Fast food + nearby schools = fat teenagers

When I was a kid, lo those many scores ago, schools were never built around retail and food outlets. They were on hills. Steep hills. Hills that you had to climb upwards, both ways, without shoes, during daily blizzards, while hauling a sack of coal on your back (since you worked in the mines before and after school). For lunch we didn’t have the choice of running out to the local McDonald’s or Jack in the Box for a burger and soda. We ate rocks… and we liked it!

Today, many schools are built near, if not within, fast food restaurants. And, instead of dining on crappy cafeteria food, they’re dining on crappy fast food provided by Wendy, Burger King or Arby. The result, according to a new studies that shouldn’t shock anyone, is that these teens are getting fat.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkley (where all schools reside near a health food store) have come to the amazing conclusion that teenagers tend to gain five percent more weight when a  fast food restaurant is built one block or less from their school.  Strangely enough, obesity rates were lower when a fast food repository was built a quarter mile or more away from the school. Probably because the teens wouldn’t be able to walk that far due to the increased weight and lack of exercise.

There are opposing sides to this study. On the one hand you have people like Eric N. Gioia, city councilman from Queens, New York, who wants to stop these fast food restaurants from opening so close to schools (while, perhaps, the liquor stores and places where cigarettes are sold will stay where they are). On the other side you have Rick Berman of the Center for Consumer Freedom who said that the correlation between the increased teen obesity and proximity to fast food establishments was flawed.

For once, I’m going with the study researchers. It’s no secret that fast food entries are high in fat and calories. Including supposed “healthy” items like salads, which Berman says these establishments sell. Since your average teen will forgo a measly salad for a quarter pounder with cheese fries, the calories will pile up. With such a short distance between the restaurant and school (especially when driving) those calories will not be burned off sufficiently. And, with schools constantly lowering their physical education requirements, there’s a good chance those calories will stay, accumulate over time, and give most teens an opportunity to scan through the ‘Big & Tall’ racks at one time or another.

There’s really no good solution to this issue. Banning fast food restaurants from opening near these schools, as Councilman Gioia is proposing, won’t work unless you can convince others to totally rezone areas around school buildings. That, and you subject yourself to various lawsuits from fast food corporations who feel their free market rights are being denied. Another option in this case is for schools to ramp up their physical education requirements while providing a healthier selection of foods. Oh, and curbing students from leaving school grounds for their meals would probably help as well.

The best option is probably as follows: take 10 minutes out of your hectic schedule, sit down with your teen, and tell them that they’ll probably die much earlier than you if they continue to eat fast food every single day. Tell them they are not superhuman and that what they are taking into their bodies is going to cause heart disease, diabetes, and an overall feeling of crappiness that will stop them from playing Rock Band. Perhaps the message will get through their skulls then. If that doesn’t work show them Super Size Me. If that doesn’t get them to stop eating fast food I don’t know what will!

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Apr 28, 2009 @ 11:23 EST5EDT