Daily News Tribune
By Rep. Paul Casey
Tuesday Mar 18, 2008
Today, while public school lunch menus have improved in nutritional value over the years, the snack and a la carte lines in school cafeterias have recently fallen under intense scrutiny from parents, doctors and state officials for their overwhelmingly unhealthy offerings. The junk food and sugary drinks in schools all across the nation are contributing to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes among our schoolchildren. In Massachusetts alone, the Department of Public Health (DPH) estimates that 29 percent of children (55 percent of adults) are overweight or obese, and these rates have more than doubled in the past two decades.
More and more children are establishing poor dietary habits and making unhealthful lifestyle choices that they are likely to continue throughout their lives. Obesity places children at a higher risk for such life-threatening conditions as heart disease, asthma and depression as they get older, and school vending machines and other snacks are partly to blame. Because of availability of “junk food,” kids are over-consuming fat and sugar from candy bars and soft drinks.
Clearly, the most effective time and place to prevent the spread of obesity is during childhood and at the school level. And, the Legislature is currently working with school districts and DPH officials on two important pieces of legislation to address the issue of school nutrition.