Rebuild from Depression Blog

Diets of teenagers have likely never been particularly good. I remember leaving my junior high campus with my blue "off campus" pass to purchase the a soda and fried burrito at Elmer's Drive-In. It cost a whole buck. A friend of mine didn't have a pass, so I forged one for her and she spent a whole buck as well. In high school we left our law-breaking ways behind but I do remember eating a package of Zingers for lunch one day (like a Twinkie with frosting).

Today is no different except perhaps that the average American diet is so abysmal that the average American teenage diet looks like an abomination of nature. When I went back to my hometown after a decade of being off in college and graduate school, I happened into town during the lunch hour. The quick stops along the main drag in Delano had turned into lunch providers. Students exited with half-gallon sized soda pops and those "Big grab" bag of chips, chips designed to be eaten by one and yet should not be considered food.

I was appalled and mentioned it to my father who was still teaching high school at the time. "Breakfast is a big soda and a donut," he responded. There was a small donut shop just off campus to tempt students on their way to school in the morning.

Inside the campus fence offered some temptation. That is where I purchased the Zingers after all. The lion's share of campuses have had soda machines, some have snack machines as well, in addition to the food prepared in the cafeteria itself.

Here in California last year, a new law went into effect monitoring those on-campus vending machines. They have limits on calories, fat, and sugar that any particular item in the machine can have. The law also allowed only juice, milk, and electrolyte drinks to be sold, causing an uproar with companies providing sodas. A new law was passed in August clarifying some elements of the original law. Even though peanuts, for instance, are exempt from the calorie/sugar/fat requirements (perhaps because it is an actual food, bless its heart), you can't cover it with chocolate and get around the calorie/sugar/fat requirements. You can't turn milk into a sugar drink, call it "milk," and avoid those same requirements.

Good for California.

Certainly students are plagued by obesity and later diseases with abysmal diets. They are plagued by depression as well. Depression has increased in every new generation in this country. Diets of chips, donuts, and soda pop do not help: at a minimum they displace actual foods in our diets that contain nutrients depressed people tend to be deficient in.

Now if students could just be convinced not to buy the donuts off campus...

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