You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to tomorrow at 8:35 a.m. That will be a good five minutes after the start of the parental summer relief program known best as Back to School. I’m counting down the minutes as we speak.
With the return to school, public debates over what children should eat and how parents should or shouldn’t step in have intensified. Obesity, the selling out of school cafeterias, new restrictions on sodas and junk food in said cafeterias, and the diet of choice at home are the topics of the day–all underlined with a sense of rising panic.
This year more than any other I can remember, reporters, bloggers, doctors, models, political figures, and just about everyone else has jumped on the bandwagon to report the ugly facts that were excused for years.
All the statistics are in–or pretty much so, and they boil down to this: We’re facing a tidal wave of blubber.
With it comes a tidal wave of early heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and more. How early? Physicians are seeing a rise in the diseases of middle age–something that, 20 years ago, had been successfully pushed back by an average of 10 years, from age 50 or so to age 60 and up for a first heart attack. We thought we were making progress. But for the past 10 to 15 years, these diseases have started popping up in school children–Type II diabetes, kidney stones, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure. No way should a 10-year-old be facing these threats. No wonder parents and everyone else are panicked–the studies we have aren’t giving us a single, easy-to-deal-with definitive guide on how to stop the juggernaut. They mostly tell us that it keeps on rolling.
But the mystery of what to do really isn’t that mysterious. Take for example the responses to Frank Bruni’s recent article in the New York Times on feeding children. Some come from doctors on the front lines, others from nutritionists and fresh-food-in-schools activists, discussing different facets of the problem, but they come to a number of sensible recommendations you could probably have named yourself without much struggle.
The conclusions?
Sodas should be cut out altogether from children’s (and probably everyone’s) daily diet. Not just for calories (250ish for a 20-oz bottle–and why is it 20 0z these days? used to be 12 was the standard) but for sodium (about 100 mg per 12-oz can, whether full-cal or diet, 200+ for the 20-oz).
Fruit juices with a pretty picture on the box are nowhere near qualifying as actual fruit. Not even with added vitamin C.
And exercise time, including outdoor recess–something most schools have cut back in the past decades–makes a big difference that’s generally overlooked in the school lunch debates.
So far, no great surprises. But they do mention one more item, also no great surprise–fast food in the school cafeterias. Nobody seems to have trouble zeroing in on french fries as the worst offender. Are they right or is this a replay of the cupcake wars? Is the french fry being unjustly accused, as the vendors claim?
Filed under: Eating out, Food Politics, kid food | Tagged: back to school, cardiovascular disease, chain restaurants, childhood nutrition, DASH Diet, David Kessler, diabetes, fast food, fat, Food Politics, french fries, health, hidden salt, high blood pressure, hypereating, nutrition, nutrition labeling, obesity, processed food industry, salt, school cafeterias, school food | Comments Off on You want fries with that?
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