Do These Food Regulations Really Worked?
In theory, these 5 food laws should have helped clean up our eating habits. In reality, they haven’t made much of a difference.
You know the sobering stats: Almost two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. And since individual willpower hasn’t seemed to improve our eating, lawmakers are turning to public policy. From banning free toys in Happy Meals to requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus, the government has passed laws set to improve food nutrition, educate customers, and fight fat. Just this month, the state of Colorado revealed that it’s considering a bill that would ban trans fats in all foods served in its schools—the most stringent trans fat school regulation in the country.
But the real question is: Are such laws working? While the intentions behind these regulations are good, restaurants, schools, and even Congress itself have found creative ways to circumvent the law. For instance, the USDA may have improved the nutrient requirements of school lunches, but thanks to an additional provisions bill passed by Congress, pizza and French fries count as vegetables. And even when the regulations are adhered to—posting calorie counts, for example—they haven’t drastically changed the way we eat. Here, we take a look at five well-meaning food laws that have gone awry.
We have to give props to the United States Department of Agriculture for updating its school lunch guidelines for the first time in 15 years, but we’re already seeing members of Congress push back. To receive subsidies from the government, school lunches must meet stricter and healthier nutritional standards just proposed by the USDA by the 2012-2013 school year. The new guidelines include calorie limits based on age, as well as sodium and trans fat limits; students will be served twice as many fruits and veggies, and all milk must be low-fat or fat-free.
However, even before these standards became official, Congress created a loophole for schools. To accommodate poorer districts that might not have the funding for the healthier but more expensive requirements, they added provisions to the bill that would have tomato paste and French fries count toward the newly upped veggie quota. Under this provision, a piece of pizza could qualify as a vegetable—something it certainly is not.
Last year, San Francisco played the food—and fun—police when the city’s government passed the Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance. Better known as the “Happy Meal ban,” the law prohibited restaurants from including free toys with meals that packed more than 600 calories and not enough fruits and vegetables. Ostensibly, the ban was supposed to encourage the McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants in the Bay Area to offer healthier foods and to prevent parents from being bullied into buying nutritionally negative food for the sake of a plastic plaything. Instead, when the ordinance went into effect on December 1, fast food chains found ways to evade the rules. At McDonald’s, you could purchase the toy for a measly extra 10 cents when you bought a Happy Meal, and the proceeds went to the Ronald McDonald House. Moreover, a study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine compared restaurant menus before and after the ordinance went into effect and found that the ban did nothing to improve the nutritional quality of the foods offered.
In 2008, New York City led the way in food and health policy when it mandated that chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus. While it was certainly shocking to see that your Starbucks banana nut loaf packed 490 calories, knowing just how many calories you’re consuming hasn’t had as big an impact on eating habits as expected. For instance, New York University researchers compared the receipts of inner-city children at restaurants pre- and post-calorie count boards and found that merely listing the calories didn’t affect their ordering choices. Studies suggest that the calorie counts are effective only if you bother to read them—something that only 1 in 6 of Americans do.
New York City’s calorie count mandate followed its first-of-its-kind 2006 ban of artificial trans fats in restaurants. That initiative has proved to be more of a success. A 2009 study found that the use of trans fats for frying and cooking in New York City restaurants went from 50% to less than 2%, and the total amount of saturated and trans fat in French fries decreased by half.
Eight years ago, Seattle schools ruled that snacks needed to fall in line with strict calorie, fat, and portion size requirements, but now they’re considering bowing to the pressure of students and loosening the nutrition requirements of vending machine snacks. As it turns out, pre-regulation vending machine sales provided schools across the city with about $214,000 annually, which was put toward funding student organizations. However, healthy vending machine offerings now only rake in $17,000, and schools are finding it increasingly hard to find additional sources of money.
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To add salt to the wound, prohibiting the sales of junk food in schools has had a minimal impact on children’s health. A Penn State study found that the availability of junk food in school has little to no effect on child weight gain. Researchers looked at the weight of 19,000 students over a period of four years and found that the presence of unhealthy food in school vending machines did not make it more likely for them to be overweight, suggesting that what kids eat outside of school may have a greater effect on their health.
In 2001 California banned soda from being sold in school, and since then more than 20 states have placed restrictions on the sales of cola in school cafeterias and vending machines.
Unfortunately, soda bans haven’t proven to be any more effective than junk food regulations. A recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine looked at students in middle schools across 40 states and found that whether or not there was a soda sales restriction in school, children still drank the sugary stuff. Sadly, when soda was banned from schools, students would buy other sugar-laden beverages, such as sports drinks, instead. And when sales of all sugary drinks were prohibited, students consumed a comparable amount outside of school as those who did have soda in their school vending machines.
Copyright: arcticle: Rodale Inc.
Original article from: http://fitbie.msn.com/eat-right/tips/food-regulations-backfired
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In theory, these 5 food laws should have helped clean up our eating habits. In reality, they haven’t made much of a difference.
You know the sobering stats: Almost two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. And since individual willpower hasn’t seemed to improve our eating, lawmakers are turning to public policy. From banning free toys in Happy Meals to requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus, the government has passed laws set to improve food nutrition, educate customers, and fight fat. Just this month, the state of Colorado revealed that it’s considering a bill that would ban trans fats in all foods served in its schools—the most stringent trans fat school regulation in the country.
But the real question is: Are such laws working? While the intentions behind these regulations are good, restaurants, schools, and even Congress itself have found creative ways to circumvent the law. For instance, the USDA may have improved the nutrient requirements of school lunches, but thanks to an additional provisions bill passed by Congress, pizza and French fries count as vegetables. And even when the regulations are adhered to—posting calorie counts, for example—they haven’t drastically changed the way we eat. Here, we take a look at five well-meaning food laws that have gone awry.
2012: Updated School Lunch Nutritional Guidelines
We have to give props to the United States Department of Agriculture for updating its school lunch guidelines for the first time in 15 years, but we’re already seeing members of Congress push back. To receive subsidies from the government, school lunches must meet stricter and healthier nutritional standards just proposed by the USDA by the 2012-2013 school year. The new guidelines include calorie limits based on age, as well as sodium and trans fat limits; students will be served twice as many fruits and veggies, and all milk must be low-fat or fat-free.
However, even before these standards became official, Congress created a loophole for schools. To accommodate poorer districts that might not have the funding for the healthier but more expensive requirements, they added provisions to the bill that would have tomato paste and French fries count toward the newly upped veggie quota. Under this provision, a piece of pizza could qualify as a vegetable—something it certainly is not.
2011: San Francisco Happy Meal Toy Ban
Last year, San Francisco played the food—and fun—police when the city’s government passed the Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance. Better known as the “Happy Meal ban,” the law prohibited restaurants from including free toys with meals that packed more than 600 calories and not enough fruits and vegetables. Ostensibly, the ban was supposed to encourage the McDonald’s and Burger King restaurants in the Bay Area to offer healthier foods and to prevent parents from being bullied into buying nutritionally negative food for the sake of a plastic plaything. Instead, when the ordinance went into effect on December 1, fast food chains found ways to evade the rules. At McDonald’s, you could purchase the toy for a measly extra 10 cents when you bought a Happy Meal, and the proceeds went to the Ronald McDonald House. Moreover, a study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine compared restaurant menus before and after the ordinance went into effect and found that the ban did nothing to improve the nutritional quality of the foods offered.
2008: New York City Calorie Count Posting Law
In 2008, New York City led the way in food and health policy when it mandated that chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus. While it was certainly shocking to see that your Starbucks banana nut loaf packed 490 calories, knowing just how many calories you’re consuming hasn’t had as big an impact on eating habits as expected. For instance, New York University researchers compared the receipts of inner-city children at restaurants pre- and post-calorie count boards and found that merely listing the calories didn’t affect their ordering choices. Studies suggest that the calorie counts are effective only if you bother to read them—something that only 1 in 6 of Americans do.
New York City’s calorie count mandate followed its first-of-its-kind 2006 ban of artificial trans fats in restaurants. That initiative has proved to be more of a success. A 2009 study found that the use of trans fats for frying and cooking in New York City restaurants went from 50% to less than 2%, and the total amount of saturated and trans fat in French fries decreased by half.
2004: Seattle Junk Food Ban in Schools
Eight years ago, Seattle schools ruled that snacks needed to fall in line with strict calorie, fat, and portion size requirements, but now they’re considering bowing to the pressure of students and loosening the nutrition requirements of vending machine snacks. As it turns out, pre-regulation vending machine sales provided schools across the city with about $214,000 annually, which was put toward funding student organizations. However, healthy vending machine offerings now only rake in $17,000, and schools are finding it increasingly hard to find additional sources of money.
http://hubpages.com
To add salt to the wound, prohibiting the sales of junk food in schools has had a minimal impact on children’s health. A Penn State study found that the availability of junk food in school has little to no effect on child weight gain. Researchers looked at the weight of 19,000 students over a period of four years and found that the presence of unhealthy food in school vending machines did not make it more likely for them to be overweight, suggesting that what kids eat outside of school may have a greater effect on their health.
2001: California Soda Ban in Schools
In 2001 California banned soda from being sold in school, and since then more than 20 states have placed restrictions on the sales of cola in school cafeterias and vending machines.
Unfortunately, soda bans haven’t proven to be any more effective than junk food regulations. A recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine looked at students in middle schools across 40 states and found that whether or not there was a soda sales restriction in school, children still drank the sugary stuff. Sadly, when soda was banned from schools, students would buy other sugar-laden beverages, such as sports drinks, instead. And when sales of all sugary drinks were prohibited, students consumed a comparable amount outside of school as those who did have soda in their school vending machines.
Copyright: arcticle: Rodale Inc.
Original article from: http://fitbie.msn.com/eat-right/tips/food-regulations-backfired
Forward this news message: