Arkansas Blog

Here we go! Next year kids will not be able to eat a candy bar in public. The candy bar section of all restaurants will be done away with and kids will only be able to enjoy a candy bar 25 feet or farther away from the door or in their own homes.

Non-candy bar eaters will wear little buttons and whine and bitch till they get their way. Beebe will sign it into law at the last minute and the anti-candy bar crowd, estimated at 75% of the population will once again trounce the 25% of the population that is so fun to kick around. Oh lord, there is no end to it! Fat kids unite!

I didn't see anything about candy bars. We are increasing sedintary in front of our TVs, computers, video games, and eat much more fast food than Mom's home cooking. Given the choice, people will still choose the triple bacon cheese burger, biggie fries, and diet coke over the salad and water.

Its a trend that's not healthy. It could use some education and promotion. Do you really think smoking should have been left alone? Talk about a nasty habit with no benefit. And, I smoked for 25 years.

We should ban advertising to children under 13, particularly junk food. That would help take the pressure off parents to buy all the crap kids eat these days.

"We should ban advertising to children under 13, particularly junk food. That would help take the pressure off parents to buy all the crap kids eat these days."

Or...you could just tell your kids NO. After all you are the parent. If you can't take care of a kid under 13 what are your plans for the teen years?

"We should ban advertising to children under 13, particularly junk food. That would help take the pressure off parents to buy all the crap kids eat these days."

Or...you could just tell your kids NO. After all you are the parent. If you can't take care of a kid under 13 what are your plans for the teen years?

My question is- 20.7% to 20.4%? 17.2& to 17.1%? Is that even statistically significant? It might just be a fluke. Or, the laws might actually be working. It's hard to tell- and hard to decide if the legislature is going in the right direction on this issue.
One big problem is that unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food. Maybe it'd be good to have food stamps be worth double for fresh produce or something.

Even DBI shows his brilliance has limits.

"Or...you could just tell your kids NO. After all you are the parent. If you can't take care of a kid under 13 what are your plans for the teen years?"

We got rid of tobacco advertising to children, remember Joe Camel? The advertising industry spends billions and billions of dollars every year, do you deny it has an effect. Advertising is designed by child psychologists to exploit kids (especially younger than 13) understanding to get them to nag their parents to death. I don't think it is too much to ask to have the government protect children from advertising. It's hard enough being a parent, and the multibillion dollar advertising industry is practically impossible to compete against. Advertising to kids for food is a lot like cigarette advertising used to be. McDonalds has the playgrounds, the clown, happy meals, etc. It's kind of creepy if you think about it.

My question is- 20.7% to 20.4%? 17.2& to 17.1%? Is that even statistically significant?

I think we can count it as improvement that the numbers didn't grow as they were prior to this effort. Hopefully in the years to come we'll see some statistically significant reductions.

Sorta off topic, but DBI, did you hear that Hot Springs wants to ban public use of smokeless tobacco?
I don't smoke, or use tobacco, but that seems to be going a little too far.
Maybe it's a secondhand spit problem.

Yeah, just ban something....that'll do the trick. Since you can't be a parent and use the word "no" we should just ban everything so you don't have to say "no". Wow, I bet you let the channel stay on bad programming too so you won't have to change the channel.

hey pj...do you have to ask DBI if you can go to the bathroom?...Jeezzz, get a new friend little guy.

It doesn't sound to me like you have kids. If you do and you've never had to deal with the nagging that commercials create, you must have raised your kids in a box. This isn't about the government raising our kids for us. It's about creating an environment where the commercial culture doesn't compete directly with how I want to raise my kids. You appear to believe that if the parents can't say no at every turn, then if the kids end up overweight with diabeties and on Medicaid (state supported) for their insulin that's just the way it should be and tough for them. While it probably go against your libertarian leanings, it really does take a village to raise a child. Most of us don't want to hole ourselves up in a compound, home-school our kids, and generally separate ourselves from the rest of the citizenry. We don't allow tobacco to be marketed to children, but we allow junk food to be. And I believe junk food is a major part of the health crisis this country faces. In fact, I believe it can kill you a lot quicker than cigarettes. Lots of other countries ban advertising to children. Unfettered capitolism may be good for business, but it's hell on the citizenry. Children need our protection as well of the governments protection from those that want to expoit them.

"My question is- 20.7% to 20.4%? 17.2& to 17.1%? Is that even statistically significant?"

No, it isn't. Especially since they were not testing the same children each year (over a three year period, that's three graduating classes and three newly formed classes). The article also does not mention the age range and total number of children tested each year (if only obviously overweight children were tested the first year, then you would naturally expect the results to decline when all children are tested). The second year's results are also not mentioned, and you can not possibly plot a trend with only two results.

However, saying that he helped to stop the advance of childhood obesity in his State, gives a little boost to the Huckster's presidential bid.

By legislating that all public schools must participate in the BMI screening, the new tobacco funded ACHI was pretty much guaranteed to have first shot at any new child obesity grants. Publish or perish. My concern is that public school children continue to be subjected to invasive, mandatory, social and public policy research research, while children that aren't held captive in public schools are left alone. All of these social programs and experiments might be fine and good, but they are intrusive and have nothing to do with the delivery of academic instruction. So, the public schools students are criticized for low academic achievement, but no one thinks anything about supplanting education time for social experiments and research. Double jeopardy; not fair.

I was baiting P and it didn't work. And pj, I am serious every time I've said do-gooders know no boundaries. Their like someone on Paxil searching for that orgasm they can no longer have.

I'm pretty happy to live my life as I see fit and die when my time comes. Weighing the details endlessly takes all the fun out of life. The only time I ever tried smokeless tobacco I threw up for days. It's just not for me. But I don't give a flip if every other adult in the world has a big ole dip in their mouth right now.

I got 2 kids, I'm their daddy and I don't have the desire or the time to be anyone else's. I have watched my own kids be sucked in by advertising aimed at them and I didn't much appreciate it and I do think it is every bit as bad as Joe Camel. More fat people die than smokers and I've never seen so many fat kids in my life.

But I do agree, if you're kid is fat, it's your fault. No works just fine and every parent should know how to use it. No one ever got me drunk, or made me watch HBO or meet up with a trucker when I was 11. And if I have fat kids, bad kids, run-away kids, it's my fault not the government's...though I do like blaming everything else on Huck and Asa.

Now pj, can I please go to the bathroom?

DBI, not unless you say "please."

Oops, sorry, you did say "please."

"Anonymous | August 16, 2006 02:22 PM"

I do have kids, 3 that are 12 and under. We do watch TV and we do make decisions as to what we eat and buy. We also take responsability for our own actions. If you want the village to raise your kids then put them on the street and let go. As for us we will keep our kids in public school and in Church and in little league. And then we will deal with the problems in their lives like parents should. TV and Mickeedee's are not the reason people are fat, people ar the reason they are fat.

"More fat people die than smokers"

Now thats a brilliant statement yogi.

Fact is, everyone dies eventually.

How about a study on the correlation of High BMI to Individuals receiving State/Fed Food assistance.

Or the correlation of High BMI per State Employee.

I bet both trounce the High BMI rates of school Children.

The advertising is insidious, and a real problem. Children don't have the ability to see it for what it is. Not allowing them to watch TV is an option, but not many manage to do that.

I would be for a ban on advertising aimed at children under 10 or so. It seems that they should be allowed to have childhoods without the merchants shouting at them to "buy, buy, buy" all the time.