Sunday, October 4, 2009

Vending junk food and sugar

Parents and teachers met with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott this summer to ask that all junk food be removed from school vending machines. They report that effective October 1st, all vending machines were filled with baked products."

This is a victory, but in one sense only: Reason prevailed in this particular case.

The people in charge of our school systems are making the wrong decisions for our kids. Junk food should never have been put in the machines in the first place. That's a no-brainer.

Neither should Snapple have gotten a contract to stock the machines solely with their brand of sugar water — not only because they landed that no-bid contract, but because it gave them to the right to imprint the word SNAPPLE, and only the word SNAPPLE, onto the braincells of every kid in the city for as long as they attend public schools.


Being a watchdog for this chancellorship is a full-time job. They do these things when they get away with it.

More of us have to take them on.




Related to this issue, see "Let 'em NOT Eat Cake" over at Ednotes, where Patrick Sullivan is quoted, beginning with:
"It looks like the Chancellor's reg was updated to protect the firms getting the new vending contracts."


— jw

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