3rd REVISION ON ESSAY # 4/corrected

Sheri Munson-Castro
Writing 101-Winter 2008
Essay #4
Craig McKenny-Instructor
March 10th, 2008




Sugar High, Goodbye: Banning Junk Food & Soda from School





My son Francisco is a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who is a ninth grade student at Chief Sealth High School located in West Seattle. He is a young man that weighs almost two hundred and fifty pounds who has had weight issues all his life. Though his weight is not causing him problems now he has some trouble with some of his activates like playing tennis, walking up stairs, hills or even walking fast/jogging. One of the central factors in his weight gain has been the excessive eating of junk foods. While he is trying to reduce the intake of it, has not easy with him having so readily a supply available to him at the school. This will become problematic later in life with our family health history.

I have been told that there are about six vending machines at his school. The good thing about this is that four of the six contain healthy items for snacks. From what I have learned from the Seattle School District is that there use to be double that amount of machines and only junk food & drink in them. They also informed me that due to the rise on the numbers of overweight kids in the school shown on their research that was done, it has prompt them to implemented a change on the Pyramid plan for the school nutrition as well which vendors they were using to provide the snacks for the students.

Banning junk food from schools is being seen as the first step in attacking the obesity crisis in children. Sedentary lifestyle practices coupled with a shift in diet to junk foods are the main reason behind this explosion of overweight or obese children. The soaring levels of childhood obesity in American children have prompted an expert panel to recommend new nutritional standards for the nation schools. Obesity is linked to the so-called lifestyle diseases like type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obstructive sleep apnea, heart disease, poor self-esteem, and a lower health-related quality of life.

The rate of type 2 Diabetes is at an all-time high in American children, as is Childhood obesity is also a growing menace to the society as well, and is one of the contributing factors in type 2-diabetes. In recent years, this epidemic has risen alarmingly. That is why the Congress requested the IOM and the CDC to review prevailing food standards and recommend guidelines to make them healthier.

Per one of the studies on this subject has shown that the Schools who back in the 1980's first allowed the access of junk food to help increase the revenue, have after coming to fully understand their part in the rise of health issues in children have started to implement changes into the schools. Especially after a study was done last year showing that over 95% of all schools across the nation have vending machines, with over half of them filled with junk food & drinks.

According to an early December New York Times Article, federal lawmakers were considering a national ban as well on the selling junk food in school vending machines. The measure, which was an amendment to the farm bill, faced significant hurdles before this beneficial change could become a reality. Federal lawmakers are considering the broadest effort ever to limit to what children eat: a national ban on selling candy, sugary soda and salty,
fatty food in school snack bars, vending machines and a la carte cafeteria lines.

In the debates that I had found showed that the government panel made up of House and Senate lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to reduce junk food in schools by requiring that any food and drinks sold on campuses, including in vending machines, meet the same federal nutritional standards as food served in the cafeteria.

The National School Nutrition Standards Amendment, sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), would have been the first legislation to update the nutrition standards since 1979, a period in which scientific opinion on what foods are appropriate has drastically shifted
"There are many reasons for this public health crisis, but one big reason is that our nation's schools have become inundated with junk food and sugary drinks," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a chief sponsor of the bill.

The measure would also force the Agriculture Department to rewrite its 30-year-old nutritional guidelines for schools to limit the amount of sugar, fat and sodium, as well as portion sizes, in response to a growing obesity epidemic among children. Whether the measure, an amendment to the farm bill, would survive the convoluted politics that bogged down that legislation in the Senate is one issue. Whether it could survive the battle among factions in the fight to improve school food was another.

There was a debate that was going on to see if the new federal proposal for reducing or taking junk food all the way out of school would pass the congress. This new federal proposal is backed by the Parent Teacher Association, the School Nutrition Association, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and other health-related groups

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn sponsors the measure in the House. The sponsors predicted the bill would be approved, although it may not get a vote in Congress during this busy election year. Woolsey noted: "A bill that has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate is rare, indeed, these days, but that's what we have here."


The problem they will face is that the group they are attacking is one that was born in the mid-1980s, when money-strapped schools across the country began opening their doors to private vendors, and offering a wider variety of foods — letting many millions of students sate their hunger and thirst with chips and soda, rather than what was on the school lunch menu. Winning those kids back over to healthy food might be a tough task.

There was no such luck on either side, because on Thursday, December 13, 2007, the Senate dropped the amendment. According to a December 15, 2007 Washington Post Article The Senate on Thursday night dropped an amendment to the farm bill that would have banned fatty foods and high-calorie beverages at school snack bars, stores and vending machines, dealing a blow to its chances of passage.

Elsewhere there also was a news release talking about the new addition to the Center for Nutrition policy and Promotion (CNPP) group that may help resolve this issue in the near future even through for the moment the bill has been stopped: Agriculture Under Secretary Nancy Johner for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services today announced the appointment of Dr. Brian Wansink as the Executive Director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP).

“Dr. Wansink is nationally recognized in his field of nutrition research which focuses on how to encourage consumers to eat more nutritiously and better control how much they eat,” said Johner. At CNPP Dr. Wansink will be responsible for overseeing the planning, development and review of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the food pyramid known as MyPyramid.gov, and programs including the Healthy Eating Index, the USDA Food Plans, the Nutrient Content of the U.S. Food Supply, and the cost of raising a child.

While elsewhere in the state of California; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill in September that would raise nutritional standards -- limiting the amount of calories and sugar -- and ban the sale of soda in all California. They had also implemented another law that had just passed not allowing any soda and sugary drinks in the elementary and middle schools.

Many parents were behind this law being approved and implemented across the board, as so many children have weight issues going on. The facts per the research going on has also shown that this may be effecting the children’s learning abilities as well. I personally feel that by reducing the intake that children have we will help to reduce the number of them that diagnose with diabetic issues, obesity problems as well as may increase the number of children who are doing well in school.
Because by implementing that law thus taking them off that “Sugar High”, they actually may pay attention and intake less of the sugar and more of the knowledge that is being taught to them by their teachers.

Resources: On the Banning Junk Food in School:


1.) http://www.newslocale.org/health/hnews/banning_junk_food_in_schools_first_step_in_tacking_child_obesity_20070427306.html

2.) http://www.calendow.org/uploadedFiles/banning_junk_food_soda_sales.pdf
Article in regards toward the banning of Junk Food across the nation.



3.) http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9903/25/child.food.pyramid/index.html


4.) http://www.scn.org/cccs/v5n4.pdf
Articles on money matters-food contracts, etc: In regards towards the money made by the school in the sales of food/drink to kids. Thats help to support the schools.