By: Don Caldwell
At what point do things just go too far? When they threaten to take away Chocolate milk...
Excerpts italicized:
With increased media attention on America’s growing childhood obesity epidemic, school districts are under pressure to make student lunches healthier—and some are doing so by banning flavored milks.
It all started when Florida considered a statewide ban in schools last fall, and other districts have replaced milks with high-fructose corn syrup with sugar—often viewed as a more natural sweetener.
The latest development comes from John Deasy, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, the nation's second-largest school district, who announced that over the summer he will be pushing to remove chocolate and strawberry milks from school lunches.
Deborah Bellholt, a South Los Angeles mother, said none of her six children ranging from pre-school to high school age will drink plain milk. "By allowing kids flavored milk, they still get the calcium they need," she said. "If not, they'd bypass it."
But Mimi Bonetti, a suburban Los Angeles mother with two elementary school-age children who drink plain milk, said she gets angry that chocolate milk is portrayed as nutritious. Children can get calcium and other nutrients from other foods, she said.
"If you offer them the choice of chocolate or plain, of course they're going to choose chocolate," Bonetti said. "When you're telling kids that drinking chocolate milk is a healthy choice, it's sending the wrong message."
Ask kids, and most vote for chocolate. Suburban Los Angeles seventh-grader Nacole Johnson said plain milk tastes yucky. If there were no chocolate milk, "I wouldn't drink it," she said.
We all want our children to be healthy and eat right, but one has to ask, where does the responsibility of the parent end and the responsibility of society begin?
If parents allow society to dictate what is best for their children, then who is really doing the parenting?
I doubt that anyone seriously thinks that chocolate milk is healthy, but do we really need to launch efforts to get rid of it? Childhood obesity is a large and worsening problem in the United States, and many are looking for answers to combat this growing trend.
The power that we give to society to raise our children is power that would be very difficult to get back. Are we really so bad at our jobs (in parenting) that we should collectively admit partial defeat and bring in the collective opinion of the masses? We can all agree that there is a lot of parenting out there, but are the masses in the right position to dictate? … Most of us can agree that different parenting styles are good and reflect the cultures, choices, and attitudes of both the parents and children involved, but what happens when the power you give to public bodies (which tends to look at things from one perspective with one solution)?
Can this make a difference?
Anyone who is a parent can attest to how difficult it can be to get kids to eat their food (especially healthy food), but can efforts like this make a difference? One has to wonder whether or not a child will even eat all of his food during lunch time, and I for one would rather know that my children are eating all of their food (semi-healthy... hopefully) then only the couple of dishes that tate good and throw away the rest. At home we can at least monitor what they eat and coerce them into eating the good stuff, but can the staff at a public school successfully do the same? On paper one can think that we are helping our children eat right, but practically it may be a very different matter… with a lot of wasted food.
The biggest impact on our children’s’ diets comes from home, and what they eat at home. Most of our attention should be placed here, and if it can’t ….maybe you need to change one of your own habits to help with theirs…
Besides who doesn’t like chocolate milk?
(ORIGINAL LINK) Nation's Second-Largest School District May Ban Chocolate Milk - FoxNews.com
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