America remains such a wealthy nation that even our problems must cause many of the world\u2019s peoples to scratch their heads in wonder. Take childhood obesity.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an unhealthy trend, though surely a major cause is lack of exercise. Parents don\u2019t feel as safe sending their kids out for unsupervised play as grandma did, and kids who sit around using electronic devices aren\u2019t going to be as fit as kids who ride bikes and climb trees.<\/p>\n
While Washington hasn\u2019t yet gotten around to dragooning kids into calisthenics squads, though, it does intend to take control of their diets.<\/p>\n
\u201cFederal regulators, fresh off a contentious nutritional overhaul of U.S. school meals that replaced fried chicken patties with chef salads,\u201d — a two-year fight that required congressional intervention, including a compromise on categorizing pizza as a vegetable — \u201care now preparing the first standards for snacks, sodas and other foods sold outside of regularly scheduled lunch and breakfast,\u201d Bloomberg News reported this week. \u201cThat means vending machines, concession stands,\u201d and, yes, bake sales.<\/p>\n
Should kids be discouraged from filling up on chips and monster soda pops? Of course. But this new piece of regulatory excess means \u201cWe have Washington deciding if you can hold a bake sale,\u201d says Utah State Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican. \u201cThey\u2019ve overstepped their bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danny Fisher, an author and 42-year-old mother raising five boys in Zanesville, Ohio, says too much emphasis is being placed on limiting food choices when the focus should be on increasing exercise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of banning unhealthy food choices is paramount to Prohibition,\u201d Ms. Fisher told Bloomberg in an interview by email, perhaps searching for the word \u201ctantamount.\u201d \u201cWe all know how well that worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Fisher has a point. More and healthier menu choices sound great, but the Los Angeles Times reported last fall that schoolkids there are dumping in the trash entire exotic meals they don\u2019t like, while teachers are making extra cash smuggling in candy and sodas to sell to their young charges, for all the world like prison guards sneaking contraband to their own inmates.<\/p>\n
Seems to me there might once have been a role here for parents, here, as well.<\/p>\n
Instead, the \u201cHealthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010\u201d (note how every law imposing Draconian new central-state restrictions now has to contain the word \u201cfree\u201d), which led to regulations last month for lunches and breakfasts, also outlines requirements for the Agriculture Department to reset nutrition standards for items sold during the school day, known as \u201ccompetitive foods.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agency claims jurisdiction since it oversees the federal school-lunch program, which provides low-cost and free lunches in public and non-profit private schools — sort of like saying that because you gave the homeless guy five dollars, you can now attempt to prevent him from buying beer or smokes.<\/p>\n
Based on guidelines in the law, changes to the competitive foods rules may affect fund-raising activities by school clubs or sports teams that resell purchased goods, including candy bars and other sweets, Bloomberg reports.<\/p>\n
Industry lobbying over the lunch standards led Congress to block an earlier USDA proposal that would have set limits on French fries and starchy vegetables, and increased the amount of tomato sauce required in pizza. The new rules for \u201ccompetitive foods\u201d will create controversy as well, since schools rely on such products for fundraisers, admits Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an outfit which has never met a radical nanny-state proposal it didn\u2019t love.<\/p>\n
But the new rules for \u201ccompetitive foods\u201d are necessary to ensure schools don\u2019t undermine parents\u2019 efforts to provide better nutrition at home, Wootan argues. (Am I wrong, or could this logic be used to demand the bulldozing of all donut shops that kids might pass on the way to school?)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame that schools have to raise money, but there\u2019s no reason to turn to fundraisers that undermine health,\u201d Wootan said. \u201cThere\u2019s no need to sell a candy bar when you could sell calendars or light bulbs or fruit baskets.\u201d<\/p>\n
So get out there and peddle those 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, kids! Oh, wait …<\/p>\n
Note the language, here. The concern is over \u201ccompetitive foods\u201d — where school lunches were once considered supplements to home nutrition, now anything that breaks the government\u2019s 24\/7 control over childhood behaviors is suspect, branded unwelcome \u201ccompetition.\u201d Is it unreasonable to expect interventions in parents\u2019 menu choices won\u2019t be far behind?<\/p>\n
(\u201cOh, Vin, it\u2019s not an ideal world. We see parents who don\u2019t FEED their kids.\u201d So the answer is to encourage more of this behavior by rewarding it whenever found? Those parents all went to your mandatory schools with their mandatory nutrition classes, right? Are you ready to admit the whole nanny-state model has failed?)<\/p>\n
The Agriculture Department as we now know it was invented to prop up U.S. farm prices when they fell after European fields were put back into production after the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans aren\u2019t starving, obviously. The USDA, which now employs more \u201cextension agents\u201d in some counties than there are farmers, should have been eliminated decades ago. Instead, the do-gooders invent new tasks for this vastly expensive farm welfare agency. Now the nation\u2019s most superfluous bureaucrats are going to take over our kids\u2019 diet and fitness, based on the excuse that they\u2019ve spent the past half-century propping up farm incomes by handing out \u201cfood pyramid\u201d charts that over-represented the need for dairy, while force-feeding America\u2019s youth below-cost breaded veal cutlets and pasteurized processed orange \u201ccheese food product\u201d!<\/p>\n
Some schools generate as much as $125,000 a year from selling these \u201ccompetitive foods,\u201d according to an August, 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n
The \u201cmisplaced overregulation\u201d may squelch income used by schools already facing the $3.2 billion cost of adopting the new, supposedly lunch and breakfast requirements, according to Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Ford, a senior special education teacher at Tooele High School in northwest Utah, told Bloomberg she hopes the bake sales her students help prepare each week won\u2019t be considered too frequent to be allowed. Her students have autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities. The money is used for educational trips as well as to help students buy tennis shoes their parents can\u2019t afford, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt teaches them money skills,\u201d Ms. Ford explains. \u201cWe tried different healthy items, but it wasn\u2019t the same at all. They just sat around and got old. I\u2019m not quite sure what we\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, don\u2019t worry. Washington will think of something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
America remains such a wealthy nation that even our problems must cause many of the world\u2019s peoples to scratch their heads in wonder. Take childhood obesity. It\u2019s an unhealthy trend, though surely a major cause is lack of exercise. Parents don\u2019t feel as safe sending their kids out for unsupervised play as grandma did, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-fE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}