Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

http://www.isbe.state.il.us/news/2006/mar16a.htm

So, I haven't been affected by America's enlarged waistline until now. But they ruined the school's lunch food for us; I don't have time to make a lunch every day.

As I see it, children are going to have to learn to use their own judgement in deciding what's healthy and what's not. Because, when they get older, there isn't going to be these restrictions.

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Actually, I don't think this is such a bad idea. Kids (and people in general) get enough junk food at home! There could be a compromise though. Perhaps instead of banning it, it would only be made available during designated meal times at school. Though, I don't think schools should have junk food vending machines (which my school did). But they certainly shouldn't punish kids for bringing their own junk food - that's their (unfortunate) choice.

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That sounds like a great idea.

In Australia, we classify our types of foods through a colour system. I think Green is healthy, Amber is sort of, Red is not healthy, and we let kids only sometimes eat red foods.

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I've never heard of that. Where do you live?

I think junk food's been banned from canteens in Australia.

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"Explain to me how drowning them would not ruin their date."

My school kind of got rid of its unhealthy food.
But you can't really say that, because the stuff that replaced it is pretty much exactly the same, it's just made to sound healthier. Stupid, really. Luckily, my mum doesn't really ever buy unhealthy food. Ever. I'm so lucky...

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NOT A SIGNATURE!

You mean like "granola bars" and such? Or "real fruit" drinks that are mostly only sugar and water? Foods that market themselves as healthy, but when you actually look at the nutritional content, they're not much better than candy?

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It's true, Spark, that the best method of raising kids is giving them freedom (trusting them) while watching closely and nudging them back into the right direction when needed. But that doesn't mean providing them with the means to do the wrong thing just so they can have the opportunity to choose against it.

If a parent packs bad food, well, there's a limit to what the government should be doing. But in government schools, they should be providing healthy food and not subverting that with vending machines. And ideally, parents wouldn't subvert it by giving kids bad food either. But what are they gonna do, inspect pantries?

So they're doing it the right way: they're not forcing people to eat healthy, but they're setting the right example by having healthy food be the easiest option. You can still choose unhealthy food, but you have to go through extra trouble to do it. If people stick with the healthy long enough, they'll eventually feel the hurt their body takes when they eat unhealthy. You normally can't feel it cuz you're used to it, but when you eat healthy for a while and then down a couple donuts, it tastes good but you can feel your body dying. It's the best education you can get.

Whether or not they do a good job of making the healthy food taste good is another concern tho

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

Ruined it how? By making it healthier? It doesn't taste as good? It's extremely difficult to feel any sympathy for this one. The facts of the obesity epidemic are irrefutable. While I don't expect this sort of legislature to curb the problem entirely, every little bit helps.

You say you don't have time to make a lunch every day. Hence, you have no choice but to eat cafeteria food. A lot of kids at your school are probably in the same boat. If that food was unhealthy the deck was really stacked against the overweight kids. Some of them might want to lose weight, but how are they going to do that when the school is forcing empty calories down their throats every day? Perhaps now they'll have a better chance at it. If it means you have to eat fruits and whole grains instead of cheeseburgers, well, so be it.

Mike

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Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

I don't like the idea of legislating "healthy eating".

There's little doubt in my mind that this whole "get rid of 'junk food', get rid of 'trans-fat', and kids will stop being fat" movement is a HORRIBLE idea and will fail miserably.

If a can of soda at school is what's making kids fat, they've got medical problems. More likely, it's the 3 or 4 they have when they plop down in front of the TV when they get home. Seriously, it's like kids don't play outside anymore. When I was a kid, we had horrible meals (from a nutritional standpoint, anyway), massive vending machine banks stuffed full of all of those evil snacks, and teachers rewarded good grades, hard work, and good behavior with candy. There were nowhere near as many obese kids as there are now. We had "fat kids", but none were terribly overweight.
The reason? It's a combination of things, but the main one was that we were pretty much expected to be outside running, playing, etc. until it got dark unless we had homework or it was raining.

I don't like the idea of legislating what we can/cannot eat.
What is that rhetoric that the pro-abortion crowd always spouts? Oh yeah, "Keep your laws off my body!"
*Eats Cheeseburger, Oreo Cookies, and other stuff with trans-fat*

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Argh, this really annoys me. It doesn't 'allow' children to have a healthier diet in school, it forces them!

Here's how I see it; I would rather have a child eating unhealthy food than eating no food at all because he is discusted by the food on offer.

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Shut up and eat your broccoli.

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A better way would be to make kids more active in gym class...
I don't go to a public school, so I don't know what stuff they do, but most of the stuff they do does not get you in shape, unless everyone participates 100% (which most people don't do unless they're the best in the class). They usually made us where heart monitors when playing sports in gym (which they probably do in all schools, I'm not sure), and my friend and I could never get my heart rate into my 'target zone' in sports like badminton and basketball, and we were playing much harder than everyone else. If they did things like ultimate frisbee and full-court basketball and required everyone to wear a heart monitor and be within a certain zone, people would work much harder.

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[I'm reading over this paragraph, and I don't like how it sounds. It sounds too confrontational, but I'm having trouble re-wording it. Mentally tone this down several notches, I don't have anything against you, Funk]

What's wrong with the schools providing only healthy meals? If people wanted unhealthy meals, they can bring them. If you don't have time to bring them, and don't want to eat healthy food, I still don't think the schools have any reason to give you crap. Perhaps its time to get used to the stuff. People don't like healthy food most of the time because they're used to the sweet, sweet taste of bad food. It takes time to get used to food without extreme taste. Now's a good time to start. Say your parents let you watch TV and be lazy. Should the schools let you do that too? No, the schools should be in the business of promoting what's good, not perpetuating problems.

You're right though, SR, that there's more to this than can or should be solved through legislation. School food isn't the main problem here, it's the sedentary lifestyle, and the unhealthy food just aggravates it. The people I know who grew up with heavy restrictions on TV are the healthiest and most mature. They had to go outside and deal with the world and its random issues as they came up instead of sitting around in a managed fantasyland.

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We played in a managed fantasy land, too, but it was OUR managed fantasy land, one that we came up with.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Exactly, not managed by parents or the media (TV and game companies) is what I was getting at.

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ATTN: LOWER BOARD USERS HAVE MOVED TO ANOTHER FORUM. COME JOIN THE FUN!

Kids that are getting heavy or kids that are normal weight and pushing it should definitely start eating less junk food. But I dont know about a skinny guy like myself.

First post of the month in this section!

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Even so, with a thin person like yourself, it would be better if you ate a diet rich in protein and low in sugar. The protein would actually help you to gain an appropriate amount of weight, whereas the sugar probably passes right through your system.

I do have to agree with this one point made by Tigger: schools should not be responsible for providing junk food. Hey, my school didn't have soda machines, and I got along just fine.

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Well, it was, sort of. I mean it was more like LARP, only we were acting our age. Our games/play was influenced by the cartoons we watched, games we played (we DID play video games and watch TV, but it was a secondary, not primary, form of entertainment), books we read, etc.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Just pack your lunch the night before. That's what I do. A little off-subject, I know.

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...or parents who are too busy to buy lunch-making supplies,

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I think my governor has the right idea, but he's doing it the wrong way. I think schools aren't the problem when it comes to obesity (in the food sense). It's the home. All the snacks my mom buys are full of sugar, and none of them are fruits or vegetables. Sure, I'm a picky eater when it comes to those foods (only apples, pears, mangos and the like for me), but I think it's better for parents to decide what's best for their kids and stop buying so much processed snacks all the time.

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If you have parents who have time to go grocery shopping (assuming they don't get take-out every night) they have time to grab chips, bread, peanut butter, sandwich bags, and some fruit.

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Pfft, with a matabolism like mine, I could eat all the beef burgers in a state without gaining a pound.

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That doesn't mean you shouldn't eat broccoli. Eating broccoli isn't for your weight; it's for getting vitamins and minerals.

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You could also do it yourself, you know. Just ask your parents for money, and walk, ride your bike, or take the bus to the grocery store. That's what I do when my parents are too busy.

My parents suck at buying food.

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Well, they havent applied "Healthy" eating at my school, we still have vending machines with large packets of oreo cookies available, Cokes, sodas and the like are available in the snack machines. Unfortunatley, during lunch, the places where the vending machines with this stuff is at are blocked off by gates, because this is a so-cal "Closed School".
But none the less, do what i do: Do a teachers Taxes and have her buy you lunch every now and then.

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My chool acually offers healthy food, like salads and vegtables and potatoes. The problem is I still grab a slice of pizza, and only the girls who are SUPER UNHEALTHY skinny want salads. I know I should try harder to be healthy.

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Ugh. I just found out that our student store has just been changed to all organics by authority. I don't have THAT much of a problem with it, my lunch is all fruits and veggies anyways, and I don't even buy from the student store to begin with, it just kinda makes me mad that the school can just like....censor stuff out like that. Like we can't make our own decisions.

I hate my school...

at my school, we have a Candy store that sells all sorts of Candy and sodas, i go theyre every day and buy a Root Beer and Beef Jerky strip. All the people who buy from theyre are not fat, theyre Skinny and muscular,(Except for the Anorexic chicks). If they were going to apply healthy foods down here, it would be the first to go.

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