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, the scientists noted
at a Department of Health and Human Services conference on obesity and
the environment.
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.
While children are enticed by more calories available at school, they
also have fewer chances to burn them during the school day. Many kids ride
the school bus twice a day, attend classes without time for recess and,
adding to the problem, spend their time after school in front of a computer,
the television or a video game console.
“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. “So how can we make schools good
environments for nutrition and life-long physical activity?”
Robert Gottlieb, Ph.D., of Occidental College pointed out the contradiction
between the lack of access to fresh, healthy foods in schools and the communities
they serve, and a reliance of 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?”
Gottlieb has worked with inner-city high school students
in Los Angeles to draw “food maps” of schools and neighborhoods,
then get the students to document what food choices are available and
where.
He’s also organized Farm-to-School projects, sending
fresh, locally grown food into school cafeterias.
“Changing this system is possible,” Gottlieb said. “It’s
going to be difficult, but it is possible.”
