Search Articles:

 

Breaking News......... BREAKING NEWS: Railroad ties start wildfire west of Missoula this afternoon......... LEMONADE! Missoula children sell lemonade at stands throughout town as fundraiser for children's shelter......... Wife, infant daughter of Butte Marine killed in car crash while he's at basic training......... Montana F-15s duel Iowa F-16s in training exercises above Montana towns......... Local News......... Schweitzer: ‘Damn right I'm mad' at GM........Three council members file suit against city........Fishing limits dropped on 6 backcountry lakes........Baucus: Health care plan will be produced before end of August........Fighting fire with fire on Blue Mountain: Strategy designed to keep smoke from billowing into Missoula during the summer........Jury acquits ex-Griz Wilson in second murder trial........

SUMMARY: Pop quiz: What do soft drinks have to do with education?

The nation's largest soft drink producers last week joined in an agreement to eliminate sales of most sweetened soft drinks from school lunch rooms and vending machines within several years. The agreement, worked out with the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association looks to diffuse, if not end, a growing battle over the nutritional standards applied to school fare. Student proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic will soar.

OK, well, that last bit about improved learning may not be true. It's just that if everyone were as concerned about what kids learn as what they eat and weigh, perhaps we'd see real progress in education. Having effectively countered the dreaded menace of soda pop, parents, educators and social activists should have little stopping them from attending to other educational priorities - such as education.

We're not disputing the fact that kids drink too much pop. They surely do. Too many soft drinks can contribute to obesity and other health problems. But it's a safe bet that most of the pop kids consume isn't obtained at school. Eliminating sweetened drinks from schools may send kids a symbolic signal about good nutrition, but short of eliminating them from their parents' refrigerators and substituting pop for meth in those shocking commercials, it's unlikely to even reduce them in kids' diets.

Perhaps this is why the soft drink industry is agreeing voluntarily to restrict the sale of their perfectly legal products. The companies will get the food cops off their back and can still expect to sell plenty of their products. These companies have broad product lines, and they're just as happy to have you drink a bottle of their water or chemically sweetened diet soda as one of their high-test sugary drinks. In fact, there may be nothing like a mean old school marm telling a kid he can't have a cola to whet his thirst for the product. Sales might even soar.

In any event, we have trouble worrying as much about what goes into kids' bellies as we do about what goes into their heads. Schools exist for one reason, and it isn't for eating. If healthier beverages were a factor in academic achievement, we'd be cheering about the new agreement with the pop industry. The ruckus over soda pop, nutritional standards of school lunches and obesity can be lumped in with a vast array of school-based social work - from AIDS awareness to anti-drug campaigns to matters of procreation - that has only the most tangential connection with education yet increasingly fills the short school day and short school year.

---

---

Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)

---