Rant: The Nanny State and MY Children

[Demosthine]

Ok, so I'm sure most of us on here are more in to the holistic, naturopathic and untainted values of life. Our children are probably more active and healthy than the typical American. So it particularly irritates the daylights out of me when our government starts praising these new nanny-state regulations that are strictly feel good measures. This time, it's further regulation of what my children can and can not buy at school. Now, don't get me wrong, my kids are not allowed to buy lunches and snacks at school, since they are just going in to the 1st and 3rd grades, but the government is passing off huge lies to the general public.

All this comes about from the Agricultural Department yesterday. They've essentially banned all of the traditional drinks and snacks typical sold in the vending machines, like candy and soda. Their solution is to replace it with "healthier" alternatives like granola bars, 100% fruit juice, diet soda and sports drinks. But when you look in to the realities of those items, the nutritional content that they are fighting, like calories and sugar, are just as bad or worse than what they are banning. Take for instance, the chart below for drinks:

Product Calories Carbohydrates Sugar Status
Coca Cola 110 31 grams 30 grams Banned
Pepsi Cola 150 41 grams 41 grams Banned
Pepsi Throwback 100 27 grams 27 grams Banned
Welch's 100% Grape Juice 170 42 grams 42 grams Acceptable
Mott's Plus Kids Health 100% Apple Juice 120 30 grams 28 grams Acceptable
Minute Maid 100% Orange Juice 150 37 grams 35 grams Acceptable

Coca Cola has fewer calories that all three juices and fewer carbohydrates than two of the three. Pepsi has few calories and carbohydrates than two out of three, with only one juice containing nearly identical sugar content Ironically, Pepsi Throwback surpasses all others on the list. Now, I understand there is a difference in natural sugar versus processed sugar, but is 42 grams of natural sugar really better than 30 grams of processed sugars? Not according to the American Heart Association, who has maximum recommended daily allowance of 24 grams of processed sugars and 36 grams of natural sugars. Furthermore, the pasteurization process completely destroys the nutritional content of these fruit juices anyway, unless they add in all sorts of chemical stuff afterwards, which makes it distinctly not 100% fruit juice. Ironic how the government regulations have completely gutted a great thing. With these fruit juices, you are only getting sugar, sugar and more sugar anyway!


Now, on to snacks. Let's take a look at a few different cookies and granola bars. What's the difference, you ask? Well, here you go. Quite clearly, you can see that both granola bars and cookies have extremely close nutritional content for all three categories that is being stressed for the school snack programs.

Product Calories Carbohydrates Sugar Status
Nature Valley Granola Bars 140 26 grams 13 grams Acceptable
Fiber One Chewy Bars 140 29 grams 10 grams Acceptable
Kashi Crunchy Granola Bars 170 26 grams 10 grams Acceptable
Grandma's Chocolate Chip Cookies 170 22 grams 11 grams Banned
Oreo Cookies 160 24 grams 13 grams Banned


And then we have the entire issue of diet soda, whose primary sweetener is usually aspartame. The same aspartame that Air Force, Navy and commercial pilots are advised to avoid. The same aspartame that the F.D.A. spent eight years denying because of the adverse reactions and then accounted for over 75% of their adverse reaction reports in their Adverse Reactions Monitoring System up until 1995, when they stopped accepting reports about it, and the same aspartame that the F.D.A. lists nearly a hundred adverse reactions, including death!


So yeah, how on God's green earth can they even think to tell me that they are only allowing "healthier" foods and snacks when it is so clearly a lie. How about they focus on educating my children to the state and national standards that they consistently fail to meet, rather than focusing so much on what they are eating. Apparently, the education system has completely failed them, too.

** END OF RANT **

 

[cassie]

A friend of mine once told me that I would feel better once I figured out that logic had nothing to do with anything. She was right. Personally, I think the reason for so much obesity in young people has less to do with what they are eating and more to do with what they are not doing. Like exercising. Not that many years ago, kids walked to school. Now they take the bus or someone drives them. Kids used to play and run around outside all day. Now they watch television and play video games.

 

[oldrooster]

I am out of highschool for 20 years now, we had soda machines turned on at the school when the school let out not before, but the "juice" machine (just 1 machine because it sold so little) was on all day. at the time the soda companies called one 12 ounce can as one serving and a boy I had PE with bought a juice on the way to class and drank it and before he threw it out at the start of class he said this says it has X many calories (something like 20-30 calories less than coke) And I asked how many servings is in it? he said one can of course! I asked him to look at the side of the can and tell me he looked and said "2 and a half" I told him next time he bought a coke look at it it will say it has just 2 servings for the same 12 ounces. he was shocked (he knew if I made such a fuss I wouldn't be kidding).

 

[newfoundland]

I think this discussion is very interesting but misses the point. No one can seriously believe that soda type drinks, largely colas, are in any way healthy. Educating children about healthy eating is very much part of the education system. It is not altogether about calories though, it is about the nutritionally value of the food/drink. We could live on a diet of 1500 calories a day (women) and it would be very unhealthy if the calories were made up of bars of chocolate. Your charts do not reveal other values for these foodstuffs. For example, how much fat and what type of fat they contain? What is the protein content of say a cookie, as opposed to a granola bar? Does fruit juice contain more vitamins than colas? (I think we all know the answer to that one.)

One of the best reasons for removing soda type vending machines from schools is the improved behaviour. Believe me, I have worked for years in schools, there are many children affected by the 'highs' that most of these drinks cause. In Britain, following disturbances in prisons, the Government totally revamped the diet of the prisoners and staff. Out went all the cheap, instant convenience food, and soda drinks, and in came properly cooked 'old fashioned' meals and fruit juices, table water or milk, as well as teat and coffee of course. The results were so spectacular that they decided to do the same thing to schools. Out went the 'Turkey twizzlers', burgers etc. along with french fries and sugary cakes. In came jacket potatoes with healthy fillings, salads, pitta breads/wraps and pasta. Deserts of fruit or yoghurt. By doing this they may have turned round the health of a generation and all those to come after it. I applaud their attempts to help the children.

 

[Demosthine]

I think this discussion is very interesting but misses the point. No one can seriously believe that soda type drinks, largely colas, are in any way healthy. Educating children about healthy eating is very much part of the education system. It is not altogether about calories though, it is about the nutritionally value of the food/drink. We could live on a diet of 1500 calories a day (women) and it would be very unhealthy if the calories were made up of bars of chocolate. Your charts do not reveal other values for these foodstuffs. For example, how much fat and what type of fat they contain? What is the protein content of say a cookie, as opposed to a granola bar? Does fruit juice contain more vitamins than colas? (I think we all know the answer to that one.)

One of the best reasons for removing soda type vending machines from schools is the improved behaviour. Believe me, I have worked for years in schools, there are many children affected by the 'highs' that most of these drinks cause. In Britain, following disturbances in prisons, the Government totally revamped the diet of the prisoners and staff. Out went all the cheap, instant convenience food, and soda drinks, and in came properly cooked 'old fashioned' meals and fruit juices, table water or milk, as well as teat and coffee of course. The results were so spectacular that they decided to do the same thing to schools. Out went the 'Turkey twizzlers', burgers etc. along with french fries and sugary cakes. In came jacket potatoes with healthy fillings, salads, pitta breads/wraps and pasta. Deserts of fruit or yoghurt. By doing this they may have turned round the health of a generation and all those to come after it. I applaud their attempts to help the children.

Yes, there are other aspects of the nutritional label that are important in the debate, but those are not part of the criteria of their new health system, as far as I can tell. It focuses entirely on the three categories that I mentioned above, which is why I used those criteria. Behavior wise, in all the kids we've babysat over the years, their behavior isn't any better in terms of fruit juices versus soda. Both are empty calories and sugars. I'm not sure where you are located, but from the sounds of it, not in the United States. The rest of the world seems to have significantly different standards on food production and commercialism has ruined ours. Yes, raw fruit juice contains infinitely more vitamins and electrolytes, but when you're pasteurizing the juices, it completely destroys all of those, making it nothing but flavored sugar water. It's a battle to buy anything that's unpasteurized. They require a very misleading warning label on raw milk products here...

​

A better attempt at helping our children would be to get back in to physical exercise and allowing children to be children. Budget cuts have removed a surprising amount of physical fitness programs from the education system. Physical Education has been removed from schools and extra-curricular sports activities are quickly being eliminated. Heck, a friend's son was suspended for running on the playground during recess. Their district policies forbid it under the guise of "preventing injuries resulting from children falling." Tetherball poles have been removed due to rope burns and head injuries due to impact from the balls. Many districts here prohibit baseball bats from being taken to school because they can be used as weapons. It doesn't matter what your diet is when you have little to no forms of exercise. And this isn't a problem unique to the Phoenix schools, as you can read in this Seattle Times article. We've already removed the physical labor required of children in America. You know, all those morning and afternoon chores that kids did on the farms. There's also numerous studies that show that children who are more physically fit perform better in school. They can not focus entirely on diet. It must be a complete, rounded approach.

Not to mention that, especially with kids, humans desire what they can not have. I experience it every day with my daughters. They are almost entirely banned of candies, processed juices and sodas, but they are constantly trying to sneak it. On the rare occasion that they are allowed to have some, they chug it like they'll die without it. They have constant supplies of fruits and vegetables available. They get water and raw milk or rice milk, depending on which daughter, all the time. Likewise, my daughters are very limited on television time and never get to play video games. I've caught them run in to the walls because they are so focused on the television while they are walking to the restroom. It's part of the self-control that we're teaching our girls. They are six and eight, by the way.

 

[mom'sfolly]

Here are the guidelines: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/allfoods_flyer.pdf

Pasteurization does not ruin all nutritional value in food, any more than cooking does.

Look at the breakdown of things like fat, protein and fiber for the cookies compared to a granola bar...
cookies 9 grams fat, 1.0g fiber, 2.0 g protein....granola bar fat 6g, fiber 4g, protein 6g.

I do agree that diet drinks, and sports drinks have no place in schools. And I do agree that fruit juice and most of the these snacks have far to many sugars; but that is not the entire story. Most of the snacks also have too many strange ingredients.

 

[newfoundland]

If anyone doubts the link between nutrition and health, or believes modern convenience foods necessarily offer all the body needs in terms of optimum nutrition, I urge them to google 'An unsuitable and degraded diet? parts one and two'. A long read I know but absolutely illuminating. It deals with the diet of working class people in Britain during the Victorian period. Part one in particular has many important public health lessons for our societies today. This has been minutely researched over a period of time and by many eminent people. It is not written for a scandal sheet by some crackpot sensationalist but for the journal of the ''Royal Society of Medicine'. Please take the time to read this you will be glad you did.

 

[Demosthine]

Here are the guidelines: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/legislation/allfoods_flyer.pdf

Pasteurization does not ruin all nutritional value in food, any more than cooking does.

Look at the breakdown of things like fat, protein and fiber for the cookies compared to a granola bar...
cookies 9 grams fat, 1.0g fiber, 2.0 g protein....granola bar fat 6g, fiber 4g, protein 6g.

I do agree that diet drinks, and sports drinks have no place in schools. And I do agree that fruit juice and most of the these snacks have far to many sugars; but that is not the entire story. Most of the snacks also have too many strange ingredients.

That was the guide I've been trying to find and hadn't hit the magical search terms. I'll have to get in to that document a bit more, as work just picked up significantly. You nailed the other aspect of it all. Packaged foods have strange ingredients, period. Our pediatrician tipped us off that their Association is changing it's views on skim milk and low fat milk, again. It's becoming readily apparent that it is not as healthy as we are led to believe. They are recommending whole milk now because there is increasing evidence that the higher and more appropriate fat content is vital to the child's development. At least one recent study has indicated that children who were fed whole milk were less likely to be approaching obesity levels by the age of four, too. The main Doctor in the Office is still opposed to raw milk, but the other two are thrilled with that option.

If anyone doubts the link between nutrition and health, or believes modern convenience foods necessarily offer all the body needs in terms of optimum nutrition, I urge them to google 'An unsuitable and degraded diet? parts one and two'. A long read I know but absolutely illuminating. It deals with the diet of working class people in Britain during the Victorian period. Part one in particular has many important public health lessons for our societies today. This has been minutely researched over a period of time and by many eminent people. It is not written for a scandal sheet by some crackpot sensationalist but for the journal of the ''Royal Society of Medicine'. Please take the time to read this you will be glad you did.

So, there are actually three parts. I've downloaded all three and sent them to my home EMail. I'll send them to my Kindle as soon as I figure out the address. I always love some good reading. Thanks for the suggestion.