Alabama may ban unhealthy food in schools

[shawn703]

The chicken legs won't be so crispy at the cafeteria, forget about the bubbly sodas to wash them down - and don't even think about skipping gym class.

That may come as bad news to kids who enjoy their tasty, yet high-calorie, lunches at school. But a health and nutrition committee told the state school board Thursday that the changes - such as banning the sale of sodas during school hours and cracking down on waivers exempting students from gym - are crucial to raising healthy young people.

"We know we have brought some recommendations that will be controversial," said state Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, who chaired the nutrition subcommittee. "But I know I feel strong, and I know this board feels strong, that there is nothing more important than the health of our children.

State school Superintendent Joe Morton told the board he would review the committee's recommendations over the next month before recommending approval of any of them.



more...
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/breaking_news/11756394.htm

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[BamaGirl]

8. Lovely

I'm sure all the resident Bama DUers appreciate this crap in every post where Bama is even mentioned. Thank you so much contributing to the bigotry. :sarcasm:

[QC]

9. When you see bigoted posts like that, just alert on them.

The mods are great about removing this kind of knuckledragging hatred.

[wicket]

16. Ignore them

I'm from up North and found nothing but the greatest hospitality and nice people in Alabama when I visited :hi:

[candy]

2. Madness----Eliminating soda is fine but leave the food alone.

Kids eat 21 meals a week,this is only 5 meals a week,for 9 months a year. They are probably eating all wrong at home,so this is a waste of time.

Much ado about nothing!

[XemaSab]

3. Makes sense to me

that the schools should be promoting healthy food instead of junk food.

A really greasy lunch could be an extra few hundred calories a day, which definitely adds up over time.

[KittyWampus]

10. Many Kids Get Their Breakfast & Lunch At School & Nothing For Dinner

at home.

Many RELY on these meals for NUTRITION>

Sorry, food is for nourishment not consuming empty calories. School is the best place to learn sound eating habits since parents don't do the job anymore.

[LostinVA]

24. A friend of mine who is a teacher confirms this

Or, what the kids get for dinner is fast food or something cheap, filling, but nutritionally very bad for them. Kids spend a big chunk of their day at school, and what better place to TEACH good habits? I've always been frankly appalled that junk food, especially soda is available at schools. Over-consumption of soda is an epidemic in this country, especially for kids. Soda was a treat for us, for a pizza party on the weekend, or a picnic. We drank water, milk, real juice, even Kool-Aid, which has much less sugar than soda, and no sodium.

Thumbs up to 'Bama.

[Massacure]

13. Some kids parents are more strict than the schools though.

But this probably will reduce the amount of calories a highschool student takes in per day by a couple hundred.

I'm in favor of banning soda and chips for power bars and juice.

[Bandit]

32. Love the logic used

They probably eat unhealthy at home so what difference if they eat unhealthy at school.:crazy:

[KurtNYC]

40. Yes, and we are only beginning to hear about "nutritional scaring"

The idea is that diets which lack certain nutritients altogether can have lifelong effects -- even if the nutrients are added to the diet later Osteoperosis is one such effect.

Better to get a more complete range of nutrients even if it is only two meals out of three.

[Name removed]

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[BamaGirl]

7. Nope, it's all bbq'ed

Big difference lol. :D

[bamademo]

11. Naw...We ain't got nuttin cept chittlins and catfish..

MMM...Mmm.. Of course we have healthy food here. We also have unhealthy food like the other 49 states. Living near Philly several years ago, I remember a lot of people shoveling down Cheese Steaks, Pretzels and Pizza.


:rofl:

[BamaGirl]

14. Ewww!!!

Chit'lins and catfish!? Yuck lol! I refuse to eat both. I also refuse to eat fried chicken. Ok, so I'm a weird Southerner lol. :shrug:

[LostinVA]

25. Why?! Catfish is great -- tastes good and is a healthy fish

I eat it once a week, along with salmon, if I can afford it. I wither saute it in olive oil or broil it. It's a sweet white fish. Yum. And I'm not from Alabama!

[BamaGirl]

29. Yuck lol

I know a lot of ppl who love catfish. I am not one of them lol. I just don't like the taste, too fishy. We eat a lot of seafood though, especially talapia, mahi, and gulf shrimp. Salmon is a rare treat. I have some frozen that someone gave me actually...need to do something with it!

[Wabbajack]

5. Pop tastes good so screw them

[shawn703]

6. Are you from Michigan?

I don't hear the word "pop" too often anymore. ;)

[Wabbajack]

17. Chicago

Most people call it pop here as far as I know. :)

[shawn703]

21. Oh, well you live on Lake Michigan then ;) n/t

[Wabbajack]

22. Well my place ain't anywhere near the lake.

:)

[Lochloosa]

28. down south it's called a belly washer

as in "bellywasher and a moonpie"

[KittyWampus]

12. Pop Is Expensive Garbage That's A Prime Contributor To Ill Health.

[Wabbajack]

18. Welcome to your opinion you are

allow kids to drink what they desire, you should.

[Massacure]

30. Let the business sell what it wants too

And since the 'business' in this case is the state, the state decides what to sell at their cafeterias.

Nothing prevents the kids from bringing their own soda to school.

[Zhade]

46. Well, that high-fructose corn syrup is screwing everyone.

It's extraordinarily unhealthy stuff.

[sintax]

15. Eating well is education-start an Edible Schoolyard Program

Go here to learn More:

If children everywhere felt real pride in their schools, perhaps we could become at last the nation we ought to be. We must restore our public schools. A federally funded, WPA-style employment program such as William Julius Wilson has advocated could help solve the epidemic of inner-city unemployment while functioning as a restoration corps for the schools. If the unemployed were put to work renovating their own neighborhood schools, the students would receive a message of empowerment and hope.

The aim of education is to provide children with a sense of purpose and a sense of possibility, and with skills and habits of thinking that will help them live in the world. A key way to learn these skills and habits is to learn how to eat well and how to eat right. A curriculum designed to educate both the senses and the conscience–a curriculum based on sustainable agriculture–will teach children their moral obligation to be caretakers and stewards of the finite resources of our planet. And it will teach them the joy of the table, the pleasures of real work, and the meaning of community.

http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/ppl_aw.html

[MountainLaurel]

35. What a cool idea

I wonder, though, how many of these sorts of hands-on science programs are being axed in order that students can work on their bubble-filling skills for standardized tests?

[sintax]

47. You Got that right

#2 pencil filled brains do not a healthy human make.

Knowing how to grow and eat healthy food is infinitely more important and real as knowledge than parsing a sentence and doing your trigonometry. Which then leads to feeding children is WAY more important than blowing a hole in the ozone to put a body on a distant rock (the moon).

[LizW]

19. I'm all for this

I see kids in my son's elementary school buying tortilla chips and that gooey yellow canned cheese sauce and that's lunch. Bleargh.

I'll be surprised if any law is passed getting rid of junk food, though. The school lunchrooms make money on all that trash, which is sold as extras.

My older son's middle school tries to get the kids to eat healthy by having the healthy, balanced meal cost much less than the junk food. If the child picks a balanced lunch that includes choices from all the food groups, it is $1.25. If they pick a bunch of starches, sweets and no vegetables, they are charged per item and the price can run up to $3.00. The parents are told about this at a meeting at the beginning of the year and most of them make their kids eat the healthy food.

[Lorien]

42. Me too

the long term benefits would include lowering obesity and diabetes rates, and that's just the beginning...Who knows, for many schoolchildren, it may be the only healthy meal they eat during the day (as the state has high poverty rates, and junk food is cheaper than healthy food).

[libnnc]

20. I think kids have too many choices in the caf

When I was a kid, you ate what was put in front of you. Luckily, my rural elementary school in the '70s always had pretty darn good food--always hot--no burgers or fries--pizza only once a week. We ate things like beans, collard greens, cornbread, ham, peas, mashed potatoes, salisbury steak, stewed tomatoes...real food (the homemade butter rolls were the BEST). It was really sad because most of the kids in my school were on assisted lunch and breakfast. Sometimes the only meals they got were at school.

Now all schools can afford to feed kids are french fries and chicken nuggets. Is ketchup still going to be a vegetable?

[salin]

23. Sadly, in some places where this has been tried

kids just started skipping eating.

The lack of health/nutrition awareness is much broader than school lunches, and so ingrained are our bad habits, that just trying to change the school lunch can be a bit counterproductive - if kids opt to just not eat.

On NPR I heard of a program in Buffalo NY that worked for a broader impact. It targetted elementary schools and was coordinated with a popular morning radio personality. In classes kids learned about "Powerfoods" (that is healthy foods), the DJ talks it up, and has some kind of phrase or ditty that emphasizes the coolness of Powerfoods. In the cafeteria the powerfoods are an option (eg students can get helpings of them - or of other things), and kids were given bonus points (towards what, I don't recall) for each Powerfood item they ate. They were working in a coordinated way to change kids attitudes towards foods - and get them to choose the foods (with the hope of changing life long habits - again of choice rather than force) towards eating more healthy. Really promising approach, imo.

[Name removed]

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[barbaraann]

27. Jamie Oliver led a movement that will greatly improve UK school food.

TV chef welcomes £280m meals plan

Chef Jamie Oliver has welcomed the government's extra £280m to tackle the school meals "crisis" in England.

At least 50p will be spent on each primary school lunch and 60p in secondaries. Some primaries currently spend as little as 37p on ingredients.

He said it would "make a difference to every kid in this country", after delivering a petition to Tony Blair.

Mr Blair paid tribute to the chef, but said the government had been working on the issue for "quite a long time".
...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4391695.stm

It looks like Tony Blair lies about school lunches, too.

[RT_Fanatic]

31. My biggest problem with this

is that the state Agricultural Commissioner can't speak properly--not recognizing the difference between an adjective (strong), and an adverb (strongly), and using the adverb when appropriate. So maybe they aren't so bright down there in Alabama.

"We know we have brought some recommendations that will be controversial," said state Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, who chaired the nutrition subcommittee. "But I know I feel strong, and I know this board feels strong..."

[QC]

34. And maybe they're all real pedantic up there in Connellsville.

Aren't generalizations stupid?

[QC]

37. Apparently they're all pretty right wing, too.

If the letters to the editor of the local newspaper are any indication.

Newsweek's ugly politics

Let's face it: Newsweek's dislike of the president and his administration was so virulent that they printed an uncorroborated story about prison guards flushing pages of the Quran down the commode that they ran (as fast as they could) to press, without bothering to check the story's validity.

If it had been a story to embarrass Harry Reid or Nancy Palosy, they would have double and triple checked the accuracy and probably would still have not printed it or only would have printed it if another news source ran it first.

They wanted to cause riots and discontent about America in the Muslim world because they wanted to hassle the Bush administration which, in the person of Condoleezza Rice, immediately denied the accusation, but the horse was already out of the barn.

Newsweek was using that old technique used by trial lawyers, where they make a statement out loud that they know the judge will not allow, but they have already planted the suspicion in the jury's minds. Like the contrite lawyer apologizing to the judge, Newsweek is weakly denying the story saying: "It is a story that may not be true because we cannot corroborate it, but it has come from a source that has in the past always been very reliable."...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/letters/s_336001.html

**********

Why 'clone and kill' legislation?

I was recently surprised to learn that the latest request for our tax dollars is from the biotech industry for research on live human embryos and they are lobbying for "clone and kill" legislation.

The question in my mind is: If there are no documented cures or successful human therapies to date from embryonic cell research treatments, why is there this request?...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/letters/s_336000.html

**********

Rest in peace, Terri

It is finished. The sorrowful passion and death of Terri Schiavo that we all experienced this Lenten season and Eastertide is over.

Although shocked and appalled at this tragedy, we are not truly surprised for human nature has not changed in these 2000 years. An echo of "Crucify! Crucify!, rings through the ages. Once again we whisper "Father forgive them they know not what they do."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/letters/s_324838.html

**********

An unmerciful judge

Did it really happen or did I dream it? Is it possible in America -- a land that opens her arms to every kind of people and is always for the underdog -- is it possible that we murdered an innocent, helpless woman? We have TV programs dedicated to the rights of animals!

What is most cruel in my eyes is that we let her murderer watch her die. We gave her murderer all rights over her. This man promised to love honor and cherish her until death do they part, and because he could no longer keep that vow, she had to die. He never gave her the chance to improve. No therapy, no tests of any kind for her. When others in her same condition were making miraculous improvements, she was denied.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/letters/s_323287.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

33. This is great news

We refuse to sell junk food in our cafeteria and don't allow pop or other junk food to be brought in. But we are fighting a losing battle. I am glad to hear an entire state is considering legislation that only makes sense.

[MountainLaurel]

36. Wonder what this will do

For student behavior and the need to medicate children? There's a part of "Super Size Me" that deals with school lunches, and there's a very evocative segment about a school for "troubled youths" that set up a food service contract with a local grocery and restaurant that provided balanced, healthy, organic meals sans preservatives and all the other crap in processed foods. Behavior problems just about disappeared.

[Old sixties guy]

38. Junk food in schools

Thats real,Mountain.Have seen this syndrome over and over again in the school system.Worst classes are always Fifth period,after the kids return from lunch all pumped up with sugar and fat.
I do what I can to educate vis a vis nutrition.The most common refrain is"but it TASTES good".
Exactly what I said when I was sixteen!

[KurtNYC]

41. Welcome Old Sixties Guy!

:-)

I have talked to the people who insist that junk food tastes so damned good that they can't resist it. To which I say how come french fries don't taste good when they are cool? Or soda when it is flat? Or coffee when it has sat for a while?

Americans have a very sweet palate but I think that saying this HFCS-loaded stuff "tastes great" is just an easier reason than what I think is the bigger one. Many Americans eat for the way it feels. Whether that means the drugs in the food, the warmth of the food, the endorphins from spicy or super sour candy or the endorphins secreted when the stomach is over-expanded. It is a chemical rollercoaster that many have little desrie to get off of. The carbonation in soda actually hides much of the flavor. When you drink it flat you can taste how syruppy it is. The carbonation actually helps people drink soda with a higher sugar content. The companies aren't formulating the product for taste so much as they are for the sugar/caffeine rush it can deliver because that is what hooks people.

[Old sixties guy]

44. Junk food

Thanks for the welcome,Kurt.
Good analysis on the food issue.I think a lot of people eat and drink these types of food as a form of self-medication and as a way to alleviate the emptiness in their lives.God knows I did that for quite a while myself!I had some serious health issues develop,however,and that left me with no choice but to"change or die".
The only problem with my rather ascetic diet is that I am out of place at most social functions.The consumtion of donuts,cookies,sodas,etc is de riguer at my job.I am that"weirdo"who won't go along with the program.
Hey,its cool,tho.Just give this weirdo his CHECK every two weeks and there won't be a problem!

[QC]

39. Ron Sparks is a good guy. A Democrat, opposes CAFTA,

supports trade with Cuba and country-of-origin labeling.

He worked in a hosiery mill when he was a teenager, did search and rescue for the Coast Guard, was one of the youngest county commissioners in Alabama history. Imagine that--someone growing up poor, making something of himself, and then going into politics because he wants to help people.

[Deja Q]

43. The junk food corporation won't be happy about this.

I'll also refrain from making jokes based on stereotypes.

[Zhade]

45. GOOD. Soda is horrible for everyone, kids and adults.

High-fructose corn syrup - high FRUIT sugar STARCH syrup - is an abomination!