I was definitely heartened
to read this story today. It is a great positive step to curbing the childhood
obesity epidemic.
CHICAGO (AP) — Laws strictly curbing school sales of junk food and
sweetened drinks may play a role in slowing childhood obesity, according to a study
that seems to offer the first evidence such efforts could pay off.
Please click the link
to read the whole story.
In fact while I was at my poetry workshop at Esalen in Big Sur, CA last month I wrote a rant about junk food – triggered by the word junk, one of a list of ten given in a daily prompt. (See the Scary Seven at the bottom of this post, courtesy of Naturally Savvy.)
A picture prettier than the rant
(the Big Sur coast)
Here’s
the rant:
Junk food
is a business.
Junk food
is an addiction
Eating
junk food is an epidemic
Can you
imagine that recent studies
show that
obesity in children
is not
related to their
consumption
of junk food
in the schools?
Can you
imagine
they say
children form
their
eating habits at home,
so why
worry about limiting
their
junk food consumption
outside
the home?
Can you
imagine why?
Of
course, you guessed it.
The
schools get a profit –
probably a
huge profit
from those
ubiquitous vending machines
that spit
forth,
with the
drop of a few coins,
a constant
supply of
high-sugar
soft drinks, chocolate bars,
chocolate
chip cookies, and chips.
You name
it, if it’s junk, it’s there.
The food
hustlers entice school management
to allow
them to put the machines on their sites
in
exchange for bonuses.
The food
hustlers are only
about
selling and money.
The food
hustlers could care less
about
healthy children.
And then
on top of all that
these
poor children eat
burgers
dripping with cheese
or pizza practically
every night
for
dinner at home.
So the
problem is not only in the schools.
Their
mothers are too busy
or too
uninformed
to make
them a proper meal.
Just go
to any school at noon
and see
those little chubby guys
stuffing
their faces
instead
of moving their butts
out in
the playground.
How
astonishing that parents and teachers
allow this
behavior.
The
children eat and binge
binge and
eat.
until they
become
a
generation that will not survive
long
enough to become viable adults.
They will
be too sick with heart problems
and
diabetes to work and have a family,
We need
to act.
We need
to take the plunge
and get
that junk stuff out of the school
and off our
pantry shelves
Neither
our families nor our nation
can
afford to do anything less.
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