Latvia bans Coca-Cola, Pepsi and sweets in schools
 

1) quote:
2) Source:
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/138027.asp

3: Statement:
lol?

Schools are doing that here in the US, as well. It's not really that big of a deal. Kids don't need that kind of sugar.

Well there is a difference between USA where kids look like bowling balls and Latvia, I guess

Kids still don't need all that sugar, no matter where they live. Don't be an asshole.

Hello. I am trying to back up capitalism right here.

Capitalism will back itself up, especially when kids start bringing in candy and such on their own. The more enterprising ones will stock up and sell to their fellow students.

Sodas will be a bit more difficult, though.

Actually, a guy I know converted his locker into a cooler for this very reason. He made quite a bit of money off of it.

I get the sense that they're jumping on the Jamie Oliver bandwagon here, soon all 'unhealthy' foods are going to stop being served in UK schools. It doesn't target any brands as such but stuff like fizzy soda, sweets and so on aren't going to be sold. If the kid doesn't like it it's either starve or get a packed lunch.

It's nothing to do with capitalism or money, it's purely down to kids' health and the supposed mass child obesity crisis in this country. No doubt Latvia has similar reasons.

Good for them, if that's what they want to do, I don't see the problem with it. If Coca-Cola and Pepsi still insist on being sold in schools, I'd say they should then buy gym equipment and sports stuff for the school as well, so that the kids can have some fun playing sports and working out. That way, it's win-win, soda can still be sold in school, and kids can work off those extra calories doing something fun (running gets kind of boring after a while you know, but baseball, soccer, football, etc. can be quite fun as a kid).

Healthy food could be so much more effectively marketed to kids. The industry and the dieticians do all the complaining (and so they should) yet routinely fail to pick up of the cues of McDonald's, Coco-Cola, etc.

Kids don't shun healthy food it because it's healthy, but because they're not sure it tastes good. Good on 'em for the ban, at any rate, but changing public perceptions would pay larger dividends.

While I agree marketing is the biggest issue, to combat the effects of fast-food marketers with the sort of budget that health companies and schools have is laughable. Also diet is just one facet of a healthy lifestyle and exercise needs to be incorporated more into the school day and at home, everyone knows the statistics of computer sufing, tv watching, videogame playing versus going outdoors and playing with your friends/family. But at that point, schools can only do so much, parents have to take an active role in continuing the sort of health education that schools implement. And as long as fast-food is inexpensive, there will always be families surviving on it and when both parents work long hours, it's highly unlikely kids will get the exercise and attention to their health that they really need. It's a bigger problem that needs a bigger solution outside of schools, governments and corporations have to take a role in changing society and society's perception on health.

Companies are starting to shift, I just read this article one CNN that had fruit companies plastering Disney characters and Spongebob on their packaging to make it more appealing to kids.

Buying gym stuff for each school is unrealistic (it requires a lot of money), and Coca-Cola and Pepsi are corporations, not charities.
A quick & dirty market solution: if they want to sell in schools, sell the sugar-less versions (Coca-Cola Zero and Pepsi Max)

The Latvian government are citing the high levels of additives in those drinks, not just the sugar content. There's an awful lot of artificial shit in diet coke which is not particularly good for you.

Personally I think that if schools want fewer fat kids, they should stop cracking down so hard on bullying. Back when I was at school, the fat kids got picked on and as such, often put some effort into losing weight. These days everyone has to be so damn PC and kids aren't allowed to bully each other anymore so the fat kids get this stupid notion that being overweight is ok. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Agreed.
I’m a dietetics major myself and this is one of the big things professors are desperately trying to jam into our heads, regarding the profession. I took Nutrition Education over the summer and one of the major take home lesion is that dieticians are supposed to be the experts in nutrition education but were not, not by a long shot. The real experts in nutrition education are the fast food companies, mind you the lesion they are teaching you is a terrible one but that does not reduce the fact that the sophistication and effectiveness of their techniques far exceeds the ones we are using in the dietetics profession. Most people have an attitude that consist of that people eat at fast food places is because they “are fat and lazy and stupid” this is a gross over simplifcation, the reason people eat at fast food places is because the cooperation’s have removed every possible barrier they could to eating at their establishment. Dieticians on the other hand have in the past (and some continue to) pushed difficult to follow, ideological driven, (i.e. the main reason many R.D. don’t see fast food as a model for nutrition education is because it not based on one of the Ivory tower academically approved models of eating behavior) one size fits all diet plans or even more prevalent raw nutritional knowledge (often in language the audience can’t understand) without the any practical guidelines on how to follow them.

In short fast food places call it marketing and consumer research, dieticians call it nutrition education but at the end of day they are one of the same - and it quite obvious who’s better at it. Dieticians think that fast food places have a lot to learn from us dietetics folk, while they may have a little to learn from us, it is really dieticians that have a lot to learn from the fast food industry.

Sounds so logical it's hard to believe you actually need laws to enforce it.

I think its definitely a step in the right direction for ANY nation.

I see no reason why kids should be permitted to purchase soda in school. Here in Massachusetts, schools are not allowed to allow kids to purchase soda because the caffeine therein is considered an "addictive drug" (which it is), and the school can not legally give that shit to kids.

Or so I was told. I have no idea how true it is since I've seen soda machines and soda at lunch in other schools.

And yea, I agree that kids will try to turn a buck on selling shit food independently. It's a great idea - and I say let them. Totally permit it, just don't encourage it.

The American kids would actually LEARN something from running their own business this way. Real-life education, I guess. ^_^

I dunno ... it's not very far from what drug dealers do either. =/

I was halfly joking when I mentioned that there's a lesson to be learned in boot-legging. I learned a great lesson when I sold booze out of my locker.

But I think drug dealers would get more harsh punishment considering what they do is actually illegal both in and out of school. As I understand it, in Latvia, it's illegal for schools to provide these items.

Please correct me if I misread.

No no we do agree. It's just me who didnt detect the half joke in your first post. =j

I like soda. I like milk too, and when I was in high school/junior high I'd be as likely to purchase a carton of milk as a bottle of soda. It depended on my preference at the time.

What I mean is, I know how to moderate myself. In addition, I was plenty active in school -- I walked to school and I did extracurricular activities and overall I felt pretty healthy.

Banning the sale of sodas and candies is a well-intentioned step (though I feel it "punishes" people like me who are perfectly healthy and not obese), I think, but I feel it's just like a "duh" step people take because it seems obvious. Why don't they also make physical education classes mandatory (in my high school, we only had to take it for the first two years), or encourage more extracurricular activities, or offer some health classes? Eating right is important, but you need more than that to stay fit and healthy.

Saka, Phys. Ed. is mandatory for all four years at my high school. Health 1 and Health 2 are both necessary if you plan on graduating.

Basically it is in need of a law because it is restricting basic rights or something like that

GOTTA FIGHT

FOR MY RIGHT

TO DRINK COCA-COLA!

Double Post:
Yeah, it's mandatory in most — if not all — schools of Latvia as well.

No but you have the right to buy a bottle from the vending machine, open it and drink the liquid that is in it.

Often, there's so much shit in food that is marketed as ''diet'' or ''sugar-free'' that it's not even funny. Just because it has zero calories or uses a sugar substitute doesn't mean it's healthy.

I read that there is a certain amount of Potassium benzoate in Coke Zero and that cats have a significantly low tolerance against benzoic acid which means that they shouldn't drink too much Coke Zero (it is not healthy for them).

There's still a Coke vending machine and even a coffee machine in my college, so I'm okay. To be serious, though, it doesn't restrict any basic rights as far as I'm concerned. You can drink or eat whatever, you won't go to jail if caught with an opened bottle of coke, it's just that school cafes aren't allowed to sell it.

The UK is pushing for a simmilar ban on this sort of sweet selling, however, they're going to need to be a little bit more on the ball as I know of at least one school in my area that has a near perminant Burger Van parked just beside it and an Ice Cream van that does very nice business during Recess and Lunchtime (thank you very much).

Firther Education doesn't need this (and I say the next word in a contextual light) nonsence however, I'd imagine by the time your College/Univertisty bound you'd be in full notion what you'd be doing to your body anyway.

Granted that this says that only Coke and similar drinks were banned, but this also is leading to many districts near where I live banning all sugary things. The school this year is having huge problems because they can no longer sell candy for fund raising, as that has been banned by the district, and any student doing so could get expelled. Personally, I have nothing against soft drinks being banned, but only so long as it is only soft drinks.

At my school, PE was mandatory in freshman year, and then you had to take only another half year afterwards (I took mine in the summer, which means I'm a pretty dumbfuck because who wants to run around outside when it's 110, but still).

Since the gym didn't have A/C, and since it was so hot outside, some days we just sat outside and played poker. A++.

Personally I think this is a good thing. If Coke and Pepsi didn't want these kinds of things happen then maybe they could try making some foods and drinks that don't cause laboratory rats to grow large prostate tumors (exaggerating...). Just take a moment and look up Aspartame and all the supposed information that goes along with how horribly unhealthy it is for us and that these companies have been pimpin it for years. Granted, plenty of sources will say its fine but there are also sources that say Tobacco use is fine too.

The schools don't really have to sell anything unless the people really push for them to. On the same note, would you want kids eating McDonald's food everyday? They aren't adults and probably aren't making the most informed decisions as to what they are putting in their bodies...

Well, they are making those new sodas with Splenda in them, but whatever.

Also, all of those problems for people with aspartame happen because they're allergic to it. That's why it has the "phenylketonuronics: contains phenylalanine" warning. Same reason why a snickers bar has a sign on it that says "Warning: contains peanuts." And the lab rats that got tumors were exposed to something like the sweetener in five hundred gallons worth of soda every day.

True but…the problem is we really don’t know what the long term effects of the stuff is more importantly we don’t know what the long term effect of this plus all the other artificial junk in our diet is. One of my dietetic professors has told us she much rather have her kids drink regular coke because she already knows the long term effects of sugar and caffeine aspartame she not so sure of. Don’t get me wrong Diet drinks do have their place: diabetics for example as a stepping stone, for those that simply won’t kick the cola habit etc. I'm just saying getting kids to dirk diet soda should be a compromise when all-else, fails never a goal. In this case I do think having diet coke instead of the regular kind is a good first but it’s too small of a step for me to really get happy about. At such a young age my focus would be and them not getting hooked on cola diet or other wise to begin with this involves removing all or better yet a good nutrition education program involving parent’s teachers, food staff etc.

And the school has the right to refuse to allow vending machines in their in the first place, the biggest problem with this is definitely money. Schools simply don’t want to give up the money they get from vending machines, cola companies company to get exclusive poring rights, the solution in these case is to try more nutrition education or instead suggest a mandatory ratio between healthy and un healthy snacks. The other problem is that some parents do believe that their kids have a right to drink soda in school which I find completely stupid because you don’t have any such right and secondly if you want your kid to have cola that badly just pack it for him in his lunch box it’s cheaper that way to.

Well, one of the problems with not letting the kid have the choice when they're younger is they might not learn the kind of self control that'll be more important when they're older. How many people do you know whose diets have gone completely to crap since they went to college since they never had any choice about anything to eat when they were younger, so now they just go for whatever they think feels good at the time?