Each day at lunch, approximately half of WJ’s students go to Georgetown Square to buy food. Another majority brings their own bag lunches from home. Others go to the mall, to Starbucks or back to their own homes. The only MCPS-certified food joint available saw, on a recent day, about 80 students who bought their lunch in the cafeteria.
On July 1, MCPS passed a law stating that eating and drinking establishments specified in the law are required to post certain nutrition facts on their menus and menu boards; MCPS cafeterias fall under this law. At the beginning of the school year signs were placed on the outside of all the doors leading into the cafeteria listing every item on the menu, its price, and the amount of calories the item contains. But, despite the attempt to help jumpstart healthy eating habits, the law both fails to reach students and drives them toward unhealthier and sometimes even dangerous habits.
WJ has 2,173 students this year and is the third largest school in MCPS. If about 80 students eat in the cafeteria every day, only 3.6 percent of the student body is exposed to the calorie counts, and that is only if every student in the cafeteria reads the signs that are placed on the back side of the cafeteria doors, which is not the ideal viewing position for an informative poster. Also, there are no calorie counts on the vending machines around the school, and the nutrition facts on food wrappers are about as effective at reaching people as the warning signs on the back of cigarette cartons. Also, many students don’t know enough about their diets to care about the calorie counts. The law doesn’t effectively reach students and therefore is pointless.
For the students who care about their calorie counts a little too much, an even larger issue arises. Instead of being uninformed, these students are overzealous in their own personal calorie counting, sometimes to such an extreme that they are pushed to anorexia, bulimia or other eating disorders. Students should be able to look up calorie counts online or request the information from the cafeteria manager, but not have it jammed down their throats everyday before eating lunch.
“We are complying with the new Montgomery County law,” said MCPS Food Service Supervisor Mary Ann Gabriel.
MCPS should not be blamed in this situation, because they had no choice in implementing the law. The lawmakers are the ones to blame. If a law does not reach and may harm its target audience, then what is the reason for having it? In counting on calorie statistics to change students’ habits, the lawmakers have gotten the solution wrong.
