I was happy to hear that First Lady Michelle Obama has made reducing childhood obesity among her causes. After all, when my girls were in elementary school I was very involved in the PTA wellness committee. We tried to work with other PTA members and teachers to alter all those fundraisers that were based on selling cookie dough and candy bars so kids could sell non-food items, or at least fruit. (The fact that our kids were required to sell anything at all has always been horrifying to me. But that’s another story.) We tried to work with the school lunch director to introduce healthy choices like baked potatos and a salad bar, if not overhaul the entire menu. Were we successful? What do you think?
Our greatest resistance came from other parents who didn’t want us “dictating what their kids would eat.” One mother told us her child needs her sweets. The most we accomplished was to sell smoothies one day a year at the high school. And we did replace sodas with water in the vending machines.
So I wish the First Lady luck. Especially after I read all the seemingly hysterical quotes this week from Long Island school personnel who insisted that they need to sell snacks in vending machines to help fund the lunch programs. Is it just me or does something seem out of whack? Isn’t there a whole lot wrong with a school system in which we parents feed our children change to feed the machines at school to fund our children’s lunch? The only sensible comment I read was from someone associated with the new obesity campaign who said if you have to have vending machines in schools, there’s no reason they can’t be re-stocked with healthier snack choices and water. But I can just hear that PTA mom all those years ago telling the First Lady, “If I want my kid to have cheese doodles with her lunch, that’s not your business.” Ah, but if someone suggests your child’s well-being is affected by that choice, couldn’t you at least listen?
How do you feel about this issue?
