No Soft Drinks in Arizona Schools

From KIKO News:

The Arizona Republic reports that efforts are being made to extend a ban on soft drink sales from elementary and middle schools to high schools. State School Superintendent Tom Horne and state Representative Mark Anderson say they plan to introduce legislation in January to do that. High schools were originally included in the legislation that passed this year. But they were taken out of the final version after heavy opposition from the food and beverage industry. The Arizona Beverage Association says it will continue to fight to keep the soda ban from being extended to high school. The group issued a school vending policy this week that promotes a variety of choices for high school students. This includes keeping at least half of the slots in vending machines for regular soda. The other half would be for nutritious and "low calorie" beverages. Horne says he would agree to keep diet soft drinks in high schools if the association will stop serving sugary soft drinks.

California has made similar efforts, as have other states. With the ever-increasing problem of teen obesity and diabetes, it's time to realize that health is more than a "personal willpower" issue. Yes, people should know better than to ingest poisons (high-fructose corn syrup), but kids are the most impressionable segment of the population -- they respond to emotional cues more than rational thought (peer pressure or prestige, for example). The soft drink companies target a young audience because they have disposable income and they are easily influenced.

There is no good reason to have soft drinks in the schools. The kids should be drinking water, milk, or fruit juice (and not Gatorade or Powerade unless they are in a school sport that entails dehydration risk). The soft drink companies have built a business model around getting young people attached to their product with the awareness that these kids will likely become lifetime customers (same scam the cigarette companies once used).

Stepping back to look at this politically, what these new laws are saying is that health is not simply a personal choice -- the social structures (capitalism in this case) play a role as well. This is part of the Integral Fitness Solution to getting a handle on the obesity epidemic. We cannot ignore the role our society plays in the problem, nor can we ignore the role of cultural values ("the Pepsi Generation," "Have a Coke and a Smile").