Junk food, schools and our kids’ health education

I am not aware of any law in the Philippines regulating what food products and items school canteens can and cannot sell. From what I have seen in dozens of school canteens, that is left to the discretion of the school administration. Neither is there a law prohibiting or regulating contracts between food and beverage companies, and schools. Hence, it is not uncommon to find ice cream stalls, bake shops, soft drinks and hotdog stands, and vending machines full of chips and canned soft drinks inside school canteens and compounds — all selling their branded products and conspicuously displaying their brand names. I don’t think it’s realistic to presume that they get their puwesto for free.

It just seems to me that there is something very ironic about a situation that allows schools to make money by neglecting our children’s health and health education. Teaching our kids about health and nutrition is part of their education. And the schools’ primary concern is — or should be — to educate our children. What is the point of teaching them about go, grow and glow foods and the lack of nutritive values of soft drinks and chichirya if, the moment they step inside their school canteens, these products are conspicuously offered for sale? Can the irony be justified by the income that the schools earn from the food and beverage companies that, at best, may help augment budgets for school projects?

In California, Schwarzenegger’s concern is the “obesity epidemic.” That is why the ban on soft drinks is coupled with the regulation of the amount of sugar in juices and the amount of fat in food. While obesity may not yet be a problem among the Filipino youth, undernourishment is. Not necessarily in the sense that they’re not eating enough food — remember we’re talking about private schools where the students are not exactly poor — but in the sense that they are eating the wrong kinds of food. Between widespread advertising in newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the Internet — most of them “glamorized” by the endorsement of entertainment celebrities — and the practice of schools of selling what can only be labeled as junk food right inside school canteens, what chance do our children really have of remembering what they learn inside the classroom? Are they going to grow up thinking that classroom lessons are mere theories that can be disregarded after passing their tests? That makes health and nutrition education a joke, doesn’t it?

If there are still some members of Congress who truly care about what becomes of our youth, somebody better look into the relationship between schools and food and beverage companies. Schools may be businesses but they are businesses imbued with public interest. Isn’t it high time that we start giving more than a cursory glance to what our kids eat in their school canteens?

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