The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.
My larger problem with these guidelines is that they often address the wrong aspect of eating- it's not the nutrient, it's the portion. What that means is that, instead of having a bake sale, where teams can sell cupcakes, cookies and other tasty items, all made at home, kids are left with "healthy" alternatives, such as Snackwells and other sweets that satisfy these ridiculous rules, but don't address the underlying problem. If you eat a ton of Snackwells, you're still gonna get fat.
I understand the desire of policy makers to want to have "healthy" alternatives to sugary foods, the problem is that either the alternatives are actually worse for you, or they simply do away with it altogether. That is comprised in this wacky statement- “I don’t think all celebrations need to be around food,” said Ann Cooper, the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley school district. “We need to get past the mentality of food used for punishment or praise.”
Without getting all anthropological here, food is often a large part of celebrations- we are about the celebrate one of the biggest food-based celebrations of the year with Thanksgiving. The second point also needs to be addressed. For years now, parents, teachers and administrators have been operating in a state of fear- that is, they are afraid to show failure. That's why you have sporting events where scores aren't kept, there are no losers and everyone gets a prize. That's also why you have rules that say teachers can't use red ink to correct student papers because of the stigma supposedly attached to red ink in schools. This is all ridiculous.
Furthermore, for anyone who has read Rousseau's "Emile," food is the center of one of Rousseau's classic examples of motivating a student- in order to get his student to exercise, Rousseau instead makes the whole event about the food instead of the exercise. Emile has to run to get the cake- to Emile, it's all about the cake, to Rousseau, it's about the exercise.
In any event, this study comes to a conclusion that bans on sugary drinks shows little effect on consumption. The study followed students in high schools in Maine. The conclusion reached by the study is "Researchers found that over one school year, students in both groups of schools cut down on their average daily intake of sugary drinks -- but there was no evidence that the school soda bans led to greater reductions." In other words, over the 9 month school year, students across the board reduced their consumption of sugary drinks, regardless of whether those drinks were available in their school. The study does posit one possible reason as to why the study came to its result: "According to Blum, keeping such drinks out of teenagers' reach during school hours may not be enough. School appears to be just one source of sugar-sweetened beverages for youth," she said, "and it may be that an educational component...is needed to have an effect on consumption from sources other than school."
It is obvious that the researcher is referring to the home. And that is a dangerous step. This study draws a line between tv advertising and childhood obesity. It advocates for a ban on food-related commercials- nevermind a blatant constitutional free speech problem. How a commercial causes a child to get obese is beyond me- the child is not responsible for feeding themselves, rather, it's parents that take the child there. In other words, both studies rightly implicate the role of parents in providing for their children, yet both stop short of the logical conclusion from both of their studies- that only through government involvement can children be rightly protected from the supposed failings of their parents to feed them "correctly."
The problem with that is, of course, that the government knows what it's doing, which is questionable. Consumers are inundated with information, per government direction, about food quality and what nutrients are best, and the government simply muddles all of that through a variety of ways, including through farm subsidies (wanna know why corn syrup is in everything we eat, thank corn subsidies, a long-running program that debuted during the New Deal). We have lost our connection to our food, and well-meaning programs, like bans based on nutrients, only pushes us further away from that connection. Instead of using some common-sense approach to food, such as realizing the benefits of home-made food, using food as a celebration or even encouraging moderation, we are instead propagating beliefs that nutrients matter, and not the food itself. That as long as something has been genetically engineered to be fat-free, sugar-free, trans-fat free, low-fat, low-carb or whatever, we are to be secure in the knowledge that it's "healthy," at least as defined by the government.
This is a 1998 article from Newsweek that is about Olestra, a fat-free alternative that is used in the production of potato chips. It was declared safe by the FDA, yet the article notes:
As it moves through the gut, it attracts fat-soluble nutrients and carries them out of the body. Those nutrients include vitamins A, D, E and K and some carotenoids, which are substances found in fruits and vegetables that help protect against heart disease and many cancers. Olestra chips are fortified with the four vitamins to make up for the depletion--but the lost carotenoids are not replaced. ....
Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health estimates that if consumption of olestra snacks becomes widespread, Americans may experience up to 50,000 more cases of cancer and heart disease every year. P&G calls the estimates ""ridiculous'' and says that olestra affects carotenoids only when olestra is eaten with fruits and vegetables.
So, olestra was approved a safe, and is being used as a fat-free way to produce potato chips, yet it extracts various vitamins from the body (but the product has been engineered to replace those lost vitamins), but the maker says that will only happen if they eat it with fruit and vegetables. Incredible! Oh, and another side effect is that some people can't digest olestra properly causing diarrhea (that would be me- the same thing happens if I have too much soy, depending on how it's refined). But, it's fat free, and that's all that really matters.
The Newsweek article continues with this illuminating paragraph:
Despite its drawbacks, olestra will surely appeal to the millions of Americans who are dieting, or wish they were. But nothing in the history of American eating habits backs up the assumption that reduced-calorie foods guarantee weight loss. Artificial sweeteners have long been a household staple, while consumption of sugar soars. Similarly, we're eating more reduced-fat foods than ever these days, yet our total consumption of fat has barely changed since 1991. Meanwhile, more than half of all American adults are overweight or obese. Many factors contribute to the national girth, including an all-food-all-the-time lifestyle and an aversion to exercise, but what's indisputable is that SnackWells are not making us skinny.
Finally, the article concludes with a startlingly prescient statement- "Products like olestra chips feed a different hunger than the one for food. Will they do any harm if you eat just a handful now and then? Nope. And neither will regular chips."
There it is, advice from 1998 that seemingly is still falling on deaf ears, even though Michael Pollan, for one, is doing a lot to change that- it's not about the nutrients, it's about the portion. I will say that while I do believe that banning artificial trans-fat is a worthwhile cause, both because of the dangers inherent in artificial trans-fat and because who really wants to eat something that was created in a lab and can engineer in and out whatever you like (this is why I don't use margarine), the larger issue isn't the trans-fat themselves, but how much one eats. If combating obesity truly is the goal of all these programs, then encouraging the government to go nutrient-by-nutrient, what Pollan calls nutritionism, is the wrong way. We should be educating children about whole foods, about our role in the food chain, a better respect for our food, and making our food. Banning certain nutrients because some government pol says it's bad is short-sighted, and, as the NY Times article explains, takes us away from our role in making food. Banning cupcakes from schools for childrens' birthdays is a useless exercise that does nothing but unnecessarily punish the child for being a child- let them have their home-made cupcake. Let there be food-based fund-raisers. Let there be multi-cultural food fairs to raise money. Quite simply- let there be food.
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