Legislators Overreach

At The School Lunch Table

Connecticut’s House of Representatives passed “An Act Concerning School Nutrition” last week after debating the issue for more than eight hours — longer than the House debates on either the death penalty or same-sex civil unions. The legislation, which was expected to clear the Senate this week, involves the state more closely in school menu planning at all grade levels than in any other state in the nation. The measure bans soda and junk food in the schools in response to rising rates of obesity in children.

The objectives of this legislation are hard to criticize; poor nutrition in children often lies at the heart of developmental and health problems that plague some individuals for a lifetime. But the startling specificity in the House bill passed last week underscores the problem with this legislation.

Consider the following list of prescribed beverages included in the legislation: (1) Water, (2) milk, including, but not limited to, chocolate milk, soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or nondairy milk, (3) one hundred per cent fruit juice or vegetable juice or a combination of such juices, (4) beverages that contain only water and fruit juice and have no added natural or artificial sweeteners, and (5) one-half hour after the last lunch period in high schools only, sugar free soft drinks or electrolyte replacement beverages containing no more than forty-two grams of added sweetener per twenty ounce serving, provided such sugar free soft drinks or electrolyte replacement beverages constitute no more than twenty per cent each of the beverage options permitted pursuant to this subsection…

So now we are going from mothers’ imperatives (“Don’t leave the table until you eat your peas”) to the state’s self-assumed prerogatives to legislate behavior, including the eating habits of children in schools. Did we skip a step somewhere?

If you want to better understand the problem of childhood obesity, go shopping. The soda aisle at every major supermarket is ten feet wide and a mile long — and we don’t see too many kids navigating shopping carts along these sparkling rivers of sugar water. Parents are buying a lot of the junk food for home consumption that state legislators are complaining about in the schools. State lawmakers are fooling themselves if they think this new legislation is going to do anything to resolve the nutritional problems of overweight children. First and foremost, this is a parenting problem.

Schools do have an obligation not to aid and abet the poor eating habits of children when their parents are not around to supervise, but the obligations of local schools are the business of local school boards and not state legislators. Working with its food service contractor, Newtown’s Board of Education has already done a good job replacing junk food with more nutritious meals and snacks in the schools cafeterias and vending machines. High fat products and sodas are no longer available to Newtown students in the schools. Parents and health professionals with suggestions for further improving nutrition in the schools can easily approach the school board for a hearing on their concerns. This is the way the issue should be addressed.

Having legislators leap-frog over the Board of Education into our schools to lecture us with persnickety laws on electrolyte replacement beverages in the lunchroom is an unnecessary distraction and not a solution to the serious problems associated with childhood obesity.