Oh, here we go again.

[conuly]

Over elsewhere they're talking about taking flavored milks out of school cafeterias. And there's Ms. Self-Righteous to say "I'm tired of people telling me what I can't feed my kids!!!"

Ma'am, nobody is telling you what you can or can't feed your children. If you want to give your children soda all day (her example was of the high school no longer selling soda, so she has to - horrors! - send one in every day (and at a cheaper price because she buys six-packs at the store rather than one can at a time from the vending machine!), and that's just WRONG!), you can go ahead and do that. Be my guest. It's your money you're spending.

If I or anybody else says something like "I don't want the schools to sell candy/chocolate milk/soda/ice cream at lunch", that's not at all the same as saying "I don't want parents to feed this stuff to their kids". Some of us might also be saying that, or saying the much more reasonable "I don't want parents to feed this stuff to their kids all the time", but even then, a move to alter what is sold in schools does not, in fact, abridge your parental rights at all. You can always send in a little something to be eaten/drunk with or after the school provided lunch.

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Logic. You haz it; others don't.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

*rofl*

That was pretty much what I was going to say.

[leora.livejournal.com]

If it helps any, I will happily say that parents do not own their children. Parents are merely the legal guardians of their children. That means that they should be required to try to make decisions in the best interests of those children, not just do what they want to do with those children. (Ownership of human beings is generally considered to be wrong, mm'kay.) I don't really believe in parental rights. I believe that the parents of a child ought to be the first choice for legal guardian, and that shouldn't be removed lightly. That is the right they are given for emotional reasons, because it is cruel to take someone's children from them. But if they fail at being responsible legal guardians and trying to make decisions in the best interests of those children, who are human beings but not yet capable of making decisions in their own best interest, then they may well lose that right. I have no issue with parents having their children taken away from them if they abuse or neglect them. And I have no issue with legally mandating certain minimum requirements of decent care, including decent nutrition. The damage that parent is doing to her child is damage that parent will not have to live with. A different human being, one incapable of giving informed consent, will have to live with with the rest of his/her life. I don't see how the fact that that human being is her child makes that justifiable in any way.

I don't have an issue with soda now and then, but daily soda, yeah, I do. And I don't see any medical necessity being sighted. Nor can I conceive of any economic necessity driving one to have to give one's child soda. So, how is this anything other than harming a human being who is too young to fully give informed consent and using the excuse that you own the child?

[marveen.livejournal.com]

(her example was of the high school no longer selling soda, so she has to - horrors! - send one in every day (and at a cheaper price because she buys six-packs at the store rather than one can at a time from the vending machine!), and that's just WRONG!)

Laziness reigns supreme, you know. (Look at how easy and simple it is to bake bread, and how much cheaper it is, and look at the huge market for ready-sliced bread at four times the price...or more. Look at people ponying up enormous amounts of money for foufou coffee drinks rather than spending ten minutes and ten cents to make a pot at home.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

What leora said. I'm tired of people bitching about being told not to abuse their children. There is no denying that the rampant epidemics of obesity and tooth decay in this country are directly attributable to the egregious consumption of junk food, soda in particular. Objecting to the schools not selling it is like objecting to the schools not selling cigarettes: what kind of parent has a problem with this?

(BTW, my own kid is now 21, off at college, and she still doesn't drink soda: living proof that it is possible to rear a child in America without getting them addicted to empty-calorie chemical crap.)

[conuly]

what kind of parent has a problem with this?

The kind who thinks that because her kid is on the track team and not overweight, it's okay that he drinks a soda every day. And maybe, for a given definition of "okay", it is.

Of course, her definition of healthy seems to be that he's skinny, as though there's nothing else to define health!