Newspaper Article

Battle of the Bulge

Reviewed by Nicols Fox

2005

Overview

In fact, corporations are stunningly aided and abetted in the fattening of America's children by schools and parents, in whom these children have innocently placed their trust. The reasons for this extraordinary betrayal are various and complicated. Underfunded schools are frankly selling their kids to the food industry, negotiating exclusive and sometimes secret contracts with soda companies -- occasionally with enticing up-front payments. \"Schools get band uniforms and Big Soda gets brand loyalty,\" write [Lisa Tartamella], [Elaine Herscher] and [Chris Woolston]. Many consider themselves dependent on the money from vending machines and fast-food purveyors. (One Florida county school board negotiated a contract with Pepsi-Cola in 2000 worth $13.5 million.) PRIMEDIA's Channel One, now beamed into 12,000 subscribing American schools, gives away \"free\" media equipment in exchange for requiring kids to watch a minimum 12 minutes daily of television programming laden with ads for candy, soft drinks and fast foods. (That adds up to a week out of every school year.) Corporate lobbying undermines attempts to regulate what happens in schools. Today, soft drinks are sold in vending machines in more than 76 percent of public schools in America. Classes in nutrition are futile when the environment sends a different message. At home, busy families rely more often on fast food or takeout and less on home-cooked meals. \"Aim-to-please parents\" often stock fridges and cupboards with sodas and junk food. In supermarkets, food choices are increasingly shaped by advertising, and processed foods often contain surprising amounts of added sugar. Fascinatingly, some modern processes -- for oatmeal, for instance -- actually change the rate at which the foods will be turned into energy; the slow-cooking kind is better. And high-fructose corn syrup, which has replaced sucrose in soft drinks, reduces the production of leptin, a hormone that tells the body it's full. Super- sizing or \"value marketing\" hasn't helped matters either. Poverty can be especially conducive to obesity because low-income parents are intuitively stretching their food dollars by choosing high- density foods that tend to be fattening, and because fresh fruits and vegetables may not be available in low-income neighborhoods. There is hope. The authors of Generation Extra Large cite Maria Golan, a nutritionist at the School of Nutritional Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who believes that \"even in the face of all the unhealthy influences in the world, parents have an astonishing power to shape their kids' eating habits.\" Community pressures can awaken schools to their responsibility to provide nutritious foods and an environment in which healthy choices are possible. New York City banned soda, candy, salty chips and sweet snacks from school vending machines in 2003, and Los Angeles is in the midst of implementing a similar plan. Instead of soda, school vending machines will offer water, milk, sports drinks and fruit- based drinks with at least 50 percent juice and no added sweeteners. Attitudes can change quickly: Philadelphia was contemplating an exclusive soft-drink contract for its public schools in August 2003 but public criticism resulted in the city's proposing a soda ban instead.

• Publisher: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
• Subject: Books-titles / Children & youth / Herscher, Elaine / Multiple review / Nonfiction / Obesity / Okie, Susan / Tartamella, Lisa / Woolston, Chris