if a school district wasn’t using crossing guards and parents learned this, how long would it be before the outcry made sure that crossing guards were on duty?

If noxious chemicals were being left out in the chemistry labs and parents found out, how long would it be before safeguards and monitoring was in place? Would the teacher(s) responsible even keep their jobs?

And yet, when schools serve children meals after meals of crap — pizza, fries every day, ketchup as a vegetable, whatever — the knee-jerk is to blame the schools.

Here's the thing about Bloomberg's idea to ban sales of large sodas: He's actually acting!

Yes, the ban has holes in it, such as not covering every conceivable high-sugar beverage. And no, if it works to perfection, it will barely dent the obesity problem in only one part of the world. But any sort of success would endorse trying the same or similar measures elsewhere.

Bloomberg sees the same problem we all do, and he's *doing* something, which already has moved more focus to the problem, and to solutions.

I’ve been wanting to get to this topic for a while, but it has languished in the in-box, as too many other things do:

The headline is, “The Food Industry Fights Back,” and it’s written by Dave Fusaro, editor in chief of foodprocessing.com (“Home Page for the Food & Beverage Industry”). The subhed is just as good: “On obesity, food safety, 'questionable' ingredients, the industry can do a better job of tactfully defending itself; the key is transparency.”

Welcome to another edition of 10 Words or Less, in which I ask brief questions and request brief answers from interesting people. Today’s participant is cofounder and executive director of NYSHEPA, which “advocates for policies and practices that improve the nutritional and physical activity environment in New York State.” Please, no counting! “10 words” is a goal, not a rule, and besides, let’s see you do it.

Name Nancy Huehnergarth
Born when, where "Baltimore, when the Beatles were #1 on the charts."
Resides: Chappaqua, NY
Your family circumstance "Married, with two teenage daughters."
A transformative event in your youth “Someone from my class drowned on Senior Cut Day.”
How did that affect you? “This was someone who was a bit disenfranchised, low income, and it made me realize that all people need to be treated with respect and that their lives should be cherished.”
Outside your family, someone’s example you follow “The person who inspired me to get involved in food reform: Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest."
Your greatest hope about the 2012 Food Bill “We stop subsidizing crops like corn and soy, and begin to subsidize produce.”
Your greatest fear about the 2012 Food Bill “The Big Food and Big Ag lobbying whirlwind will convince legislators to create a bill that benefits only Big Food and Big Ag.”

Bettina Eilas Siegel, proprietor of The Lunch Tray blog, also addresses — quite well— Kathleen Parker's Washington Post op-ed about how family leadership is the route of salvation from the epidemic of obesity.

One commonality I note is that we both agree that family involvement is necessary but neither of us thinks it is sufficient. Our prescription is multifaceted.

As I am called to say frequently these days, I agree that for child obesity, any strategy that doesn't begin with family involvement is unlikely to be sufficient. Here's the problem with Kathleen Parker's misty-eyed paean to the family and how it holds the key to America's obesity problem: We're relying on it already — have been all along — and we're getting fatter.

Ordinarily, that's evidence that we need to try something more.

Recent headline on the "Center for Consumer Freedom"'s blog: "News Flash: Parents Can Help Kids Overcome Obesity"

Well, duh — yet another foolish post from the bought-and-paid-for shill of the restaurant and food products industry that is wrong, even when it's right.

In my focused world, the release of Ashley Gearhardt's (et. al) study advancing the evidence for food addiction has been a welcome thunderbolt from several directions. Unreservedly.

But nothing is perfect, and I must quarrel with the report's closing words:

I know that blog posts should be short, but I so often struggle to combine brevity with complete, rounded thoughts. I also indulge in little preludes, such as the one you just read. Anyway, here's an attempt at shorter:

One absolute invoked by those who speak of the "food police" is the primacy of individual and corporate rights. End of discussion. I value my rights, too, but they don't prevent me from seeing all the harm that unfettered junk food marketing to kids, and to the rest of us, is doing.

One of my repeating tropes lately has been to ask those who rail against government involvement in setting nutrition standards, "what's your solution?" To me, it's not enough to wax nostalgic on parental guidance as the way to resolve the national obesity crisis, not necessarily because it wouldn't work, but because so few are using it!