The Senate Agriculture Committee recently held a hearing on school nutrition that has inspired the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) to keep driving toward national action that will help get junk food out of the public school system. Congress could move this year to restrict junk food sales in public schools, while lawmakers search for a way to conquer the national epidemic of obesity.
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• The Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act calls on
the USDA to update what CSPI says are "disco-era
nutrition standards" for school
foods (e.g., vending machines, school stores, and a la carte in the cafeteria).
• The Act would take the USDA's current standards of limiting the sale of foods of minimal value, currently applicable only to cafeterias during meal times, and extend it to apply throughout the school day and everywhere on school grounds.
• The USDA's current standards allow the sale of candy bars, cookies, and sugary fruit-flavored drinks containing very little real
fruit juice, while disallowing things like seltzer water and breath mints.
• Despite increasing rates of obesity in children and teens, the
Senate hasn't held a hearing on the sale of junk foods in
schools since 2003.
• "Though many states and local school districts are undertaking heroic efforts to improve the nutritional quality of foods sold in schools, the junk-food
industry fights those efforts tooth and nail," said
CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan.
• "The industry likes to say school foods should be subject to local controls," said Wootan, "yet it strikes back at the efforts of parents and health professionals when they try to act locally."
Bottom line
•
Congress could pass a law which restricts junk food within the public school system.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams created NaturalNews.TV, a natural living video sharing site featuring thousands of user videos on foods, fitness, green living and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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Thursday, June 14, 2007
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