How unsurprising it was this week that the federal government has chosen to address the symptom of junk-food at schools as if it were the problem.
New rules from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that won’t take effect until the 2014 school year telling public schools what they can and can’t serve as snacks from vending machines will likely do little to reduce the ever-expanding waistlines of American children.
There’s no doubt the United States and even Colorado, often hailed as the country’s “thinnest” state, has a real problem.
State health officials say the obesity rate here in Colorado has grown considerably faster than elsewhere in the nation. Even though Colorado residents are known for leading healthy lives, the number of obese Coloradans grew from 10 percent of the population to 19 percent in just six years. The state obesity rate increased by 89 percent, compared to the U.S. obesity rate increase of 67 percent.
It’s a dangerous trend. Obesity not only causes serious illness, and debilitating illnesses even earlier in life for obese children, but those illnesses are helping drive a huge increase in spending for health care. And American children are battling the bulge at an even more alarming rate than adults.
So federal officials have decided that by taking candy and sugary pop out of school vending machines and replacing them with granola bars, trail mix and fat-free chips, the pounds will start dropping.
The ill-conceived plan is disappointing for a host of reasons.
First off, the new rules ignore the reality that American children eat too many calories and get too little exercise. By endorsing this plan, the government makes it clear that by replacing Twinkies and Cokes with granola bars and apple juice, the pounds will start slipping away. In reality, many of the snacks on the “approved” list have the same or more calories than do the forbidden fruit being expelled from school break rooms and cafeterias.
While there are many theories about human nutrition and dieting, scientific consensus makes it clear that the biggest problem is that calories burned must exceed calories consumed. For far too many kids in Aurora and all across the country, that’s not the case. These new rules do nothing to address what parents send kids to school with.
What’s really missing is an acknowledgment that inactivity in and out of school is as much to blame as is the choice of snack food. Increasingly, Colorado schools are ratcheting down recess time and other exercise programs at a time they should be increased. And study after study shows that American adults, like their children, are becoming increasingly sedentary. Americans watch more TV, more movies, and play more video games than ever. Bad habits at home only make for bad habits at school.
Rather than spend so much time treating the system of obese children, federal and state officials need to find ways to get kids active in school and subsequently at home.
Choice of snacks are important, but addressing binge eating and being complicit in keeping kids too still for too long are the real problems.