Boo Hoo, Mountain Dew!

Schools in Centerville, Ohio, have yanked the super-sweetened, super-caffeinated, antifreeze-resembling Mountain Dew from the grubby clutches of their ADHD-ridden little monsters, er, students. Gone too are other Pepsi soda products. In their place are "noncarbonated drinks like water and Gatorade" reports the Dayton Daily News.

Centerville city schools are trying to put better health on the plate by weaning students from soda pop.

The move, part of a national trend, marks a shift from a 1990s-era love affair with soda pop giants, who showered school systems with big bucks for inking exclusive contracts.

The Centerville school board opted to can soda in high school vending machines and lunch lines this year. It's also considering bagging junk food like candy and chips.

Centerville's soda ban follows similar moves by districts in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. A California state law banning the sale of soda and junk food in all public elementary schools takes effect next year. As critics focus on rising obesity rates, the sweet taste of soda bucks seems to be fading.

A couple of observations:

First, Centerville is not banning kids from bringing soda to school. That bit of freedom is good but it also points to how useless this sort of ban is if its real point is to turn would-be adolescent porkers into mini-Schwarzeneggers. Nnot that the sort of thing should be the focus of public schools that already suck at teaching math and reading.

Second, one of the few things that got me and my schoolmates through the days at good ol' St. Mary's grammar school 30 years ago was precisely the gloriously overstocked candy counter in the dreary cafeteria. After quaffing a half-pint of cheap orange brink that could instantly induce a diabetic coma in anyone over 20, we would pony up nickels and dimes for everything from Lemonheads to Mike & Ike to five varieties of Turkish Taffy to a full range of Now & Laters to Mary Janes to Sugar Daddys to Black Cows to Sugar Babies to Atomic Fireballs to you name it. Some of us got fat, some of us got skinny, and most of us got cavities.

But the larger point is that what's for lunch in schools is hardly the motive force behind society-wide trends in weight. Given that, it's unlikely that anything schools do will reverse them. School boards would be serving their students better by focusing more on their core function, education, preferably by creating more competition among themselves. And by spending less time on things like soda and candy bans.

[Link courtesy Free-Market.Net]

Comments

[xray]

Mountain Dew in Canada is caffeine free, ’cause regs say that only brown fizzy drinks can have that little something extra. For most kids, the Canadian Dew was not popular, although it’s color did merit a chuckle.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

The whole vending machine issue is very consistent to the model of pre-college “education”: control, control, control. Sit straight. Look forward. Walk in line. Follow the bell. Eat at this appointed time. Exercise in the yard (but stay inside the fence).

Eliminating choice in vending machine snacks conditions our young people for the food police later in life.

[sarah]

Drinking soda doesn’t make modern kids fat. Sitting around in front of the PS2 for seven hours straight makes them fat.

[dhex]

here’s something i’ve yet to see a good answer on, and maybe i haven’t looked hard enough – why are those willing to regulate, tax and otherwise control from a macro level the food intake of children and to a lesser degree adults not willing to take the most obvious step and create incentives for exercise programs, or mandatory exercise programs with actual bite – not just walkin’ around the track like a buncha snails, etc?

both ideas are pretty heinous to me but one of them would actually get results.

[dhex]

and i disagree about the soda thing – soda is easily the worst shit you could put in your body that’s not an ingredient in airplane fuel. it’s really fucking bad news all around.

[Mo]

I don’t see why this is eliminating choice. Kids can still bring their own sodas. Why isn’t it considered eliminating choice when the vending machines are only stocked with Coke products? As long as they don’t mandate what parents can give their kids, I have no problem with this policy. If I remember correctly, there weren’t any vending machines at my school until I got to high school and this was pretty recently.

[anon on]

I think many kids don’t get enough sleep at night. I have freinds who conmplain their 2nd graders can’t get up for school in the morning, yet those kids are up past 10 watching TV.

Also, the four hours of homework situation was expalined to me by my sister as due to so much disruption in class since teachers are not allowed to punish students, so more work has to be done at home. Anyone else her this?

[jon. b]

Does anybody consider that we don’t send our kids to school so that the schools can sell them as a captive audience to companies in the first place?

[Glen]

Besides, this gives the school board something they can actually do, as opposed to strengthening education, which they obviously can’t do.

[Curt Warner]

Maybe they can hook up a Diet Pepsi Slurpee machine at the schools now. That’d be nice.

[Ersatz Datura]

I’m torn about this. Yeah, as a kid, I looked foward to the treats more than anything. I drank soda, never exercised unless it was something I enjoyed (as in, I hated organized sports and forced exercise). And now… well, I’m still not overweight. But having a lunch I hated and being forced to exercise still stand out as low points in school.
But then, I think that control of what a child eats should be in the hands of the parent, not of the child. Giving a kid money for lunch doesn’t ensure that they’ll buy healthy food. Why have it available?
I don’t think of kids so much as little piles of goop to be molded as much as they need to be nudged along paths. There’s gotta be a way to make things enjoyable and healthy…

[dagny]

What’s the obsession with non-carbonated products as somehow healthier? Have they ever looked on the ingredients list of most juice drinks (many of which are marketed as healthy “juice” but are really dyed sugarwater)? And if the schools didn’t want kids to live on junk, maybe they could offer food that didn’t suck. Or let high schoolers go out to lunch.

[Murrel Rhodes]

Wow! Such hostility! sounds like you’re still on chocolate frosted sugar bombs. I always wondered why the schools had vending machines anyway – although I won’t judge others eating habits, it sure seems that the schools mission is not making money off of a poor kids sweet tooth. If you want sugar bombs, bring em from home – or won’t your mom let have any …

[Citizen]

They ought to stop all busing and carpool systems and make kids walk to school. Yeah that’s it, then they’d HAVE to get their excercise.

I’ll tell you what else would be helpful in slimming kids down – fit teachers. How can admin expect the kids to lose weight when their 2nd period english teacher is a lardass?

[harDCore]

I think this is a great idea, finally some progressive thinking among educators. A huge middle finger to soda and candy companies for lining their pockets off the decay of poor kids’ teeth. Along with this program they should have a good lesson in their health class about nutrition. As my old coach used to say “SUGAR TURNS TO FAT, FASTER THAN FAT TURNS TO FAT.”

[Sean]

A lot more kids are going to be sleeping through class. Unless there’s coffee for sale. This doesn’t surprise me though, just adds to my opinion that Ohio is the shittiest state in the country. Yes, it’s worse than Delaware (the France of the US).

[Scott Harris]

No problem with this policy at all. There is no harm done to learning by limiting the sugar intake of kids. And if someone is being PAID to pay attention to diet, why not applaud them for making a reasnably wise decision?

That’s like saying janitors should not be thanked for keeping the schools clean because their activity is not directly linked to learning. So what? Are pig sty schools the answer?

I’m all for breaking up the public education monopoly, but attacking them for making GOOD decisions seems a little bit extreme.

[s.m. koppelman]

In their place are “noncarbonated drinks like water and Gatorade”

Gatorade? Doesn’t that have as much sucrose in it as soda?

And apart from some high school athletes, how many kids have any use for spoonfuls of mineral salts in their drinks?

[Anonymous]

Sean,

The solution to kids sleeping in class is more recess (physical activity), not sugar induced high. When I was in grade school in the 70’s, we walked to school, arrived early to play with our friends, had a morning recess (20 minutes), a lunch recess (45 minutes) and another afternoon recess (20 minutes). Then, we walked home (1 mile for me.)

My 3 children now have one recess period per day so more time can be spent on learning. Meanwhile, back at the homestead, when my 5th grader gets 4 hours of homework on Thursday night, I’m smart enough to break up her “work” sessions into small parts with ample breaks because her brain works better that way.

Exercise stimulates the brain. Processed sugar gives a temporary artificial high that nose-dives into a sugar induced depression after it wears off. Playing horse, or chasing my daughter around the coffee table releases her mental stress and renews her mind. Its not even close.

[Steve]

In a macrocosm for libertarianism in the world at-large, when my high-school banned the soda vending machines 5 years ago, they also allowed us to bring soda from home. So my friend and I brought several cases of wholesale-priced soda from home, plus coolers and ice, and resold it at vending machine prices. We made $400 on the year — not bad for poor high schoolers. It was the best thing public school ever did for my livelihood.

[Mark S.]

“They ought to stop all busing and carpool systems and make kids walk to school. Yeah that’s it, then they’d HAVE to get their excercise.”

Dear lord, we can’t have that. There are perverts and child molesters and homosexuals hiding behind every bush and tree just waiting to violate our youth! Besides, walking is so 20th century.

[Kevin B. O'Reilly]

I have no problem at all with getting rid of vending machines in schools. I don’t think what kids eat in schools has much to do with the obesity problem, but I don’t think government-run schools should be contributing to the problem by making a profit off kids.

Now, on to school lunches, whose contents are determined by which agricultural interest give the most money to politicians and bureaucrats.

That said, allowing parents to choose their schools is the best way of dealing with this, along with that pesky learning problem.

[Scott Harris]

Meanwhile, ever since he was 4 years old, my son (now in 13 and in 8th grade) has caused his teachers to “recommend” medication so he can better concentrate. The fact that he is a perennial A/B student is not important. Only the fact that he cannot manage to hold focus and concentrate for hours on end holds sway with them. Although he has NEVER threatened or been disrespectful to his teachers (by their own testimony, not a biased father’s viewpoint), he has been labelled disruptive because he ……….DAYDREAMS. H*ly Sh*t!

Rather than adjust to the realities of the natural make-up of children, today’s teachers are treating them as though their minds should work like adults. And even then, this ignores the fact that factory workers are given regular morning, lunch and afternoon breaks because IT INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY, QUALITY, HEALTH AND SAFETY. And they wonder why it doesn’t work.

Regular exercise breaks, repetitive teaching drills, and an understanding of the limitations of children would go a long way toward getting better over all performance from teachers, schools, and students. But they would rather exasperate the kids at school, send nasty notes home so Mom and Dad can also tell the kids how BAD they are, and load them up with so much homework it disrupts family life and other learning of life skills that can only be effectively taught by parents.

Yes, you can probably sense my frustration – and all three of my children are HONOR STUDENTS. I can scarcely imagine the frustration of parents whose children actually have learning difficulties.

[Scott Harris]

Sean,

That post above was by me. I forgot to put my name in.

[alkali]

There is no harm done to learning by limiting the sugar intake of kids.

Of course there isn’t. The question is whether there is real harm to the rights of human beings to make free choices. Fully appreciating that there are some choices that high school students shouldn’t be permitted to make — buying cigarettes, carrying a concealed weapon, joining the French Foreign Legion — I fail to see that there is any compelling interest in preventing a 16-year-old kid from having a Coke if he or she wants one. I don’t consider myself a libertarian, but this comes very close to paternalism for paternalism’s sake.

[Citizen]

Yup Steve, we used to sell blue BlowPops and Carmel Apple suckers for 50 cents a pop. We couldn’t keep those things in stock.

I don’t mind that admins want to ban soda sales. But it bothers me that they think this will actually curb obesity. Kids are fat because they don’t move their muscles and because they make crappy food choices. Water was always available. Milk was always available. Kids chose out of that. They threw away the carrot sticks their mothers gave them. I don’t know why anyone thinks they won’t do the same now. The schools just won’t be profiting.

[dhex]

i always thought organized sports were enjoyable and healthy on the high school level, if one can look past the varying degrees of sado-surrealist tortures involved. football was a lot of fun, though my coaches certainly violated more than a few geneva convention rules and i certainly wanted to kill them on more than one occasion.

[Anonymous]

Not only do the other drinks come loaded with sugar, is there any “Diet Gatorade” out there? I’m unfamiliar with it if there is. But I do know that EVERY soda vending machine I’ve ever seen has diet soda choices in them.

[Stinky Smelly]

YUM junk food. schools should have more junk food and pop, there isn’t enough! at my school they banned you from all sweets, so at home i pig out like an elephant cuz i get chocolate cravings. my friend is 5’1” and weighs 190 pounds, if anything, we need to fatten her up! by the way, i am 4’9” and weigh 296 pounds, and am perfeclty happy with how i look

[*sigh*]

Someone explain the actual reason WHY they have this Mountain Dew law in Canada =