Anti-snack nanny statism ineffective
It’s funny how people refer to regulations they don’t like as “nanny statism.” Anyway, it may be nanny statism, but I support the move to get junk food out of public schools, given the obesity epidemic. Trouble is, new research shows that these junk food bans don’t do any good:
No matter how the researchers looked at the data, they could find no correlation at all between obesity and attending a school where sweets and salty snacks were available.
“Food preferences are established early in life,” said Jennifer Van Hook, the lead author and a professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. “This problem of childhood obesity cannot be placed solely in the hands of schools.”
This is a fascinating result, because it seems to indicate that food preferences are largely set in the first five years of life, before kids get to school. And, it suggests that any good the school might have done kids during the day, by keeping them away from sugary sodas and high-calorie junk food could be wiped out when they go home. One thing I see these days that we didn’t have when I was growing up: this bizarre practice of giving kids between-meal snacks as a part of anything they do. It seems to me that kids can’t do anything without adults handing them a Capri Sun and a bag of chips at the conclusion. When did this start?
In the end, as with so many things, it all goes back to parenting, and home training.
Even if true, there’s no reason schools should be complicit in encouraging bad food habits.
?
Snacks are a good idea. Even my mom gave us a cookie or an apple when we came home from school.
Schools get benefits from having a vendor’s machine in their hallways. Apparently, food corporations think it’s a profitable idea to pay institutions to house their product. If someone were trying to sell my daughter something outside of my supervision, I’d want to know about it, at least.
In the end, as with so many things, it all goes back to parenting, and home training.
Ain’t it the truth! My 3 yr old daughter couldn’t tell you what soda tastes like. I see parents all the time handing a can of coke to kids the same age. There is a reason obese people have obese kids. To quote a famous (and funny) anti-drug ad from back in the day: “I learned it from you dad!)
Re-vamping agricultural subsidies would change the playing field parents are forced to operate on.
Wait, a professor of sociology and demography said that there is an issue which can not be resolved by a government program?
I agree completely. The eating habits that the parents establish are way more important than what is available at school lunches and vending machines.
I did enjoy growing up with Capri Suns though…
Very frustrating, but not at all surprising. Most doctors have learned time and again that counselling children/families at their well child visits about exercise and weight loss is an exercise in futility. REally, nothing seems to work. 100% of the time one or both parents are obese, and until they decide to change their lives, the children are going to continue their deeply unhealthy eating habits.
I mean, I’ve got to think that whatever kids are snacking on in school is in terms of calories and quality minimal compared to what they’re getting at home (realizing, of course, some kids don’t have a lot of food at home). I also remember my friends and me growing up and eating and drinking all kinds of garbage — Mountain Dew, Doritos, Snickers, etc etc — and remaining of normal size, probably because we were biking all around town in the summer to go play football, baseball, whatever, and playing hockey on the outdoor rinks from the time school was out til well past dark in the winter. I think a lot of the problem is TV, video games, internet, etc.
Should we end the intrusive, nanny-statist bans on drinking and sex in high schools, because they don’t prevent alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and promiscuity outside of instructional hours?
I’ll grant the strawman suppliers this much: the kind of parent who would be worried that their kid was getting fat at school on government-subsidized Lutherburgers is unlikely to be the kind of parent who would supply them at home, and the kid would much less likely be fat in the first place. But I also don’t see any good reason to aid and abet the misery of kids who don’t have those fussy parents.
food preferences are largely set in the first five years of life
I know that “anecdote” is not the singular of “data,” but if this were true then I should never have become the fat teenager I was and the fat pushing-60 adult that I am. My mom never had chips, soda pop, or ice cream in the house; never baked cookies, brownies, or anything else (except birthday cakes (from a mix) once a year); didn’t allow between-meal snacks; and provided three nutritious meals a day and always made us eat our vegetables. Despite this eminently sensible nutritional foundation, I was soon a fat kid who grew up to be a fat adult.
I attribute this not to poor parenting and home training but to the fact that I was a bookish kid, neither talented in nor inclined to sports or outdoor recreation such as fishing or hunting, and when I grew up I pursued an intellectually challenging but entirely sedentary career (software engineering). I eat a reasonably healthy diet, but since I get practically no exercise I never lose weight. There is no way that I can blame that on my folks.
When my wife and I were raising our sons, we gave them nutritious meals but were much less strict than our parents were about snacks and sodas and such. Both our sons (now in their early 30s) are of normal weight and are in much better shape than I ever was. Go figure.
“It’s funny how people refer to regulations they don’t like as ‘nanny statism.’”
Ok. But is it fair to call them nanny-statism when it becomes clear that they don’t work for their intended purposes, but that seems to have no impact on their popularity?
These bans were enacted to combat childhood obesity. If it’s discovered that they do not combat childhood obesity, yet they are still in place, that would seem to argue that they were never really about childhood obesity in the first place. Same with menu labeling and smoking bans and all the rest. If it can be demonstrated that they do not work for their indended purposes (I am not saying that it has been demonstrated in all cases), and yet they persist… what then?
Maybe nanny statism is the wrong word. Nannies, as far as I know, try to work efficiently and effectively. It’s more like Bully Statism. Or… My Aesthetic Sense Is More Important than Yours Statism.
My Aesthetic Sense Is More Important than Yours Statism.
Isn’t this the argument in favor of abstinence-only sex education and the reason for bans on city needle-exchanges? That the policies might be ineffective, but that they fit the aesthetic requirements of their advocates…
That said, these sort of food standards are, at least “do no harm” policies, rather than counterproductive, as “conservative aesthetics” policies tend to be.
What I don’t understand are those like Palin who cry “nanny state” when nutritional changes to school lunches are proposed and say that parents should be the ones who decide what their kids eat. Currently it is the big Ag and big food processors in concert with the USDA who determine appropriate school lunches. If that isn’t nanny-state it surely is crony-state.
Also, if better food choices don’t solve the obesity problem in and of itself, certainly it can’t hurt. How many adults do you know who reverted or converted to better eating habits in adulthood based at least in some part to a good nutritional example set by a trusted authority? Even if eradicating soda machines from campus doesn’t reduce obesity in a 5-year span it at least ensures that a school isn’t making money off of its own students’ entrenchment of bad eating habits.
I have a funny little anecdote. When my brother was around ten or so he had a friend that lived solely on junk food. Almost literally it was all he ate. Our Mom was a bit of a health nut, so needless to say the friend didn’t like coming over too much, for long periods of time anyway. One night he slept over and my Mom wakes up early in the morning to find the kid watching TV eating Coco Puffs. She asks him where it came from, he says: “I called my dad, he brought it over for me.”
I can guarantee that a school junk food ban would have no effect whatsoever on this kid.
Except of course it denies all the kids who do exercise and are thin the right to buy a Snickers every once in a while during lunch.
“Also, if better food choices don’t solve the obesity problem in and of itself”
That’s not what the study found. It didn;’t find that the bans have some positive impact tha tis overwhelmed by other factors. It found that there is no impact. At all.
If I came out with a policy that said, “Everyone in America has to wake up in the morning and scream ‘Sam M is awesome’ out their window,” and I proposed that the reason for this was to reduce the level of cancer, I suspect that a few years later someone might look at the cancer rates. If it was determined that it had no impact at all, but I said, “Well, you know, it’s probably not CAUSING cancer, so it’s not really doing any HARM,” I think you might ask what’s really going on here.
It’s not like some people didn’t predict it would have no impact. Just like the calorie counts, which were justified ion the basis of public health.
There has been no impact on public health. Some people happen to like them. But they were not sold as, “A few people might like it that way.” That is not a justification for a law, nor for fining people who refuse to comply with it.
I have no desire for my kid to have easy access to candy bars or Pepsi. If I owned or controlled the school property, as a school board member, I would probably vote not to have such machines on the property I was charged with managing.
And yet, I would vote against any overarching law to ban other school boards from deciding otherwise.
Just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean it would be a good law.
I think it’s a good idea for teenage girls to wear proper clothes. I do not think a law banning halter tops is a good idea. Etc. Even though such a law would “do no harm,” except perhaps to teenage boys.
So ridiculous.
In the end, as with so many things, it all goes back to parenting, and home training.
It certainly does. Though I think it would be hard for kids not to draw the conclusion, if only subconsciously, that, if the school is making junk food available, the school is subtly endorsing its consumption, regardless of what the teacher in health class might say. But in general, teaching kids to question attitudes that their school appears to be endorsing is, in my opinion, a good thing.
“the obesity epidemic.” the solution to the obesity epidemic is exercise pure and simple. when I was in grade school we got a 15 minute recess in the morning, 30 minutes for lunch and another 15 minute recess in the p.m. the time during recess and lunch was spent running around burning off energy
take a look at the schools and see how little time is spent on PE
I’m against nanny-statism in general. However, when we’re talking about the public schools where our children spend 6 to 8 hours a day and the gubmint has an in loco parentis responsibility, nanny-statism seems entirely appropriate.