Whole milk is junk food, but baked cheetos not?

[buttmunch]

CHICAGO Dec 10, 2005 — Cartons of whole milk would be considered junk food, but baked Cheetos would not, under new rules proposed Friday by Illinois education officials.

The State Board of Education proposed the rules after Gov. Rod Blagojevich asked for a junk food ban in elementary and middle schools.

The new rules focus on the nutritional content of foods rather than broad categories of food.

Because of that, the proposed guidelines would allow 1 ounce bags of baked potato chips, even though all chips are now banned under the board's current definition of junk food. Whole milk would also be banned because of its high fat content, school officials said.

Some of the recommended cut-off points: calories from fat exceeding 35 percent (except nuts and seeds), calories from saturated fat exceeding 10 percent, and total calories exceeding 200 for an individual package.

"I think it's more practical," said the board's general counsel, Jonathan Furr. "We're focusing on nutrition, which is the objective to focus on a healthier environment."


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press

Ah yes, it's always great when a bunch of bureaucrats put their heads together in order to solve a particularly tricky problem. Why don't they just serve them food close to the source, make sure they have gym at least three times a week and leave it at that? This is absurd.

[SVZ]

Well....some obese kid shouldn't be chugging down whole milk because he thinks it's healthy either Just as much as he shouldn't be eating the cheetos.

Since when did Cheetos come in one ounce bags?!?!!

[MrsDark]

This was less of a big deal when I was a kid. Because we used to have gym every day! Bring that back. But with coaches who are actually qualified to teach fitness to kids! Not ex-jock or military assholes who make them all play nothing but 3 sports all time time and make a kid not naturally athletically inclined feel like shit.

Besides, kids need calories to grow and even a slghtly higher fat content for brain growth when they're elementary age. Even if you feed them low fat foods they can still be little fatasses if they do nothing but sit on their ass playing video games all day!

[SVZ]

Not ex-jock or military assholes who make them all play nothing but 3 sports all time time and make a kid not naturally athletically inclined feel like shit

Ohhh but they're so hot, if they haven't let themselves go and brush their teeth in the reflection of their 20 year old trophies.

It's a balance between diet and excercise. While we're not excercising at all, we're also not eating very healthfully either. One covers the other, but you can control how much benefit you want to gain from excercise, the most you can do with diet is...not eat, and you're metabolism slows down anyways so there's no point to that (You need to eat.)

On the other hand, people need to smarten up and read labels themselves. Unfortunately it's risen to the point where state rules have to be put in place to guide people.