Of kids and cookies
There have been two good pieces of good news in the fight against child obesity today.
First: the Government has come up with enough money to allow the Health Sponsorship Council to get back sole naming rights for the annual “Smokefree” Rockquest in which secondary school rock bands battle it out for supremacy. Coke was co-sponsor, but the HSC was uncomfortable with the conflicting health messages the soft drink company’s sponsorship brought about.
Second: Guidelines to help schools and children understand which drinks are good for their health and which are not have been unveiled. A traffic light system - green means go, amber means hold on a minute, red means stop - is being developed. The Herald reports that the amount of sugary drinks kids consume is a good indicator of how much weight they put on, and Otago University human nutritionist Rachael Taylor believes schools are a good place to start changing kids’ bad habits. What’s really needed, though, is for the Health Ministry to set guidelines outlining what food schools should be selling and what they’re shouldn’t. But this is definitely a step in the right direction.
May 27th, 2005 at 9:49 am
any guidelines, without scrutiny/regulations on the food and drink industries that push poisonous sugar/sodium laden crap at us with no thought to any future health consequences, will be doomed to irrelevancy..
and will be the equivalent of re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic..
these wild west industries must be regulated as to the content of their products before any dent can be made in the ever-worsening obesity epidemic..
May 27th, 2005 at 11:01 am
Obesity is just the visible part of the health issue.. as big an impact has to be the loss of opportunity for education. The schools presented in Supersize Me were pretty compelling evidence, not only of the effects of a change in diet can have on behaviour, but of the proper role of good governance in mandating healthy options.
In response to the inevitable squarking of the junk food industry, the government should be demanding they (we) get value for the billions spent on education - money that is devalued, if not wasted, when kids are unreceptive due to being zoned out on junk food.
It’s ridiculous that the response to the issue has to be yet another education campaign, pitting yet-more taxpayer dollars against endless advertising dollars. It’ll have an impact, probably the more aware students will wind up conflicted about another choice, and the majority will continue as-is.
A (suitably) more aggressive posture would be to produce minimum requirements for products sold in schools and it’s up to the manufacturers to produce products meeting those standards. Why on earth do we accept the need for OSH standards on playgrounds, product safety standards on bicycles and school equipment, and yet play the ‘education game’ when it comes to food products?
May 27th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
I actually just saw Super Size Me last night. Very compelling argument for avoiding processed foods. I had already cut out fast food from the diet - now I’m going to try to cut out sodas and do more shopping at the organic store.
Problem is, of course, oranges.
I love organges, and the organic store only has those tiny oranges that are messy and taste… ech. For the big navel oranges, you have to go to the big supermarket.
I really, really like navel oranges.