In what universe are candy bars NOT junk food?
Posted June 17th, 2009 by Joan BladesWhich of the following is considered a junk food according to national school nutrition standards?
A. Hi-C Blast – vitamin fortified sugar water
B. Poland Springs seltzer water – water with bubbles
C. French fries
D. Candy Bars
If you guessed A, C or D you’d be wrong. Believe it or not, seltzer water is the only item on this list banned as a junk food because it doesn’t contain any vitamins or minerals. Yup, french fries, candy bars, and Hi-C aren’t officially considered junk food. That’s just crazy when you consider that children ages 6-11 are four times more likely to be obese than children were a generation ago.[1] Four times! Today nearly one-third of all children are overweight or obese, placing them at heightened risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and many other serious diseases.[2]
Time for an update! Sign our petition today — it will be hand delivered to Members of Congress June 24th:
http://action.momsrising.org/cms/sign/petition_1925/
The petition says: “Please update outdated nutrition standards immediately to ensure our schools provide healthy food for our children!”
In what universe are candy bars NOT junk food? The USDA’s school nutrition standards were developed in the 1970′s and are no longer consistent with nutrition science or current concerns regarding childhood health. For example, USDA does not consider candy bars, snack cakes, or french fries to be junk foods in schools. USDA standards don’t even address calories, saturated, and trans fats or sodium.
Right now Congress is discussing ways to reduce health care costs in America. Improving nutrition in schools is one no-brainer answer.
Sign on our petition and we’ll get it delivered to the U.S. Capitol next week. June 24th is Capitol Hill Advocacy Day for our friends at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They’ve offered to deliver our petition along with your comments to our leaders in D.C. In fact, they have already arranged breakfast, lunch and meetings in-between with members of Congress on the Hill. Let’s make sure they have a huge number of names signed onto the petition along with comments from us to deliver! Our voices are key to letting Congress know that mothers and fathers care deeply about making sure our children can eat healthy food at school.
Sign the petition today!
http://action.momsrising.org/cms/sign/petition_1925/
[1],[2] Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Statement Regarding Release of Estimates of Obesity Prevalence Among U.S. Children and Teens, http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/product.jsp?id=31611, Beyond Health Care – New Directions to a Healthier America, Robert Wood Johnson Commission to Build a Healthier America, p. 7. http://www.commissiononhealth.org/Report.aspx?Publication=64498
Joan Blades is co-founder of MomsRising and MoveOn, as well as co-author of a forthcoming book titled The Custom-Fit Workplace, to be released Labor Day 2010.
8 Comments
July 17, 2009 at 4:32 pm by RoxanneRecently I dropped off my two-year old at daycare a little late and caught her class at breakfast time. They were feeding them Little Debbie’s Pecan Spinwheels snack cakes as a ‘grain’. When I asked about this I was told it was in the USDA program so it was fine. I wrote to the USDA and they confirmed that yes it was a credible item because it contains “enriched flour”!!!! However, the Dietician for the USDA who responded did say that because the Spinwheels contained three types of sugar: Corn syrup, Sugar, and High Fructose Corn Syrup, there was a concern for it potentially containing too much sugar. She asked me for the name of the school because she thought the portion size may be inappropriate for a child of two. They are investigating. I am shocked at the sugary and unhealthy snacks the USDA allows.
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June 18, 2009 at 6:18 pm by Chico Lunch LadyAs a parent of 3 healthy beautiful children and as a Director of Nutrition Services I am very disappointed in this information. Proper research was not done prior to sending this information out. I view this as a scare tactic to get a response. Public schools have some of the strictest nutritional standards and in California we have some of the strictist.
I take great pride in my job and feeding the future.
Take a look at the USDA web site and it’s requirements for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs. I think you’ll be surprised with what you read.
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June 18, 2009 at 4:52 pm by Cynthia FlanneryI love the work of Mom’s Rising and I only recently became aware of that work. We all need to get involved with our children’s health in new ways–this means coming together as a community of intelligent, thinking people who question what our schools are doing, question the food industry, and question the FDA. Our work at Grow Green Families, a new social enterprise, is focused on food and families. We want to help families raise healthy kids and teens. Please check out our new site.
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June 18, 2009 at 3:09 pm by joan katinasI agree, big time!!
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Andrea Reply:
June 18th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
@joan katinas,
I’m new to blogging and hit the reply button to Joan Katinas. I meant to reply to the post of Meredith.
Meredith,
Thank you for posting your thoughts on the petition to the government. It is valuable to have a voice from the population that is faced with these food choices in the public school systems.
I talk with my children about appropriate food choices almost every day, three times a day, while they are happily or unhappily eating their fruits and vegetables. I buy no highly-processed food products, and when my kids do get them, it’s with the understanding that it’s a treat, not something their bodies can have too often. They play, dance, tumble, climb and do all the joyful movement activities a three- and five-year old boy can do. They get their treats too so that they don’t get too fixated on a forbidden food, but it’s mixed in with plenty of healthy food, activities and sleep.
Their little pre-school teaches a unit on nutrition which stresses fruits and vegetables and high-fiber foods as healthy snack choices. And then they go to their snack tables and eat donuts or brownies or M&M chocolate chip cookies. The disconnect makes me crazy, and confuses the kids. Foods they see at the top of the food pyramid, to be eaten sparingly, is in their experience consumed as much as fruits and vegetables.
My discussions with the school administration echo this larger nationwide discussion about the responsibility of our government to educate its youngest citizens on a lifetime of healthy food choices. Everybody has to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Kraft, Archer-Daniels Midland, Nabisco — they all spend enough money on advertising to lure children and adults into consuming far too much enjoyable but unhealthy foods without our government providing its tacit approval of this continual all-throughout-the day junk-food snacking.
Those aforementioned corporations will certainly use their considerable resources to keep the sizeable sales territory the public school system represents to fight this petition. All we have are our voices, limited time, and a little bit o’ money for donations to support the fight to teach our kids a lifetime of healthy nutrition habits. And our love.
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Yeah, most of you won’t like this but considering I’m a young adult and have been in the school system recently and still in the university school system, I have the most recent and first hand knowledge of their food.. SO here it is.. the cold hard truth of the matter that many don’t want to see, accept or handle.
So, I’ve been seeing this on the news, getting forwards for petitions to sign it, parents rising against the food the “government” is feeding their kids… right… What a crock of BS. You wanna know who is at fault for kids getting fat??? That’s right.. it’s their parents fault!
If your kid is fat then it’s your fault. Not the school system. Growing up in public school myself I took both packed lunches for a long time and later started buying school lunches. Yes, there were vending machines at the school but the actual cafeteria did not serve the candy bar and etc as part of the actual lunch. You could as a parent not give your child money to buy stuff from the vending machine… and even if they had their own money to buy stuff from the vending machine, You could make them work/exercise/play it off! You could make a check out to the school and pay for a weeks worth of lunches at a time or longer, thus not actually handing your child the money…. You could pack your child’s lunch for him or her to take to school… You could make your kid get off their butts and go play outside and not let them stay inside and play video games after school was over… AND!!! once they are old enough you could push them into getting a job.. where there would be physical involvement!
The School System isn’t making your kid fat… YOU are letting your kid get fat! Now grow up and deal with it yourself and stop blaming the government.
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June 18, 2009 at 11:02 am by cynthia calkinI agree with the petition
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June 18, 2009 at 12:29 am by stan zantarskiI’m clearly not a mom, but I hope more moms get involved with their children’s health. I cannot believe this story. Please consider getting involved with health care at Organizing for America at barackobama.com.
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