Fast-food restaurants cluster around schools, USA

[HuckleB]

Fast-food restaurants cluster around schools, USA

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=29760

"Fast-food restaurants are concentrated within a short walking distance of schools, exposing children to “poor quality food environments” on a daily basis.

According to a study of fast-food restaurants in the Chicago area, the median distance of any school from a fast-food restaurant was .52 km or about a third of a mile, a distance an adult can walk easily in five minutes. Almost 80 percent of schools had at least one fast-food restaurant within 800 meters, or less than a half mile.

Fast-food restaurants were statistically significantly clustered in areas within a short walking distance from schools, with an estimated 3 to 4 times as many fast-food restaurants within 1.5 km from schools than would be expected if the restaurants were distributed throughout the city in a way unrelated to school locations.

Last year, the Institute of Medicine called on the food industry to voluntarily restrict advertising of unhealthy food to children. The study's authors also point to possible school policies prohibiting off-campus fast food from being brought to school and zoning requirements to limit restaurants' proximity to schools as ways to combat rising obesity rates among children.

..."



Hmm. No wonder the soda companies don't much care if their machines are in the schools. They've still got things covered before and after school, and during lunch time for those schools that allow kids off campus.

[Alcibiades]

1. " a distance an adult can walk easily in five minutes"

but which takes fifteen for an overweight, overeating child with an overstuffed backback who is also out of shape because budget cuts reduced PE classes to one a quarter.

[Comrade Kangaroo]

2. It's not the school's responsibility to keep kids in shape

...they either excersize or they don't. It's not the state's responsibility to make sure your kid is in shape. Don't like it? Stick his fat ass on a treadmill. I've always found PE class to be utterly pointless. It's not McDonalds' fault kids are fat. Well, not entirely. It's cause they sit in front of a TV or a computer or an X-BOX all day and don't get off their asses and do anything, and parents let them live like that.

[HuckleB]

3. Most studies regarding education and physical fitness find PE helpful.

Not just for fitness in the time kids are in school, but for introducing kids to a number of athletic ventures. Further, the break and the exercise of PE helps improve the ability to learn and think thoughout the rest of the school day. Thus, it's quite difficult to argue PE is pointless. As for the rest of your cliches, do we really have to waste our time on such blind nonsense?