as a person who fills vending machines for a living, I will tell you that
junk is a much easier buck, but if you put in the right "better" foods kids
will buy them more than adults, raisins and sunflower meats come to mind,
and from what I am seeing and hearing a part of the problem is the nasty
food fed to kids now. My mother has taken a partime job in the lunch rooms
of the school district and sister is a substitute teacher, they confirm what
the children tell me, one good meal in about seven, Lee
Fred wrote in message
...
And how does one make reasonable and responsible decisions if the food
at restaurants is not labeled. What the hell is wrong with banning
(in the words of this article's author) JUNK FOODS from school vending
machines?

What is wrong with funding bike paths and building sidewalks.
Socialism? Labeled foodstuffs - how, well, communistic!

Sheesh..............

On 5 Jun 2004 15:37:30 -0000, Radley Balko
wrote:

This June, Time magazine and ABC News will host a three-day summit on
obesity. ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who last December anchored the
prime time special "How to Get Fat Without Really Trying," will host.
Judging by the scheduled program, the summit promises to be pep rally for
media, nutrition activists, and policy makers -- all agitating for a
panoply of government anti-obesity initiatives, including prohibiting
junk
food in school vending machines, federal funding for new bike trails and
sidewalks, more demanding labels on foodstuffs, restrictive food
marketing
to children, and prodding the food industry into more "responsible"
behavior. In other words, bringing government between you and your
waistline.

Politicians have already climbed aboard. President Bush earmarked $200
million in his budget for anti-obesity measures. State legislatures and
school boards across the country have begun banning snacks and soda from
school campuses and vending machines. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Oakland
Mayor
Jerry Brown, among others, have called for a "fat tax" on high-calorie
foods. Congress is now considering menu-labeling legislation, which would
force restaurants to send every menu item to the laboratory for
nutritional
testing.

This is the wrong way to fight obesity. Instead of manipulating or
intervening in the array of food options available to American consumers,
our government ought to be working to foster a sense of responsibility in
and ownership of our own health and well-being. But we're doing just the
opposite.

For decades now, America's health care system has been migrating toward
socialism. Your well-being, shape, and condition have increasingly been
deemed matters of "public health," instead of matters of personal
responsibility. Our lawmakers just enacted a huge entitlement that
requires
some people to pay for other people's medicine. Sen. Hillary Clinton just
penned a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine calling for yet
more federal control of health care. All of the Democrat candidates for
president boasted plans to push health care further into the public
sector.
More and more, states are preventing private health insurers from
charging
overweight and obese clients higher premiums, which effectively removes
any
financial incentive for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

We're becoming less responsible for our own health, and more responsible
for everyone else's. Your heart attack drives up the cost of my premiums
and office visits. And if the government is paying for my
anti-cholesterol
medication, what incentive is there for me to put down the cheeseburger?

This collective ownership of private health then paves the way for even
more federal restrictions on consumer choice and civil liberties. A
society
where everyone is responsible for everyone else's well-being is a society
more apt to accept government restrictions, for example -- on what
McDonalds can put on its menu, what Safeway or Kroger can put on grocery
shelves, or holding food companies responsible for the bad habits of
unhealthy consumers.

A growing army of nutritionist activists and food industry foes are
egging
the process on. Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public
Interest has said, "we've got to move beyond 'personal responsibility.'"
The largest organization of trial lawyers now encourages its members to
weed jury pools of candidates who show "personal responsibility bias."
The
title of Jennings' special from last December -- "How to Get Fat Without
Really Trying" -- reveals his intent, which is to relieve viewers of
responsibility for their own condition. Indeed, Jennings ended the
program
with an impassioned plea for government intervention to fight obesity.

The best way to alleviate the obesity "public health" crisis is to remove
obesity from the realm of public health. It doesn't belong there. It's
difficult to think of anything more private and of less public concern
than
what we choose to put into our bodies. It only becomes a public matter
when
we force the public to pay for the consequences of those choices. If
policymakers want to fight obesity, they'll halt the creeping
socialization
of medicine, and move to return individual Americans' ownership of their
own health and well-being back to individual Americans.

That means freeing insurance companies to reward healthy lifestyles, and
penalize poor ones. It means halting plans to further socialize medicine
and health care. Congress should also increase access to medical and
health
savings accounts, which give consumers the option of rolling money
reserved
for health care into a retirement account. These accounts introduce
accountability into the health care system, and encourage caution with
one's health care dollar. When money we spend on health care doesn't
belong
to our employer or the government, but is money we could devote to our
own
retirement, we're less likely to run to the doctor at the first sign of a
cold.

We'll all make better choices about diet, exercise, and personal health
when someone else isn't paying for the consequences of those choices.