There are some very confused people in Houston, Texas. A local company named Primero Food Service Solutions has created a cafeteria automation system that allows parents to decide what their children eat for lunch. The system was originally created so that parents could put money into lunch accounts for their children, sparing their children the burden of having to keep track of lunch money. Recent modifications to the system now alert the cafeteria cashier to all food restrictions for that particular child. The causes for restrictions range from physical fitness concerns to food allergies. Parents can even modify their child's food restrictions online.
Administrators and parents are reducing students' already diminutive amount of liberty in schools in order to reduce the rate of child obesity in Texas. Given that Men's Fitness Magazine recently declared Houston, the fattest city in the United States for 2005, such a goal is not necessarily sinister. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of overweight children aged six to 11 more than doubled in the past 20 years, and the number of overweight adolescents aged 12 to 19 more than tripled. But school districts where the new cafeteria automation systems have been put into place, such as the Pearland school district, are going about the goal of reducing childhood obesity in a very wrong way. It is well known that obesity is connected to low levels of self-esteem. And for many people, quality of life is reduced when liberties are reduced. By disempowering children to make healthy choices, parents are simply attacking their children's self-esteem and ultimately reducing their children's quality of life. Even the National Institutes of Health argues "against putting your child on a weight-loss diet unless your health care provider tells you to. If children do not eat enough, they may not grow and learn as well as they should."
This automation system creates a vicious cycle of degradation for children by not allowing them to make their own healthy choices. As a result, children will feel more helpless as they are led to believe they are not capable of choosing what foods are "good" for them and thus experience an even greater reduction in self-esteem and become even more unhealthy in the long run. Schoolchildren from Houston will undoubtedly experience feelings of anxiety when they're faced with an eating decision outside of school, as the children will only be used to having a machine tell them what to eat.
Tragically, many people appear to be ignoring the long run. Dorothy Simpson, food service director for Pearland schools, said, "Overall, it's benefited everyone. Students go through the line faster. It's good for parents because they can track what their kids are spending." But on the minority side of the argument is Karen Cullen, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Children's Nutrition Research Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Kids need to be able to make healthy choices," Cullen said. "Parents can't be in charge. Children need some freedom."
What are we to do for the students who are not fortunate enough to have parents who care what they eat? Are the only two solutions to the problem of obesity either limiting children's liberty or not protecting them at all from unhealthy food choices? The obvious, but ignored, solution is education and emotional support, as clichéd as that may sound. Because the true problem is a lack of self-esteem, not a large waistline, we must empower the children to make appropriate choices. According to the NIH, "Children will be more likely to accept and feel good about themselves when their parents accept them." I would argue that in order for children to feel "accepted," their choices about food should be "accepted." In the long run, not only will education about healthy foods enable children to become healthier, such empowerment will boost self-esteem in all aspects of their lives. Carol Torgan of the NIH says, "Involve your children in meal planning and grocery shopping. This helps them learn and gives them a role in the decision-making."
Children's choice to be healthy must be their own so that they will benefit from the pride of such an accomplishment in making the transition from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle, and they can have the confidence to make better life choices in general.
Michael Ramos-Lynch '09 chose to be born in Texas.
