U.S. Congress looking at school junk food laws

by Brian White (Subscribe to Brian White's posts)
Mar 8th 2007 10:37AM

Are public school food menus good or bad? There are probably reams of opinions on that very subject, but the U.S. Congress is contemplating way to make junk food sales in schools way more restricted than it is now.

Junk food is surely contributing to the prevalence of obesity in younger schoolchildren these days, along with all the good tasting but highly non-nutritious processed food most kids eat. Would helping curb bad food in schools help this problem? Opinions will vary, but I say yes.

Will regulation come to vending machines in schools any time soon? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think the nation's public school system needs it.

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Comments (6)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ESK 3-08-2007 @ 12:04PM

I am SHOCKED that this web site approves of regulating eating choices.

I don't understand why the US doesn't just publish an "approved foods" menu and ban everything else. Why take years and years to get to the destination when the path is clear?

Obviously, the US government knows my body and metabolism better than I, and only they should be able to tell me what to put in it.

Brian White 3-08-2007 @ 12:15PM

We just opine on the news, ok? Use the "Read" link to see the source story please.

ESK 3-08-2007 @ 12:33PM

"Would helping curb bad food in schools help this problem? Opinions will vary, but I say yes."

"Will regulation come to vending machines in schools any time soon? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think the nation's public school system needs it."

And I am simply opining on your opinion, which is that the government needs to regulate individuals eating.

Brian White 3-08-2007 @ 12:52PM

Fair enough -- we can agree to disagree on this one, but I specifically singled out "public schools" (not the entire country) -- and did not blanket-statement the government regulating all eating choices (there's a big stretch from junk foods in public schools to regulating all eating choices by the public, yes?). I continue to believe junk foods in public schools are a complete disservice to the nutritional needs of children. Others may feel differently of course. I do appreciate the comments so far ;-)

ESK 3-08-2007 @ 12:55PM

I agree they are a bad idea as well, but I also think government telling us what we can and can't eat is a bad idea. Of course, I believe in a modicum of personal liberty, so I'm kind of a nut...nuts don't have trans fat do they?

Tina 3-08-2007 @ 1:06PM

I think they should just change cafeteria food... sure remove vending machine food but the cafe food is JUST as bad. I got out of HS a few years ago and all there was to eat was stuff like spaghetti, pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken burgers, burritos, American styled egg rolls, and Chinese (i.e. a restaurant sold chow-mein, etc at our school). All fattening foods no? And they aren't even decent tasting either (I even threw up after eating one of the cafeteria's Chili Dogs... never again ate those).

They RARELY had anything healthy to serve (there was one healthy choice of salad and once in a while they'd have 3 with strawberries and you had to snap them up fast before others got them). The only constant healthy food was the small side of CANNED string beans (or dirty dry lettuce), which always made me want to puke. Not to mention the meats... I don't even know what they were made of... it was like fatty ground meat mixed with some kind of nasty tiny cubes of another meat (seemed like this was the default meat used in everything... NO JOKE). The cheese they used always also seemed to be Velveeta as well. And all the soups were creamy... rarely did we have one of those veggie+broth type soups. I distinctly remember the "Potato bacon cream" soup. :P

As for sodas, they should keep diet coke/pepsi at the very least. There was no way in hell I'd drink the rancid and only slightly cold milk we had.