Selling the Health of Our Kids

I was appalled when public schools made deals with large pop and candy companies to allow dispensers in school in exchange for money and other perks. Candy and pop in school. A marketing victory. A parent's nightmare.

In essence schools sell the health and well-being of our children for monies they plan to use for educational purposes. Worthy idea. But at what cost? Sugar not only causes problems with weight, but pop and candy ingredients are unhealthy in many ways. Pop short-circuits the brain, making learning more difficult. It decreases bone density, causing long-term problems. We won't even go into the high caffeine content of much of the pop and candy offered. These are just a few of the problems that come with the consumption of products that are anything but nutritious. Yet, by offering these deficient junk-food products in the school, the school tacitly condones the consumption by the very availability and thereby undermining the health of our kids.

But with the new dieting craze, many schools are set to compound the problem. We don't hear of removing pop, but we do hear sugared pop may be replaced with more diet pop. However "bad" sugared drinks and other food products may be, those sweetened with aspartame are far worse for the health of our kids.

Even though the media recently released a news story on a study that reportedly found aspartame does not raise the risk of cancer, such findings do not mean this product is harmless to our health. In fact aspartame is gaining a reputation for a number of health problems from aggravated diabetes to migraines. Other problems reported were depression, memory loss, lethargy, irritability, dizziness, headaches and worse.

In a 1996 review of aspartame studies by Ralph G. Walton, MD, chairman of The Center for Behavioral Medicine, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, he found that "Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored studies, 83 (92%) identified one or more problems with aspartame."

Other sweeteners are also problematic to health. Yet, without due consideration, schools are condoning the use of these products as though the end, money for education, justifies the means, damage to the health both long and short-term of our students. Unfortunately, for most, I believe this tradeoff is done unintentionally and in ignorance.

However, schools should be a bastion of health education, not a source of undermining health of kids who may all ready have health issues.

Instead of exchanging one unhealthy product for one that is even worse for health, why not completely remove unhealthy products, replacing them with healthy choices that aid, not undermine, the ability to think, reason and learn. After all, of what use is all the money in the world for our schools, if our students are so zoned out on junk products they can't focus?

Let's educate ourselves and our children about healthy choices and model those choices in our schools as well as our homes.