Promoting Healthy Eating to Children
News about snoozing – and child abusing
Tomorrow’s schools: 7/11s with busses, books, and teachers?
I’ve written a lot about changes many public school systems have made in the food options they offer kids. Of course, many of these are misguided, like the substitution of fruit juices for sodas in school vending machines (they’re both pure sugar), or the addition of vegetarian entrees to cafeteria fare.
Some school systems, however, have met with my applause in the past for meaningful changes that promote healthier dietary habits: Things like eliminating vending machines altogether or banning the sale of soft drinks on school property. These changes can be helpful in fighting juvenile obesity. Most schools, however, are reluctant to part with the candy- and soda-stuffed vending machines and junk foods in cafeteria lines.
Why? Because they’re major moneymakers.
Let’s face it: Kids stocked with daily lunch money instead of packed lunches (like in the old days), often can’t be trusted to make wise dietary choices with the cash. And since there’s way more profit to be made in refined, preservative-loaded, keeps-forever junk food than in nutritious, fresh foodstuffs from local organic sources, many schools have become nothing more than retail outlets for Coke, Pepsi, Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs and every other kind of sugar, trans-fats, and refined flour under the sun.
Yes, the brutal truth is that with a few notable exceptions, most schools are using unhealthy ways to “supplement” the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue we stake them with every year – at the expense of our children’s waistlines. But if one Pennsylvania public school is any example, some institutions are finding creative new ways to rake in these profits under the guise of health!
According to a recent Associated Press article, students at State College’s Mount Nittany Middle School are encouraged to eat breakfast at the school – with a “grab-and-go” food cart in the lobby that’s loaded with junk food. No, it’s not candy bars and Twinkies, but it’s just as bad: Bagels, muffins, breakfast cereals – even Pop Tarts! And all for just $1.50. Seriously, no breakfast at all is better than this junk.
Apparently, fruit and milk (probably worthless skim or 1%) are offered, too, but come on: What kid is going to grab an apple or orange when a pack of Pop Tarts beckons?
I hope this isn’t what schools that have abolished vending machines are going to replace them with. Preliminary study shows the cart has more than tripled breakfast consumption among kids at the school – to the tune of more than $60 a day (and climbing) in the school’s till. Based on a typical school year, that’s more than 10 grand in sales.
The only thing that would make matters worse would be if they used the money they make from this child abuse to buy more vending and soda machines
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Catch fitful sleep napping
Statistics show that nearly 50% of adults over 65 regularly report struggling to get a good night’s sleep. Tell this to a doctor and he will likely whip out a pad and dash off a “scrip” for some drug or another. But if some new research is right, one key to a good night’s sleep might be
A good day’s sleep!
According to a recent Associated Press article summarizing research conducted by a medical college in New York, a test group of 32 men and women between 55 and 85 who napped between 2PM and 4PM slept at least as well at night as they normally did, but fared measurably better at tests of memory and mental acuity than when they didn’t nap.
This finding supports the somewhat counterintuitive notion that a mid-day nap actually increases the quality of restful sleep at night – a factor in mental ability. This is not to mention the fact that catching “forty winks” during the day adds to the total hours of sleep most older folks get.
But if you simply haven’t got the time for an afternoon siesta, try some valerian root extract or warm milk (or both) instead. I’ve found that these work at least as well as any prescription or over-the-counter drug could ever hope to – and without the side effects.
Always thinking “soundly,”
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
