Archives for the 'children' tag
The road to café standards
This is California, of course:
The Assembly has passed a bill to set minimum standards for food in licensed child-care centers, requiring a vegetable to be part of lunch and supper and forbidding whole milk for children 2 or older.
The food children eat in kindergarten through 12th grade in public school is regulated for fat and salt content, among other things. But for many preschool children, there have been no such dietary rules.
“California enjoys a worldwide reputation for its sunny, healthy lifestyle,” said the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica). “Childhood obesity rates threaten to steal this enviable position.”
The bill, which passed the Assembly on Wednesday by a 48-27 vote, now heads to the Senate.
If it becomes law, AB 627 would require low-fat or skim milk to be served to children 2 years old and older. It would limit sugar in cereals and eliminate deep frying and sweetened drinks. It also would establish an 18-month pilot project to evaluate stronger nutrition and physical activities standards.
In Los Angeles County, 350,000 children 5 and younger spend at least a part of their day in child care. The county licenses 2,230 child-care centers and about 7,800 family child-care homes.
Food served at child-care centers based in homes, community centers, churches and other locations is one key to a lifetime of healthy eating, said Matthew Sharp, senior advocate with the California Food Policy Advocates, which sponsored the bill.
“We can’t possibly solve the healthcare crisis” without nutritional improvements, Sharp said. “We’re paying one way or another.”
The Solution to Childhood Obesity
My piece on last month’s SoBe Wine & Food panel on getting kids to eat healthy, which featured Rachael Ray, Tom Colicchio, and the superb Brian Wansink, is up at Reason.com. A sample.
On its face, a panel featuring a daytime talk-show host, high-end restaurateur and head judge on Bravo’s hit Top Chef, diet-book author, uber-rich foodie mom, and New York Times writer wouldn’t appear to pose any danger to the restaurants-make-us-fat myth. (This year’s panel at least had better myth-busting potential than last year’s, which featured celebrity chefs—and torrid food nannies—Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters.)
But the overwhelming message of the panel was that parents—not the government or restaurants—are ultimately responsible for what their kids eat.
Whole thing here.
Lunch Buffet
Another death by smoking ban, this one in Chicago.
D’Artagnan may have duck dogs, but my friend Veronique goes one better, pointing me to a NYT Freakonomics post on foie gras dog biscuits.
Parents who bring their little devils to UK bars are ruining the pub scene there, reports the Glasgow Herald.
Those alarmists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest are yammering on about the need to ban food dyes, again, reveals the LAT.
The reprehensible Jamie Oliver almost ready to endorse a government Ministry of Food, reports the Times of London.
