Food trucks aren’t making kids fat
By JOSE SOLORIO, STATE ASSEMBLYMAN
3/01/2012
One of my Democratic colleagues has introduced Assembly Bill 1678, which seeks to ban “mobile food vending” within 1,500 feet of elementary and secondary schools, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on school days. Without food trucks offering their fattening foods, the theory goes, kids will eat their carrots, obesity will vanish, and students will loiter less and spend more time in the library.
If only it were that simple. Statistically, children who watch the most hours of television, or log on to computers, have the highest incidence of obesity. Are we going to legislate time spent per day on technology? Studies also show that only about one-third of elementary-age children have daily physical education, and less than one-fifth of U.S. schools offer extracurricular sports. Are we going to increase physical education time when our students need every minute of cognitive instruction our financially challenged school districts can muster? And we all know that parents who eat diets high in saturated fats also have children who do the same. Are we going to start knocking on doors to check what’s for dinner? Continue reading