Want Your Kids to Eat Right? Gotta Do It Yourself

Even this token lefty can recognize when government programs are junk. Last night's MDL runs an AP article on the failure of government nutrition programs to have any lasting positive impact on children's eating habits [Martha Mendoza, "AP: Spending on Nutrition Programs Does Little," published at Pantagraph.com, Bloomington-Normal, IL, 2007.07.09]. The feds will pour over a billion dollars into nutrition education this year, "[b]ut an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success in changing the way kids eat — or any promise as weapons against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity."

Among the various programs tried, a Pennsylvania experiment gave kids prizes for eating fruits and veggies. That program worked... but only as long as the researchers kept handing out prizes. "[W]hen the researchers came back seven months later the kids had reverted to their original eating habits: soda and chips." (Tempting as it may be for teachers to use rewards -- read bribes -- to change kids' behaviors, such an approach produces a more negative outcome, where kids develop no sense of the intrinsic value of achievement and actually become less likely to continue the behavior we desire on their own.)

Evidently these government efforts to engineer children's eating habits aren't able to overcome the other confounding variables of parents (cited in the Mendoza article as having "the greatest influence" over their children's eating habits), poverty (you can't make healthy choices if you can't afford fresh produce or if your local supermarket doesn't carry it), and advertising (though certainly free market theology would recoil at the suggestion we limit corporations' freedom to manipulate children's psychology for profit).

Just as bad is the government's unwillingness to admit its failure. Be sure to read (toward the end of the Mendoza article) the nearly hilarious doublespeak of USDA minion Kate Houston:

Kate Houston, the deputy under secretary of the USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, oversees most federal funds, $696 million this year, spent on childhood nutrition education in this country. Funding has steadily increased in recent years, up from $535 million in 2003. Houston insists the programs are successful.

“I think the question here is how are we measuring success and there are certainly many ways in which you can do so and the ways in which we’ve been able to measure have shown success,” she said.

But isn’t the goal of these programs to change the way kids eat?

“Absolutely that’s the goal,” she said.

And they’re successfully reaching that goal?

“We’re finding success in things in which we have been able to measure, which are more related to knowledge and skill. It is more difficult for us to identify success in changing children’s eating patterns.”

When asked about the many studies that don’t show improvement, Houston asked for copies of the research. And she said the USDA doesn’t have the resources to undertake “long term, controlled, medical modeled studies” necessary to determine the impact of its programs.

The Madville Times has no patience with failing government programs or bureaucratic bull. Believe it or not, the Madville Times does not believe that government is the solution to every problem. Good nutrition is a worthy goal, but when presented with actual science that shows government programs aren't doing the job, the Madville Times says scrap those programs and seek other solutions.

Some things -- like highway construction and universal health care -- work better (morally and practically!) as a large-scale social effort. Other things, like education, work better on the small-scale, grassroots level. If you want kids to eat better, do like Mrs. Madville Times: avoid junk food while pregnant, then get the little urchin hooked on tofu (!) before her first birthday. Heck, our man Gerry is probably doing more to promote good nutrition here in Lake County than federal nutrition education programs (ooo, that reminds me, I should ask Gerry if the community garden could donate veggies to Headstart and the daycares as well as the old folks).