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.