OPINION:
With the new school year upon us, it’s worth taking a closer look at what your public schools are serving up, in addition to homework (“Feds tout school lunches as ’national security issue,’” Web, Aug. 27). In Michelle Obama’s hometown of Chicago last year at Little Village Academy, students were prevented from bringing food from home. At Claremont Academy, students were allowed brown-bag lunches, but monitors would confiscate any snacks they deemed loaded with sugar or salt.
Washington, D.C., schools banned junk food in schools and at sporting events. Nutritionists put new menus in place for teenagers. Soft-drink machines were emptied, and they halted sales of baked goods and candy. Football fans could only buy milk, hot chocolate, vegetable juices, hard-boiled eggs, whole-grain-bread sandwiches, unsalted nuts or yogurt.
While this may not seem as extreme as the Chicago approach, the students opted to head elsewhere for lunch, to places where “junk food” was sold. One school used to use soft-drink and snack profits to support school sports and lawn maintenance. To make up for the loss of profits, the school board decided to give various schools federal-impact aid money. So the entire nation was forced to underwrite this decision.
If these events in Washington are unfamiliar it is because President Reagan brought this failed experiment to our attention back in 1976 during a Viewpoint radio broadcast. The concept of trying to control what students eat and what parents feed them is another example of moving “forward” with an old top-down, government-knows-best idea.
There are countless examples of bad school-lunch policies over the past 40 years. It is important to scrutinize the real costs and how far-reaching such programs are to taxpayers. I don’t know anyone who does not want children to eat well, but I think persuasion and education are more reasonable approaches to developing such healthy habits.
I stand with Ronald Reagan on this issue. He ended his broadcast with the question, “Whatever happened to … ’Eat all of your spinach, Junior, or no television tonight’?”
RINGO LANZETTI
Falls Church
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