School snacks

We have all heard about the latest craze sweeping the country......the removal of "unhealthy"snack foods from our nation's schools. I was watching Katie Couric this evening and the story was reported again......baked snacks in and fried snacks are out. Eeeek!

The biggest concern is the fact that there are a lot of obese school children roaming the byways and highways of America. So in order to correct this, they are removing Doritos and Pepsi from the vending machines because this seems to be the primary problem. I don't agree.

The children who have access to the vending machines at school are the same children who eat at McDonald's and Burger King regularly. You may be able to remove the snack items from their reach while they are at school for seven hours but you cannot correct their eating habits outside of school. This is where the problem really lies.

Until the FDA declares Marshall Law on all fast food chains, Lunchables and Dairy Queen, the problem is going to still exist. I guess it makes the school officials feel less guilty about the situation. They can say they are doing all they can to promote a healthy lifestyle.

I was chubby child. I am a chubby adult. We had vending machines at my school. You name it we had it. Do I think that was the source of my overindulgence? No. In fact, I rarely bought anything from the vending machines. It was the meals outside of school that assisted with my fascination with food. Good meals at home with "seconds" and feeding from the fast food frenzy with my aunt on the weekend fulfilled every food craving I had in my early teens. At that time, twenty five years ago, there was little concern about the obesity rate in children.

End result.........today's healthy eating habits must begin at home with the parents. Isn't that where everything should start? Do we have to rely again on schools to assist with the role of parenting? Let's try concentrating on keeping kids in school instead of giving them yet another reason to leave.

Baked Doritos? It's just not right.............