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May 10, 2006
Ring The Ice Cream Bell Slowly
We gave the idea rightful scorn when a San Diego commission proposed it last year, but in the United Kingdom it may well become a reality: Parliament is considering a bill that would empower districts to bar ice cream trucks from parking near schools.
We gave the idea rightful scorn when a San Diego commission proposed it last year, but in the United Kingdom it may well become a reality: Parliament is considering a bill that would empower districts to bar ice cream trucks from parking near schools.
British activists are hard at work on creating school zones free of foods they don't like, heedless of the consequences. One dietitian told The Times that the van ban "would be a draconian policy that may drive children to buy even less healthy foods at nearby shops." Of course, activists surely have a solution for that problem, too: Crack down on the shops!
Two columns published in the last few days have some especially choice words for activists still gorging on anti-food hysteria after the announcement from beverage makers last week that they would take soft drinks out of school vending machines. Writing for Townhall.com, humorist Jay Homnick observes:
Obligingly, as if on cue, new studies and articles are sprouting almost daily over the past two weeks. Obesity crisis, the headlines shriek. Something must be done. We must take stock of the stocky and chunks off the chunky. One more good year and we'll all be blimps. Who said that inflation was under control?
Just as impatient with activists and their efforts to banish soft drinks from schools is Andrew Wolf, who writes in The New York Sun:
[T]he folks who own those snack vans one finds parked outside of schools must really be whooping it up. Children will still drink Coke and Pepsi and Gatorade, but they will buy it from outside vendors.
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