The little red produce department

I used to attend an English conference every spring. Usually the proceedings were a disappointment, like the expert who prescribed instructing students to read books backwards and write compositions when they have high fevers.

Conditions didn’t improve at lunch. Operating on the assumption that all English teachers are vegetarians, or ought to be, conference organizers provided a hummus and sprout sandwich on low-fat bread, an apple, and a disk of fiber masquerading as a cookie.

Don’t misunderstand. I believe in eating healthy food and exercising. Now that I’m an adult, my doctor and I look after these things. When I was a boy, my parents were in charge. Not once did my English teacher take a break from adverbs to check my lunch bag. Not once did my birthday cupcakes have to pass the principal’s muster.

Those days are gone. The whole grain police have stormed the cafeteria to rescue America’s children from the four horsemen of the steamtable – salt, sugar, fat, and empty calories.

There’s nothing unreasonable about being alarmed at America’s escalating childhood obesity rate. In 1980 six percent of Americans under nineteen suffered from obesity. Today the CDC reports that one in five school-aged children qualify as obese.

Nor is it the first time a campaign to combat the nation’s physical decline has involved schools. Fifty years ago we worried that American children were growing soft while the next generation of communists wasn’t. The resulting President’s Council on Youth Fitness was why I spent most gym classes doing calisthenics. In the cafeteria we had four food groups, which eventually became six, which then metamorphosed into a striped pyramid featuring twelve personalized dietary “models.” Today we’ve moved on, or back, to an illustrated My-Plate and five food groups

Unfortunately, all the new shapes haven’t helped our shape.

Apparently convinced that adding yet another nonacademic chore would help schools better educate children, Congress enacted legislation requiring local district “wellness policies.” In addition to pretending that “wellness” is a real word, the law raised the philosophical question, “Did James Madison envision classroom birthday parties when he enumerated the powers of Congress?”

Officials didn’t wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the Constitutional merits of high fructose corn syrup. Alabama schools banned any party food that contains it. An anti-Fluff Massachusetts legislator proposed a bill “that would severely limit the serving of marshmallow spreads.” A concerned Florida county limited class parties to once a month unless your mother substitutes birthday celery for your birthday cupcakes. A likeminded Maryland district specifically banned anything “cream-filled,” while a zealous Connecticut school embargoed all “celebratory foods.”

Yes, across the nation school authorities are taking a stand on dessert.

If only they were as resolute when it comes to reading and arithmetic.

Armed with the best intentions and firsthand experience with the health risks of too many Big Macs, former President Clinton negotiated commitments from soft drink and snack manufacturers to limit and even eliminate the sale of soda and junk food in schools. Unfortunately, children don’t do most of their eating or blobbing out with videogames at school. The International Journal of Obesity reported that school wellness “efforts often do little to make overweight children less fat.” Even where students demonstrated more “knowledge of healthy food choices,” they typically “didn’t lose weight.”

I agree that school lunch programs should try to serve healthy food. And I’m dismayed at how out of shape many children seem to be. I agree they’d be better off if they got up off the couch and ate less sugar, salt, and fat. But I’m not ready to mandate what other people’s children should eat. I’m certainly not ready to turn my preferences into legislation. It’s ironic that many liberal voices who complain when conservatives try to impose their particular moral values seem to have no problem imposing their particular definition of a healthy diet.

The problem goes beyond the ethical question of who gets to decide what somebody else’s child gets to ingest. Schools are already staggering under too many nonacademic mandates. One Mayo Clinic expert advocates a kinetic classroom format where students no longer sit in chairs. Instead they spend the day standing, balancing on exercise balls, and reclining on mats. His “dream” is a school where students are simultaneously “shooting hoops and spelling.”

He’s not alone.

And people wonder why children aren’t learning enough.

At the same time we’re removing chairs from our classrooms, we’re importing fresh fruits and vegetables. In addition to midmorning snack time for all students up through eighth grade, Poor Elijah’s school now provides fresh produce during last period classes. The grant-funded program encourages teachers to “tie the fruit/vegetable of the day to their curricula.” It also stipulates that all adults in the building must “act as role models for healthy eating” and eat the free produce, too.

The day my employment is contingent on eating raw broccoli, my schoolboard can find another English teacher.

We even have “Walk to School Day.” I approve of walking to school. That’s how I used to get there. But have we finally reached the point where traveling to school is part of the school curriculum? Does my job as an English teacher now include teaching my students how to get to my classroom?

Schools could better do their job if we remembered what it was.