The Issue: Whether the government’s school-lunch efforts are enough to combat childhood obesity.
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Thank you for putting into perspective what we food-service directors have been saying: Good eating habits begin at home, and children are not going to eat things they do not like just because we put these things on their lunch trays (“Why the Cafeteria Crusade Is a Crock,” Michael A. Walsh, PostOpinion, Jan. 26).
The majority of us provide healthy options, but the students do not choose to partake of them. They want bur-gers and fries from McDonald’s, just as they receive for dinner.
Terry Sincock
Hartland, Mich.
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When I was a kid, practically every breakfast cereal boasted sugar in its title, yet we were not an obese generation.
Kids today sit in front of computers, playing games and chatting, while we were out riding our bikes and playing sports.
D. Becher
East Northport
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Walsh points to the failure of Los Angeles school district students to eat “such delicacies as vegetarian curry” as an example of why attempts to improve school lunch programs are shams.
One reason this may have happened is that children who have been largely raised on processed food need explicit explanation as to why it is important to eat a healthy diet, what “real” food is, where it comes from and why it tastes different.
For years, the government, in concert with the USDA, has promoted policies designed to make nutritionally bankrupt food the cheapest and most ubiquitous option available.
The mounting human and economic costs of the obesity epidemic demand that we come up with better options. Food-literacy education, coupled with healthy school lunches, are a good place to start.
Deb Lewison Grant
Co-Founder
FoodFight
Manhattan
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No Child Left Behind is keeping all children off the playground and behind their desks.
We’re feeding these growing children less and less to compensate for the lost time on the playground and the X-Box waiting for them at home.
When they get home in the afternoon, they are starving and hit the chips, cookies and other wrong things. It is my opinion that this is the true problem leading to obesity.
E. Gorena
Area Supervisor
Food and Nutrition
Brownsville Ind.
School District
Brownsville, Texas
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Eating a school lunch is not mandatory. Students can choose to pack their own lunch, and schools have a choice in accepting federal dollars.
It makes sense for the government to insist that healthy foods be served using the money it provides.
But the real challenge, as evidenced by the shortcomings of the LA school district experience, is how to get children to eat healthy foods.
Continuing to offer children poor nutrition choices next to healthy ones and hoping they make the right selection doesn’t make sense.
If we continue to travel down the current path, paved with hot dogs and chicken nuggets, we may save money in the short run but there is going to be a huge health-care cost down the road.
John Tewksbury
Muncy, Pa.
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Coercing school kids to eat a nutritionally proper lunch is a losing proposition. As George H.W. Bush said about eating broccoli, it “ain’t gonna happen.”
Do I prefer slim over fat? Sure. But is it the nanny state’s job to slim us down? No way.
Paul Bloustein
Cincinnati