Ice Cream Bars Beat Vegetables by a Large Margin

I just finished reading this article from the New York Times about Novato High School's decrease in cafeteria lunch sales due to an increase in food trucks near school grounds that lure students away from their fruits and vegetables. According to the article, California has made a law prohibiting public schools from certain high sugar and salt snack products. Despite the school's attempts at getting students to eat healthier, it appears that most students don't seem to care-they go after the sugar-laden sweets anyway. And why wouldn't they-to them, it "tastes better."

This news is a perfect example of how even when schools attempt to feature healthier foods, students still have no interest in them. Clearly, this formula isn't working as well as it could be. Residents of Novato are working to prevent these food trucks from being closer than 1,500 feet from the school, but meanwhile, there remains a lot to be done about students' attitude around food. Perhaps if we did not have labels such as "healthy but tasteless" and "unhealthy but scrumptious", these issues wouldn't exist in the first place. Then again, that is oversimplifying the issue; teaching children important but realistic nutritional habits is going to take a lot more effort from all of us.

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