Footnotes for "The Heartbroke Kid" (originally aired May 1, 2005)
Bart gets fat from junk food and not enough exercise. He gets sent to a fat camp to lose his weight, and the Simpsons turn the house into a youth hostel to pay for it.
- Child Obesity, Vending Machines, Physical Education Programs. Health officials have raised concerns about child obesity in recent years; a 1999-2002 study (on-line here) reported that an estimated 16 percent of children aged 6-19 years old are overweight, a 45 percent increase from estimates from a 1988-94 study.
As seen in this episode, many schools have used vending machines to raise additional revenue, particularly for extracurricular programs. According to a 2001 study cited by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in a 2004 report (on-line here), 38.2 percent of elementary schools and 50.4 percent of middle or junior high schools had contracts to sell soft drinks and that many of the schools with such contracts received sales incentives such as cash awards and allowed advertising.
Some have raised concerns about the choices of foods and beverages offered. For example, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which has evaluated the nutritional quality of school lunches in recent years (on-line here), based 10 percent of each evaluated school district's 2004 grade on its vending-machine policy.
"School vending machines that sell unhealthy snack foods and beverages compete with healthier foods in a child's daily energy intake. It is important that schools that rely on vending sales to fund extracurricular activities sell only low-fat snack items, juice, water, and nutrient-rich items in order to teach children about proper nutrition in school," the PCRM explained in its criteria (on-line here).
Responding to such concerns, several large school districts have announced in recent years that they are eliminating soda and other types of food from their vending machines. For example, the Board of Education of the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, adopted a motion in August 2002 prohibiting schools from entering into or renewing contracts for the sale of beverages not deemed healthy beverages.
Some schools have also focused more attention on physical-education programs. The federal government also is providing funding to school districts and community-based organizations to improve such programs. The 2000 School Health Policies and Programs Study (overview on-line here) found that only 8.0 percent of elementary schools and 6.4 percent of middle or junior high schools provided daily physical education or its equivalent.
- Lack of Universal Health Coverage. Most people in the United States have health insurance, with most people under 65 years old having coverage through their employment, and with some covered by Medicaid. But about 40 million people under 65 years old (about 16-17 percent of the population) did not have any health insurance in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Health's annual report on national health trends, and a political debate continues as to how the United States can address these people's health needs. For more on this, go here.
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By Stephen Lee
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