— From the Las Vegas Review-Journal
Childhood obesity is an unhealthy trend, though surely a major cause is lack of exercise. Kids who sit around using electronic devices aren’t going to be as fit as kids who ride bikes and climb trees.
Although Washington hasn’t yet gotten around to dragooning kids into calisthenics squads, it does intend to take control of their diets.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which led to regulations last month for public school lunches and breakfasts, also outlines requirements for the Agriculture Department to reset nutrition standards for items sold during the school day, known as “competitive foods.”
Based on guidelines in the law, changes to the competitive foods rules may affect fundraising activities by school clubs or sports teams that resell purchased goods, including candy bars and other sweets, Bloomberg News reports. The proposal also would set nutritional limits for food and beverages in vending machines and fast-food items in the cafeteria, including pizza slices.
What does this new piece of regulatory excess mean? “We have Washington deciding if you can hold a bake sale,” says Utah State Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican. “They’ve overstepped their bounds.”
Do you think? How much longer will people be complacent about these ridiculous federal overreaches?
Some schools generate as much as $125,000 a year from selling these “competitive foods,” according to an August 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office. But that’s of little concern to the Nanny State brigade.
“It’s a shame that schools have to raise money, but there’s no reason to turn to fundraisers that undermine health,” said Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an outfit that seeks to impose a national infantocracy. “There’s no need to sell a candy bar when you could sell calendars or light bulbs or fruit baskets.”
So get out there and peddle those 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, kids!
Is it unreasonable to expect that interventions in parents’ menu choices won’t be far behind? Could this logic be used to demand the bulldozing of all doughnut shops that kids might pass on the way to school?
The Agriculture Department as we now know it was invented to prop up U.S. farm prices when they fell after European fields were put back into production after World War I. The department should have been scaled back decades ago. But now the nation’s most superfluous bureaucrats are going to take over our kids’ diet and fitness.
Rebecca Ford, a senior special education teacher at Tooele High School in northwest Utah, told Bloomberg she hopes the bake sales her students help prepare each week won’t be considered too frequent to be allowed.
Her students have autism, Down syndrome and other disabilities. The money is used for educational trips as well as to help students buy tennis shoes their parents can’t afford, she said.
“We tried different healthy items, but it wasn’t the same at all,” she said. “They just sat around and got old. I’m not quite sure what we’ll do.”
Oh, don’t worry, Ms. Ford.
Washington will think of something.
— From the Las Vegas Review-Journal