Bill Clinton sponsors deal to kick soda out of school vending machines by 2010
By jarespond - Posted on May 8th, 2006
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"The Clinton Foundation, the American Heart Association and the nation's three biggest beverage manufacturers--Coke, Pepsi and Cadbury Schweppes--last week announced an agreement to begin rolling back America's growing obesity epidemic in the place they can do the most good: the schools. Beginning now and progressing through the 2009-10 school year, the manufacturers will kick high-calorie, sugary drinks out of school vending machines and replace them with bottled water, unsweetened fruit juices, low-fat milk and sugar-free sodas--all served in smaller portions" (TIME Magazine).
Given the recent focus on childhood obesity in the news, this event, or something like it involving different people, has been a long time coming, but it is not without its little bits of controversy. Even within the field of public health, there are some people who feel that it is more important to change individual behaviors than it is to change the environments in which those behaviors occur; the premise of this argument is that "meddling" with vending machines infringes on students' liberty to make responsible choices.
Furthermore, school officials, as noted in TIME and elsewhere, often rely on the sale of vending machine products to supplement school income, and some of them are upset at the current decision regarding vending machines. However, this argument supposes that children will be less inclined to purchase fruit juices and diet sodas, which may not be the case. Furthermore, it also supposes that there are no children who currently do not purchase sodas but who would purchase fruit juices if given an adequate selection.
In addition, there are some officials who believe that this regulation ignores those children who are most at risk for developing health effects related to obesity and overweight now. And, while I can sympathize with the sentiment behind this argument, it is by far the least coherent of those presented here. It would simply be unfeasible to mandate a change by the start of the next school year, or even by the start of the year after that, given the immense task of replacing all of the products in all of the vending machines in public schools across American. While it is unfortunate that the children in school right now will not necessarily benefit from this arrangement, there are numerous other ways to prevent childhood obesity in addtion to laws, and children currently enrolled in schools are experiencing no greater a problem than those who have been enrolled in public schools in the past.
On a standardized test last June, I was required to write about whether or not the government should moniter the nutritional content of food served by fast food restaurants. I think that companies should put some consideration into what ingredients they use in product but ultimately it is up to the consumer whether or not to eat the food. I think the same goes with soft drinks. If students choose to drink sodas it is their choice. All people should really do is make sure that kids are well informed about the effects of all the sugar and empty calories. The rest is up to the child.
I think replacing the drinks is a good idea. I think I had a soda pop in school twice during my whole school life. We didn't have vending machiences till my junior year. I went to a really small rual school. You can't make decions For people you can just make the bad decions a little more inconveint. If the students as you say have to smuggle the pop and sugar in....well I can tell you the ones who are doing that were doing it before. It's more about reducing impulse buying, I'm sure you learned about that in business class. And if some of the students develop a taste for the "so called" better drinks. Maybe they will smuggle the "CHEAPER" ones from the outside stores in, instead of 130 cal a serving pop. Did you know that a 32 oz gatror aide has less cals than a 20 pop. The gator aide has just 200 cals, while the pop has 325. Absolutly stupid to drink the pop. If the schools had some posters one the machienes about the dangers of pop I'm sure we would get some better response too. Such as my favorite saying: Chamisty Class: Did you know? The free radicals in the carbon dioxcide of the pop can damage your body. And the rest of the poster can describe how!!! I learned that in college chemisty....
P.S. Yes I still drink pop sometimes- its cheaper then gatoraide... Sucks, I wish gatoraide cost less.
If people want to get fat off of soda, I figure you should let them. America Is supposed to be the land of freedom, besides, if anything they should take out the fatty chocalate,and strawberry milk they serve!!!
It would be a wise plan, but lets see if it pans out!
In Arizona the soda is gone.
It has been replaced with Gatorade type drinks.
More Gym class or PE is a better solution.
More gym class is an excellent idea. I completely agree but I think that gym needs to be more structured--at least at my school it does. In my freshman and sophomore year in high school all we did was walk laps around the gym and run the mile once a week. Now that I am a Senior, they have started offering more organized sports in gym. A lot of the problems in our gym class results from teachers not getting the proper funding. Most of the money in our gym teacher's budget goes toward sports equipment for competitive athletes.
that is the mosy pointless effort to help kids lose weight. ridiculous
They have already immplemented that in some of the area schools in Washington and you see more and more kids trying to "smuggle" candy and soda into the school. What is even more amazing is that they are still serving tator tots, and greasy pizza to kids which doesn't help with the weight problem at all.