Apparently an elementary school in Ottawa (where I live) has decided to limit the number of slices of pizza that kids can have on pizza days to one. Their rationale is that two slices would exceed the limit on saturated fats as set by the Ministry of Health.
Not surprisingly the story has made some waves, with the bulk of the outrage being about liberty and fun and the overstepping of the school on the rights of children and their parents.
My take?
It's not the number of slices that should be limited, it's the number of pizza days.
The message taught to kids (and parents) by school pizza days, regardless of the number of slices involved, or whether the slices' ingredients comply with Ministry guidelines, is that fast food pizza weekly, for no better reason than the fact that it's Thursday (or whatever day), is an acceptably normal part of life.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that fast food pizza is something that shouldn't ever be consumed, in fact my family often orders it on our kids' birthdays or when my father comes to town to visit, but given it is the second largest food source of calories in North American kids' lives, as well as the rise of chronic, non-communicable, diet-related diseases in kids, along with the ubiquity of junk food invading every single facet of modern day life, maybe schools should be doing more to teach kids that fast food is a rare treat, rather than endorsing it as a weekly norm.
The restaurants, located roughly 1km away and across a highway, clearly expect sufficient high-schooler traffic so as to make their bus and driver outlay worthwhile.
Though I regularly write about different food industry sponsored predatory advertising, this feels different. This isn't a large, nameless, multi-national corporation with a deceptive advertisement. This is a local franchisee who who has chosen to explicitly exploit their own local community's children to make a buck.
While it may be unrealistic to expect more from multi-nationals, here's hoping that this local franchisee reflects on the ethics of what strikes me to be an especially predatory practice.
[Thanks to the frustrated parent who sent this my way]
UPDATE: One week after this blog's posting (and subsequently a great deal of local media attention) the Burger King bus was cancelled.
Consider the incredible and deeply disturbing reporting in this story the next time you want to try to kid yourself that something other than profits matters to the food industry.
The slightly longer answer is society's normalized use of junk food to fund raise.
In the Boys and Girls Club's case, they're apparently quite comfortable taking money from fast food restaurants who, in a brilliant bit of marketing, sell packs of free kids meals in return for a donation (which presumably gets shared with The Boys and Girls Club).
Give $3 to Montana's (a fast casual BBQ restaurant chain in Canada), and you'll get 3 free kids meals.
Give $5 to Swiss Chalet (a fast casual rotisserie chicken restaurant chain in Canada) and you'll get 5 free kids meals.
As far as kids meals go, the Center for Science in the Public Interest once ran a comprehensive study of various kids meals. They determined that of the over 3,500 they analyzed, 97% were either too high in calories, sodium, or sugar (or all of the above).
Of course, the adult meals aren't any better and also provide wallops of calories, sodium, and/or sugar, and no doubt, the business model for the restaurants is that they can give away the kids meals because of course, their parents will be eating too.
Also notable is the irony found in The Boys and Girls Club's Twitter banner where they include "Healthy Snacks and Meals" in their listing of what they do.
While fundraising without junk food may be more difficult, it's certainly doable.
Yesterday morning I tweeted about a friend of mine's kid who's fundraising for her hockey team by way of selling pumpkins (and if you click through to the tweet's replies, you'll see many more examples).
There are ways to fundraise that don't involve selling junk food. Friend's kid's hockey team is fundraising by selling pumpkins!
Rather than enabling, permitting, and encouraging a fast food lifestyle, what organizations like The Boys and Girls Club should be doing is demonstrating leadership by ending - purposefully and vocally - the practice of junk food fundraising, and championing and promoting healthier fund raising options in its stead.
My office's local chip wagon (for Americans, think of a food truck, but where fries are their dedicated specialty) is a case study as to why trans-fats need to be regulated out of the food supply.
Walking by the truck with Dr. Aric Sudicky we noticed outside of it, were empty fryer oil buckets. The buckets were a perfect size to brine a turkey and so I asked if I could have one. Kindly, the chip wagon folks said, "sure".
When we saw its trans-fat content our jaws dropped.
It contained 1.9g of trans-fat in every 9.2g of deep fryer shortening.
A quick spin online found us an article that reported that 17.1% of the weight of a french fry came from its absorbed frying oil.
A purchase of a large fries, a kitchen scale, and a smidgen of math later and it turns out that there are a staggering 20.5g of trans-fat in a large serving of our chip wagon's fries.
Here's the video we shot to help put all of this in perspective.
Non-naturally occurring trans-fats, according to the head of Health Canada's trans-fat task force (and everyone really), are a toxin unsafe in any amount, and 20.5g? Well that's the equivalent amount found in 11.4 teaspoons of the most trans-fat laden stick margarine we could find in the supermarket, the No Frills No Name All Vegetable Shortening which according to its package packed 3.5g of trans fat into every 2 teaspoons.
The good news though is that I have it on good authority that Health Canada will be moving imminently on the trans-fat file. Given people have literally died waiting for them, their announcement can't come too soon.
[Interesting short side note: When looking up the margarine's trans-fat content online (I was looking for better photos than the one that had been shared with me), I found that No Frills' No Name All Vegetable Shortening was reported to only contain 0.1g of trans-fat per 2 teaspoons (as opposed to the actual label's reported 3.5).
Seemed really odd until I also noticed, in a very faint and difficult to read font (that's it in the hard to read light grey at the bottom) the line,
"The values stated are approximate and may not be fully representational of this products (sic) vitamins, minerals, and ingredients"
. Um...WTF?]
[And lastly, huge thanks to Dr. Aric Sudicky who shot and edited the video. Aric is a resident finishing up his last year of training and is spending the month with me. You can follow Aric on Twitter, and he's much more active on Instagram than me (I'm old).]
Thanks to nutritional biochemist Dr. Dylan MacKay (following him on Twitter is well worth it) for sharing the handout his 6 year old daughter's school sent home to parents to provide them with examples of peanut free snacks that their kids could bring.
The list is unbelievable. In part it's difficult to believe that a school would suggest these options, but more, it's difficult to believe that whoever put this together didn't take a minute to pause and consider what they were writing.
That they didn't doesn't speak to their lack of intellect, competence, or caring, but rather speaks to just how normal it has become to rely on ultra-processed junk to feed our children. Plainly put, people tend not to question or scrutinize social norms.
Here's the list transcribed
Cookies and Crackers
Dare: Wagon wheels, Bear paws, Vinta crackers, Grissol breads Christie:If no peanut/nut warning on pkg then safe. Chips Ahoy, Oreos, Animal Crackers, Ritz, Stoned Wheat Thins, Triscuit, Premium Plus Peek Freans: Shortbread, Creme-Filled, Digestive Cookies Kellogg's: Rice Krispie squares (except for peanut type), Nutri-grain bars, Pop Tarts, Special K bars President's Choice: Various cookies and crackers, Granola bars, Rice Crispie squares, animal crackers, fruit snacks Pepperidge Farms: Goldfish crackers (various flavors) Betty Crocker/General Mills:Fruit snacks, fruit roll-up, Dunkaroos Chips
Old Dutch: All flavors, popcorn twists, pretzels, taco chips Frito/Lays:All flavors, tortilla, taco chips, cheezies Pringles: All flavors Hawkins:Cheezies Yogurt: Most yogurts are safe except those that contain Muesli Puddings: Jello, Magic moments, Superstore brands are all safe, Fruit cups and applesauces Candy/Chocolates Dare Candy: all Dare candy made in a peanut/nut free facility Wonka Candy: Sweet tarts, Nerds, Gobstoppers Hershey's: *some products have peanut free symbol, Twizzlers, Nibs, Tootsie rolls, Kisses (read label for safe flavors), treat size bars Nestle: Aero, Kit Kat, Coffee Crisp, Mirage, Mint Aero, Smarties, also treat size bars (seasonal or special shaped (heart, or ball) treats may not be safe) Effem:*Mars bars with peanut free symbol, Skittles Trebor-Allan:Various candy, Laces, Big foot, Hot lips, Lollipops Vadeboncoeur: #peanut free symbol. Variety of chocolates
And then, as an afterthought, outside the main list iat the very bottom of the page, is this non-highlighted single line,
"Fruits and Vegetables are healthy choices and are also peanut free"
Hopefully, moving forward, the school will utilize the revised version that Dylan mocked up for them, and if your kid's school sends you a similar list, free free to share it with them as well.
From the BBC comes a byline free story about feces flinging that though not even remotely deep, scientific, important, or fascinating, is just too golden not to share.
Saw a recent study in the International Journal of Obesity. The study, The effect of increasing risk and challenge in the school playground on physical activity and weight in children: a cluster randomised controlled trial (PLAY), set to measure the impact of school playground redesigns aimed at encouraging "imaginative and independent free play" on Grade 1-8 students' weight, waist circumferences, BMI z-scores, and their accelerometer measured activity intensity and duration.
All the schools involved in the intervention arm made substantial changes to their playgrounds which sound so fantastic that here's the paper's description,
"All eight intervention schools made substantial changes to their school play spaces, which promoted greater risk and challenge through building new areas (hills and tunnels), adding more dynamic equipment (for example, a Kompan ‘Supernova’ that requires co-ordination and teamwork to use), or via relaxing the rules (letting children ride their bicycles or scooters on school grounds, allowing children to climb trees or play outside in the rain). Children were able to engage more with natural elements, create imaginative play opportunities with loose parts (carrying tree stumps around to form a spaceship or a jumping game where the ground cannot be touched) or long grass (places to hide, roll around in, throw mown grass at each other). Some schools also ensured greater equity in access for all ages, or made different aspects of the playground more attractive"
The results weren't shocking.
The installation of awesome sounding playgrounds and relaxing playground rules wasn't shown to have any effect on kids' weights, waists, or BMI z-scores.
I say the results aren't surprising because why would anyone expect, even with a best case scenario, that an increase in schoolyard imaginative or challenging play could change kids' weights or waists? How many minutes messing around on a Koman Supernova would it take a young child to burn 100 calories more than they would lazily moving and resting in a plain lot? If I were a betting man, my vote would be in the neighbourhood 2-3 hours, or more than a week's worth of recess. But that's not a fair way to consider those calories given that those 100 calories aren't likely to be above and beyond the calories those same kids would have burned if they were engaged in less imaginative or challenging play.
As to activity, at least according to the kids' accelerometers, there wasn't an increase, though I'm fairly sure that they're unable to measure imagination.
What didn't the study measure? Physical literacy, fun, or happiness.
Honestly I can't understand why this study was conducted, at least in the context of the kids' weights and such. There's no mechanism by which anyone could reasonably expect fancier playground equipment to lead to significant weight change, but now that the study's out there, I wonder if it'll serve to discourage schools from undertaking awesome playground remodels of their own? I sure hope not. They sound great.
ParkLives is a joint project between Coca-Cola and the British government that aims to promote free physical fitness activities at local UK parks.
At least that's what's in it for the British government.
What's in it for Coca-Cola?
Well of course they can spin it as strong corporate social responsibility which helps their claim that they're on team health and in so doing provide themselves with ammunition to possibly forestall or block industry unfriendly legislation.
But there's more.
There's marketing.
A recent study set out to look at the ParkLives project through the lens of advertising.
The study analyzed two weeks worth of #ParkLives tweets during two separate weeks. The first week was during a week of school vacation (where the marketing might be expected to be thicker and the events more frequent), while the second was during the school year, but spanning National Fitness Day.
Every identified tweet was then coded for category of content (marketing or otherwise)
Over the two weeks of collection, 318 tweets containing 216 images were identified, and of those, 57% included a Coca-Cola logo (usually on banners or staff shirts).
The authors note that the exposure to Coca-Cola branding is perhaps more powerful here in that with ParkLives, Coca-Cola is associated with fun, healthy, family activities.
The authors' take on all of this?
"ParkLives is indicative of a CSR project that aims to create a health halo around a brand and influence wider socio-ecological factors by guiding public discourse and directing opinion on the determinants of public health issues away from corporate influence and toward individual responsibility"
Partnerships, by definition, benefit both involved parties. Perhaps governments shouldn't be helping out in the business of marketing the world's largest liquid candy brand.