Cash-strapped school systems have found a new source of funds in willing manufacturers of soda, candy and snacks who want to install vending machines or even full-scale fast-food operations in schools, conference attendees noted.

These collaborations with private enterprise, when combined with intense marketing of food inside and out of schools, raise questions about the real purpose of education, said Alec Molnar, Ph.D., of Arizona State University.

“Are our schools here to educate our children or to be a platform for advertisers?” Molnar asked.

“Schools contribute to the weight problems by offering too much bad nutrition and too little physical activity,” said David Foulk, Ph.D., of Florida State University. “At the same time, the new emphasis on high-stakes testing means that schools are concentrating on core subjects like reading, math and science while eliminating art, music and physical education.”

As strong as the forces that encourage obesity and inactivity are, parents, educators and public health officials must make the effort to reverse their effects, said former Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., who now teaches at the Morehouse School of Medicine.

“In the past, so much was done to encourage bad health habits that we now need to have the home, schools and community work together to develop good habits,” Satcher said.

Robert Gottlieb, Ph.D., of Occidental College pointed out the link between the lack of access to fresh, healthy foods in schools and the communities they serve and a reliance on fast food or junk foods.

However, worse than the ready access to foods of minimal nutrition, he said, is the fact that students pay for it out of their own pockets.

Gottleib said, “Why should poor students, who get free lunches, have to dip into their own pockets to pay for food which is bad for them?”

To read more from the HHS conference, “Obesity and the Built Environment,” go here.

-- Aaron Levin, Health Behavior News Service