Food control - why it's a waste of time and a failure

Every time I enter the L'il Peach in Cleary Square, the kids from the Rogers and Hyde Park High load up on whatever sugar-laden or fat-laden treats they can get their hands on. Many a time, I joked out loud that there should be a snack tax - one that would discourage kids from bollixing up the line by forking over more money for Pixy Stix, Chef's Cajun/Ketchup/Soul chips, and Ring Pops.

That would give richer, tonier, wealthier towns a wicked idea, though. Tack on a quarter to a fist full of Tootsie Pops, a bag of chips, or anything else that looks like junk food. They take a harsher line: they ban any form of sugar in their schools.

I'm wondering if the dearth of cupcakes and crullers really raised the SAT scores - no wealthy family will have their spawn at UMass Amherst to flip burgers or work in a cubicle when they could be at a Big Six accounting firm with a hot trophy wife and five Stepford children.

I think these richer towns have it wrong: You cannot hope to rein in obesity if you have a group of resentful kids and equally resentful parents glaring at you as if you were Captain Queeg. Take away the sugar, and they're bound to find it elsewhere and consume it sub rosa.

Are the kids from Lynn going to become illicit sugar suppliers for the kids in Lynnfield? How about the North Andover kids, jonesing for a can of Coke Classic, surreptitiously going over the border to Lawrence to snag a can - at inflated prices? And Brookline is surrounded by Boston, and it's easy to sneak into Allston and Roxbury to get your fix of Ho-hos and Yoo Hoo.

If these richer towns really want to do something about obesity, the first thing is to take the advice of Richard Simmons - bring back gym, also known as physical education. Letting the kids run around for twelve minutes a day during recess will not only get all that pent-up energy out of their systems, it will help maintain their health without your school administration being branded a nanny-state killjoy. The MCAS and other boutique courses can wait - and you won't be taking away a single cupcake or cookie without a whimper, as they'll be burned off as soon as the recess bell rings.

Second, the teachers should be examples to students, and not live their lives through them. That means they should encourage healthier eating by eating healthier themselves. If the teachers can have donuts and flavored coffee during their meetings and are telling their kids they can't bring in cupcakes for the bake sale, then the teacher's a hypocrite AND a liar. Maybe after a few meetings with the things they're forcing their students to do, they will modify their hasty decision.

Third, and most importantly, it is most important to know that social engineering through food control is a bad idea. Making kids perfect at the expense of letting them be kids is a Sysiphian task. Trying to control children through food also brings up nastier, elitist overtones, as in "Johnny won't be much if he's 300 pounds vs. Jenny's a good girl for being within 99% of her weight and height profile." In the future, Johnny could lose all that weight, or even maintain the weight and be fit (normal blood pressure, good cholesterol scores, etc.), while Jenny is in the hospital yet again because she can't gain control of her anorexia or buliemia, and she's one or two binge-purge sessions away from choking on her own vomit and dying - and she's the same 72 pounds she was in 5th grade, at the age of 21.

I don't talk about these things lightly because I am overweight myself. I am over 300 pounds, although I am 6-4. I have high blood pressure at times, and I am prone to lose weight one doctor's visit, only to put it back on another. I sit in front of a computer all day, and exercise is hit-or-miss. Ice cream is my Kryptonite. So what business would I have telling the school boards that their plans to ban sugar and junk food stinks?

Plenty.

I'm a lot like Johnny: my blood sugar and cholestrol is still good. I don't eat eggs all the time, I don't drink or smoke, or do drugs. I do walk, but not enough to get benefits. My doctor tells me I won't live past 60 if I keep on doing what I do, but losing weight and keeping it off isn't an easy process. There is no magic pill, no exercise program or diet program that will make me 100+ pounds lighter tomorrow. I've tried Weight Watchers and I've found it too heavy on meetings and group therapy (and massive amounts of accounting) and not enough on proper eating.

If these school boards think that sugar and junk food are the obstacles from keeping kids healthy, maybe they should consult reputable dietiticians and physicians who aren't paid to spout out the directives these school boards want to hear, as kids will also overeat the healthy, organic stuff equally simply because they think it's OK to gorge on soy shakes and organic tofu dogs.

Maybe they can bring Richard Simmons to their schools and tell them how to do it right.