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ARLINGTON--A General
Assembly panel has shelved
Sen. Madison Marye's bill to force all Virginia schools to banish vending machines that dispense soft drinks and snacks. However, the issue appears to have plenty
of shelf-life.
Armed with reports like the Surgeon General's recent finding that obesity is a major health threat, the Food Police are demanding across the nation that schools ban such vending machines. They seek laws declaring schools to be commercial-free zones, an action that would negate profit-sharing partnerships between public schools and
private companies.
In addition, the Washington-based advocacy group known as the Center for Science in the Public Interest last year began pushing a tax on junk food, dubbed the Twinkie Tax.
A soda-pop and snack-food jihad against public-private partnerships could have a devastating impact on education. A recent survey by a vending-industry trade publication says vending-machine sales bring school districts around the nation about $750 million a year.
Schools use the money they earn from sales of soft drinks and snacks for such worthwhile items as physical-education classes, sports programs, computer purchases, scholarships, field trips, and clubs.
If that single 140-calorie soft drink the average teen-ager drank during a typical day were the sure link to obesity in adulthood, punitive taxes or outright prohibition would command moral force. And that would be the case not just with regard to school vending areas, but supermarkets, restaurants, convenience stores, and even home refrigerators--wherever the youngster might encounter a carbonated drink.
Existing research, however, suggests that trying to prevent obesity by targeting soda pop is rather like attempting to eliminate bad breath by banning mustard. One of the most recent studies came from Georgetown University's Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, which found no relationship between 12- to 16-year-olds' consumption of carbonated soft drinks and obesity. Other studies at Michigan State, Michigan, Emory, and Creighton universities have found soft drinks cause neither obesity nor bone loss, diabetes, dental cavities, or other ailments.
Of course, no one argues that teens should swill sodas all day long. In a properly run school, what student would have time or opportunity to do so anyway? When students do visit the vending areas, they are likely to find that most machines dispense juice and water, as well as the sugar-free and caffeine-free varieties of soda. The choices are theirs.
To battle obesity effectively, advocacy groups ought to seek an addition to school resources, not a huge subtraction. Specifically, they ought to be pushing for restoration of quality physical education for all children in all grades.
During the fitness-conscious boom that followed the high profile that President John F. Kennedy gave his President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, almost every state required physical education in its public schools. Today, incredibly, only Illinois requires PE from kindergarten through grade 12. Virginia's elementary schools offer PE twice a week, on average, and middle schools three times a week, but Virginia's high-school students have no required PE.
Before recently concluding his stint in office, Surgeon General David Satcher found that "lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating patterns, or a combination of the two," along with genetics and lifestyle, play a role in overweight in children and adolescents. Almost half of adolescents watch television more than two hours a day. The computer and video games cause still more physical inactivity.
Some school systems have used the advent of high-stakes testing (such as the SOL in Virginia) as an excuse for scuttling PE, along with art, music, and field trips. That's sad. The quality of a school's instruction should be such that lessons can be learned without nonstop drilling. Besides, exercise can help children handle the added pressure of testing.
Even the best PE programs can't overcome all by themselves the culture's encouragement for Americans to be fatter than we should be. But they can help. And it is just possible that revenues from public-private partnerships could help revive physical education.
ROBERT HOLLAND is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute.