Growers and Grocers

I have a couple problems with the bill. For one, they allow fruit juices with 50% or more natural juices, but don’t allow diet soft drinks as far as I can tell. Sorry, but juice is barely better — if at all — than a soft drink for a child’s health. You can fortify soda with vitamins, too (as Coke is planning to do, I believe), and it’s still just sugar water with vitamins. Liquid calories. Diet soda, however, is primarily fizzy water and has much fewer health problems than juice or even milk. Heck, if Coke put some vitamins in a diet soda, it’d be downright good for the kids on balance.

Also, sticking to the strict guidelines that the bill sets forth for percent of calories from fats or sugars, a kid could not be on a low carb or low fat diet. They have to have a “balanced” diet.

Technically, most fruit would not meet their requirements. An apple has no fat and 17g of carbs, 13 of which are sugars. So more than 35% of its calories are from sugars, I would think.

I have issues with the bill as far as how power for such things should be distributed, whether the localities should be mandated rules from the state, etc, but those are philosophical questions.

ExtraMSG,

Your point about juice is well taken. It’s surprising how people fail to recognize the amount of sugar in fruit juices–even non-commercial ones.

I don’t know that I agree with the notion that artificial sweeteners are a better choice over HFCS. I think they both have problems that people need to be concerned about.

For the apple example, I think the bill implies a balanced diet as opposed to making sure each food item is balanced. Did I read it wrong? But again, your point about low-carb diets is valid. I wonder if there’s a plan for an exemption program that kids could use (though I’m sure it would be laborious and bureaucratic).

Thanks for the thoughts.

Hmm…aren’t these the same zealots who attempted to bring the Twinkie tax to fruition? From what I’ve read of them, they use dubious “science” and focus on sensationalism to push their agenda instead.

I was referring to CSPI, incidentally.

What a nation of idiots and wusses we’ve become. What we need is less litigation and more and better parenting. Maybe the gov’t should sue the moron parents that consistently overindulge their kids.

Jennifer,
I’d be curious to read more about them. Any links to anti-CSPI sites I should check out? Using dubious science and sensationalism to push an agenda is practically a national pasttime. I should note that CSPI is only one of the suers.

Cartman,
I’m absolutely for better parenting; I agree that parents are too willing to look elsewhere about problems their kids are having. On the other hand, I do feel like we need to curtail advertising to kids (which is what soda machines in the school is really about), as they are so easily swayed by ads. There needs to be some balanced attack. Litigation is at least less nebulous than “better parenting skills.”

Hi Derrick.

There’s actually a very good one, but I’m going to have to poke around for it. I’ll be back.