Philadelphia School Battles Students’ Bad Diets - NYTimes.com

Tatyana Gray bolted from her house and headed toward her elementary school. But when she reached the corner store where she usually gets her morning snack of chips or a sweet drink, she encountered a protective phalanx of parents with bright-colored safety vests and walkie-talkies.

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Battling Over Childrens’ Diets

The scourge the parents were combating was neither the drugs nor the violence that plagues this North Philadelphia neighborhood. It was bad eating habits.

“Candy!” said one of the parents, McKinley Harris, peering into a small bag one child carried out of the store. “That’s not food.”

The parents standing guard outside the Oxford Food Shop are foot soldiers in a national battle over the diets of children that has taken on new fervor. With 20 percent of the nation’s children obese, the United States Department of Agriculture has proposed new standards for federally subsidized school meals that call for more balanced meals and, for the first time, a limit on calories. The current standard specifies only a minimum calorie count, which some schools meet by adding sweet foods.

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Skip Dessert? Christie and Huckabee on First Lady’s Side

In the dessert wars, at least, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee side with Michelle Obama, not Sarah Palin.

Some conservatives, notably Ms. Palin, have mocked Mrs. Obama’s campaign against obesity, particularly in children. But on separate Sunday morning news programs, Mr. Christie, the New Jersey governor, and Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor — both Republicans — defended Mrs. Obama, and Mr. Christie put his answer in personal terms.

“I think it’s a really good goal to encourage kids to eat better,” Mr. Christie said on “Face the Nation,” on CBS. “You know, I’ve struggled with my weight for 30 years, and it’s a struggle. And if a kid can avoid that in his adult years or her adult years, more power to them, and I think the first lady’s speaking out well.”

Mrs. Obama has urged parents and food manufacturers to make healthier choices available to children, adding that she tells her daughters, “Dessert is not a right.” She has not called for government mandates on the issue.

Even so, Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, has called Mrs. Obama’s efforts an example of “government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us.” In a December episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” on TLC, Ms. Palin searched her kitchen for the ingredients to make s’mores, saying it was “in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert.”

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have taken similar shots at Mrs. Obama.

But appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Huckabee, who once shed more than 100 pounds, said that in fact Mrs. Obama was calling attention to a serious problem, not calling for government intrusion.

Asked about the criticism of Mrs. Obama, Mr. Christie said, “I think it’s unnecessary,” and he made a point of saying that he did not want the government telling people what to eat.

“But I think Mrs. Obama being out there,” he said, “encouraging people in a positive way to eat well and to exercise and to be healthy, I don’t have a problem with that.”

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