all need better diets and sweets and junk food of course DOES decrease health and alertness in kids. But the fat people spiraling out of control to where we can't contain it thing, I think most the health costs are with OLDER people on their last stretch of life. I'll look that up though since that is attainable information

 

Glad to see the response to this thread is an avalanche of level-headedness and critical thinking about this problem and only a select few "freedom fighters" doing their regular myopic b****ing and moaning about the government.

Seems real progress is being made on children's nutritional health and how seriously we take it.

 

Absolutely, there have been some wonderful programs going around the country fighting childhood obesity. They are geared towards educating parents about what their kids are eating and changes that need to be made. The biggest issue that most people have is the cost of the changes.

As far as the "freedom fighters"... it's pure ignorance, per the usual in our political landscape today. Children deserve a chance to be happy and healthy. They don't need sweets or fattening foods to do so.