Junk Food

Read a local news from the Star Online (thestar.com.my), not only for those students, it’s a severe issue among adults as well:

“HEALTH Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai announced on Sunday that effective immediately the body mass index (BMI) of students would be listed on their report cards, and unhealthy foods and drinks would be banned from school canteens.

This was in response to data indicating that around 1.7 million, or 30%, of Malaysians are overweight, with another 30% considered obese.

Obesity is an associated risk factor for many chronic, non-communicable diseases, including diabetes (which is being detected more and more in younger Malaysians), heart disease and hypertension (high blood pressure).

Banning soft drinks and food with high sugar content from the school canteen is an excellent idea. However, this is an old issue, one that keeps popping up periodically over the years.

The guidelines from the ministries are there, but let’s face facts. First, canteen operators are business people, and kids love unhealthy foods; and second, enforcement is quite lax.

Our Government is concerned over our growing waistlines no doubt, and there are the committees and policies to prove it.

But all the best policies in the world will not help if there is no strict enforcement, especially when the change is difficult – you try convincing most kids that a piece of fruit is better than fried chicken nuggets!

And as we all know, banning unhealthy food from the school canteen will be fairly useless if students can just run outside the school gate to buy them from streetside vendors.

Controlling one’s diet is also just half the battle.

Some other ways to help solve this problem could be for parents to ensure that their kids have breakfast before leaving for school (yes, we are aware that it’s almost impossible to wake some kids up, but you are the parent), packing them healthy food for recess, and reducing their allowance so that they do not have the money to spend on junk food in the first place.

But kids just need to be taught right by their families, because once they are in school, what they eat is their own choice.

And enforcing a healthy diet in school will not help if parents are indulging those fast food and high calorie requests regularly."