Last updated on 2013.07.09
As Kristi Noem and other conservatives embarrass themselves trying to make political hay over the USDA's new school lunch nutrition standards, they ignore the well-timed news from Lynn Taylor Rick at the Rapid City Journal that South Dakota is one of the fattest states in the region. According to the new "F as in Fat" report released by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Tuesday, 28.1% of South Dakota adults were obese in 2011. That makes us the 23rd most obese state in the nation. Of adjoining states, only Nebraska has a higher obesity rate (28.4%).
The worse news is that over the next 18 years, the percentage of obese South Dakotans will more than double:
With a projected rate of 60.4 percent obesity, South Dakota could see 101,181 new cases of type 2 diabetes, 222,609 new cases of heart disease and 30,796 new cases of obesity-related cancer.
Under the 2030 projection, South Dakotans will also pay 3.6 percent more for health care in order to manage the increase of obesity-related diseases [Lynn Taylor Rick, "South Dakotans Losing Battle of the Bulge," Rapid City Journal, September 19, 2012].
Increased health care costs from obesity? Jeepers! Maybe we'd better start saving money with that Medicaid expansion, eh, Governor Daugaard?
Michelle Obama and the USDA and your public school are trying to take practical action to address the very real public health problem of obesity. A few Republicans are hyperventilating about imaginary socialism and the nanny state and kids not getting enough to eat even as those kids throw away the fruits and vegetables the schools give them.
Kids, even if your Republican parents won't tell you this, listen to the First Lady and your principal: eat your vegetables.
(And go outside and play more. According to the RCJ report, South Dakotans rank 40th in physical activity and dead last in vegetable consumption.)
I used to have a client working in a school lunch kitchen. The food is awful, mass produced institutional food---prison food. Most larger school districts have a big institutional kitchen somewhere in the city and the day's slop is trucked for miles to every school. If you think the nice lunch ladies are cooking for your kid, you haven't been in a school lately.
Anything Michelle Obama and USDA is doing to improve this situation and getting real food and local food to our kids is great. And the kids who need it most are the kids who turn up their noses at real food.
Another reason the SDSU administration's decision to put a Panda Express and a Chick-Fil-A in the middle of campus is suspect.
I know both Avera and Sanford in Sioux Falls have cafeterias that the vast majority of their employees eat at. I've never been to either, but I bet they have a pretty good plan for providing healthy food options. Maybe they could be an asset for our public health planning?
Humana has just unveiled a program to get their insureds to eat healthier by giving them a discount at Walmart grocery stores for healthy items.
That's right, one of the nation's largest health insurers recognizes that what we eat does matter. Healthier = less expense.
To all the hyperventilating Republicans screaming nanny state and socialism...add free market to that list.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/19/humana-wants-to-change-what-you-buy-at-the-grocery-store/
Hey, a carrot rather than a stick! Good for Humana! I'll bet WalMart will love the plan too: It'll probably bring more people to their grocery stores.
Sounds interesting. Like what the Christian "Medi-Share" programs pretend they do, but based on science rather than denying coverage. I don't know what Bernie Hunhoff is doing promoting that crap. It's a cultish scheme that is illegal in many states and has plenty of reason to be.
Don't have seat belt or helmet laws? Lose your transportation subsidies: it's just that simple.
I'm blown away by the parents who think 850 calories is not enough for a lunch. If you eat healthy food, you will probably get full before you get anywhere near 850 calories. The kids who complain they are "starving" probably didn't eat the fruits and veggies that came with the meal. And kids are not eating breakfast as much anymore.
I've had people (who granted have fat kids..sorry, no other way to put it) ask how our daughter is so thin...um, well, she rarely eats junk food and almost never drinks soda. She prefers water, she loves fruits and likes veggies. She eats healthy. We actually wouldn't let her eat school lunch because of how fatty, caloric and full of sodium it was. I'd be willing to entertain the idea of her eating the school lunch now.
Sorry, but I do not want to see my insurance costs go any higher because the US has fat kids who grow up to be fat adults. It is so much easier to learn how to eat healthy when you are young rather than when you are an adult.
Good big-picture view, Becca. This is a public health issue and public fiscal issue. The government is serving those meals; the government is justified in setting high standards for those meals. And no one is required to eat them. All those angry Republican parents can all bag their kids' lunches just as you did for your daughter.