Thursday, September 23, 2010

You know your school food policy sucks when...


Pizza Pizza announces that by means of modifications to recipes and portion sizes their pizzas will be in compliance with the 2011 Ontario School Food & Beverage Policy 'Healthiest (Sell Most)' rating.

So what exactly does a 'Healthiest (Sell Most)' rating mean?

Nutritionally it means that per serving of pizza there needs to be more than 2gr of fibre, more than 10gr of protein, less than 5gr of saturated fat and less than 960mg of sodium (conspicuously absent are caloric limits).

Think kids might have more than one slice?

Think that regardless of the nutritional breakdown of Pizza Pizza's policy friendly recipe that schools shouldn't be promoting a lifestyle that regularly includes the consumption of fast food?

Think that schools instead should be encouraging kids to cook and to eat whole, healthy meals that they, or their parents, or a fresh food based cafeteria make?

I do.

Unlike shopping malls, airports and your drive to work route, schools are publicly run institutions. In Canada that means they're funded by the same folks that fund our socialized medical system. That system's the very same one that is almost certain to collapse over the course of the next 10-30 years as it crumbles under the weight brought to bear on it by our morbidly unhealthy lifestyles.

Schools should be setting examples for our children, not reinforcing our society's nutritional shortcomings by furthering the embrace of fast food culture.