School candy ban gets high grades

This is a great first step. Now we need companies taking a little responsibility, and not advertising candy and junk food to young children.

This is the kind of Clip...story...that should be topping Current News. Yes, the Polygamist raid and the Golden Gate Bridge are hot news stories...this is one that affects us all in the long run. Please "OK" this story.

I don't know. Polygamist news is all the rage right now. It's gonna be tight, what with the shock and awe of it all, but I agree, this is important too.

Greenlighting!

I'm glad that we're educating our children, not only in how to read and write, but also how to make healthy life choices. It makes things a lot easier for them down the road, believe you me.

The next step is to eliminate trans fatty foods from schools. Especially in the free/reduced lunch programs. Impoverished people eat enough crap-laden food already, providing them with free crap is not enough.

Personally, the reason why I put on weight in high school was that I had no exercise. I think that there should be fun and different PE classes that are an option. I always thought that running around in circles was kind of a horrible way to get exercise. If they are replacing soda and candy with healthier options, they should invest in low competition sports like yoga, strength training, spinning, or judo.

kill your TV .

I think taking this step forward and educating people on what exactly is in the food they eat is a great way for people to understand how important their food choices really are to their body and teach kids to develop a healthy relationship with food.

There are probably still a great amount of obese children in these schools due to lack of exercise and the eating HABITS they have, most likely created by their parents. By educating children on the importance of nutritional information and exercise, it will help them develop a healthier relationship with food, creating different eating habits, which they will hopefully keep through life and teach their children as well.

Someone should find correlating data between eating disorders and food education. I would think by helping kids to understand how important the nutrition in the food they eat is to their body and offering access to healthier food items, less children would opt to deprive themselves of it.

This is a step in the right direction. Now parents and the media need to step it up.

As the kids get older and start to become more aware of what's around them, like the billboards for a McDonald's over there or the Starbucks on every corner, they will be faced with doing what is easy rather than what is healthy. One of the best things a parent can teach a kid is how to cook healthy for themselves.

I think that schools should teach more about food choices though, rather than just banning the unhealthy products.

Ironically, here in California, schools have banned sodas and candies but have introduced other carbonated drinks and started baking more chocolate chip cookies. Or at least at my school they have.

Speaking as someone who teaches in an elementary school in Los Angeles, there have steps made to eliminate "junk food" in the schools. According to our school district, the food that is offered to our children has zero trans fat, but my comment back to that is big whoop!
When you examine the nutritional content of the food being given to the children (and some of the teachers eat this as well) you would second guess having the children eat this stuff. The food has high amounts of sodium, sugar, regular fat, and is pretty high in calories. It is sad that it thought that this food is good for the children.
We as teachers are doing everything to we can to not have the children eat junk at school but when they leave the school and head home, we do not have any control! Parents have to step up and take control of the food their children consume. They should take a look inside their own cupboards and look at what they are feeding their kids.

That 7% just goes to show that you can only teach people so much. THEY have to want to change thier lives. Of course by "THEY" I am referring to the children's parents.

Not only that, but I don't see this becoming such a widespread thing. There is a huge business in keeping people sick in this country. The medical field, the weightloss business, the pharmaceutical companies, the fast food businesses, and more make millions and millions of dollars off of obese, uneducated Americans.

And they are not just going to hand over this huge money-maker on a silver platter.

You've got to question the psychological health of a school administrator, school board, mayor, governor, president and on, and on, and on, that tolerates soda pop dispensers, candy and junk food at a public school.

You've got to question the psychological health of a society that condones such wantonly destructive behavior. And who benefits from poisoning our children, big business - corporations like Coca Cola, McCrapple's and so forth.

Of course, the wantonly destructive behavior doesn't stop there, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Don't vote for McCain - he's dog food.

So good to see schools taking on the roll of parents in enforcing good nutrition. Now, can we bring back paddling?

I read an article about a school district in the south that ran an experiment similar to the UK prison, and the results were similar. If I find the link, I'll post it.

As someone who is currently living in an impoverished area (I'm a grad student in Philly, and I needed a cheap place to rent), I see everyday the choices people have to make food wise. I don't think it's fair to place blame on parents who grew up without proper nutritional education, and who still don't have access to it.

It's also not fair to parents who want to feed their children healthy nutritional food but can't afford to. Candy costs less than fresh fruit. A bag of chips costs less than fresh vegetables.

I'm very proud of school districts that are taking these steps.

I am glad to see that schools are taking measures like this and I hope that the schools teach the kids why candy is banned and how it has no place in a healthy lifestyle. I was fortunate to just have a high metabolism as a child. My family was not, they are quite overweight and have a lot of medical problems now. Had education been handed out while they were younger they would have had the tools to prevent this.

but of course, everyone deserves an indulgence every once and awhile. Education will help control how often this will happen.

The joke of this is that we've known how terrible junk food and sweet water like coca cola are to kids (and adults) since long before schools allowed the stuff to be dispensed to children - but it was ignored by the very people who were empowered to educate and protect our children in schools.

Every idiot politician who expressed the idea American's want us to be tough on crime - but IS complicit in poisoning children IS unworthy of holding public office.

Let's talk about MSG. Why did the FDA alow it to be called "natural flavors"? Because some smart Americans realized it was bad for us and avoided foods that contained it. Sooooo, those humans without conscience, but college educated said let's change the name so people won't know it's in there.

RESULT: one in 163 American kids have autism.

Did you see Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto? Great film. There was some text at the beginning of the film that said something to the effect that 'a great nation can only be destroyed from without, if it is first destroyed from within'. So true.

There are people in this world who destroy - because their arrested psychological development does not move them to create.

Feeding kids junk food and soda pop is a passive aggressive and destructive act against children, family, community and society.

wow voyager. you could've just said "junk food is bad, mmk" but what you said works too.

and no i have not seen Apocalypto. Mel Gibson freaks me out. dunno why but he does.

The fact that soda and candy was readily available in schools has always shocked me. It's like giving them a class in a warpped, deadly nutrition.

Processed white sugar is poison and should be considered a 'controlled substance'.

Why don't we simply provide the ingredients and have the children MAKE their own lunches?

Instead of paying SYSCO $1 million dollars out of the school budget to ship in crates of pre-fab high salt, high fructose corn syryp meals -- wouldn't a better idea be to expand Home Economics into an hour and half class wherein each day ingredients are provided and the children are instructed how to prepare a meal?

You know, actually teach them how to fend for themselves and prepare their own meals?

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Hee hee. If we wanted it to be a real educational experience we could easily accomodate the students that wanted to prepare Chicken meals by having them slaughter a chicken and pick the feathers off of it.

I know I wouldn't be suffering with this Wendy's Spicy Chicken sandwhich addiction today if I had to cut the head off a chicken at 14.

crob, that is a very interesting idea. i had never even thought of that. its definetly an idea that should be considered. the only thing i can think of with preparing their own food would be the possiblity of spreading food-bourne disease. but then again that risk can be reduced with proper education.

i never did understand why the served all the "food service" meals when i was in school (a short 8 years ago).

i am guessing that schools get bids from different distributors and the lowest price usually gets picked. no one wants to spend money on things that are known to be good anymore. either that or the administrators in schools today are just to ignorant/lazy to know any better.

I think we need a full revision of what our goals are for student instruction.

We're going to teach you how to read, write, perform mathematics, etc -- but we should also be teaching them:

1) How to prepare meals and cook in order to be self-sufficent after you leave Mom and Dad's.

2) Personal Finance. Give everyone Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" and give them strict instructions on how to budget money, how to read a home loan, what exactly stocks are, why 401(k) might be a good idea to supplement your SS, etc (If we can offer Calculus I think they can handle a semester of home mortgage review)

Right now it seems our educational strategy is: give them the absolute minimum instruction we can get away with because their just gonna end up eating out every day and stocking shelves at Kmart so let's not waste time giving them anything else. Geez. That's kind of the low expectations we have for prisioners!

Which is why we have a new generation coming into adulthood that honestly don't know how to budget money, honestly don't know exactly what their mortgage agreement is saying, couldn't prepare a meal if their life depended on it, etc. There seems to be this huge "practical knowledge" gap between the older generation and the younger. It seems our grandparents could milk a cow, build a barn, change out the car engine, cook a 5 course meal and itemize their taxes -- the more recent generation seems to be locked into a more sterile environment wherein their taught how to add and subtract in high school and nothing else. And unfortunately their parents don't know how to do too much themselves so, yeah, they never really get shown how to do anything.

Small rant. Off topic.

But, yes, I definitely think we need to turn the "lunch hour" into a more structured/learning experience. Each class is given raw ingredients, handed a reciepe and together they're going to make our lunch for the day.

FAT overweight(don't wanna offend fat people who aren't overweight HAHA) people, piss me off. I . If you don't have some type of disease or something, you have no excuse. Stop veing so lazy it's gross!

LA-Aislyn said "Personally, the reason why I put on weight in high school was that I had no exercise. I think that there should be fun and different PE classes that are an option. I always thought that running around in circles was kind of a horrible way to get exercise. If they are replacing soda and candy with healthier options, they should invest in low competition sports like yoga, strength training, spinning, or judo." I completley agree, most schools have 20 min of PE, that is clearly not enough, and not giving ample time to shower afterwards, makes kids not want to participate to the fullest, and Lets face it as a teenager your embaressed about your body enough let alone sharing showers with 10 other people who all point and laugh at eachother, I say longer PE classes, seperate showers, and Ample time to change would help kids get into it and expose them to nutrional values.

Exposing children to healthy foods, is the way to go from the beginning, when as teenagers they are exposed to healthy foods, its insanely more difficult.

This seems like such an obvious step! I'm surprised schools have ever allowed sodas and candy bars in their halls, however teachers are no match for the crafty lobbyists and huge businesses behind these products.

It starts at the home!! It's not the schools responsibility to be baby-sitters in this sense.