Summary on Sam Leith’s Article “US Schools to be Battleground in War on Junk Food”

According to Sam Leith’s article “US schools to be battleground in war on junk food” published in the Daily Telegraph, may 2002, reinforces the issue of obesity in the USA caused not only by junk food sold in school cafeterias.

There is a proposal for a law to ban junk food from schools because 60 per cent of the adult population in the Us are overweight. Obesity began to be discussed by politicians because of a link between loosing weight and therefore paying fewer taxes. These moves have prepared the setting for a battle against big fast food companies. They affirm that obesity is caused by a lack of exercise rather than eating junk food.Because fast food companies have a great budget, they make groups that are for nutrition, seem unimportant. Because companies are sensitive to their public image, many polemical books accuse them for the social and nutritionist problems. Nutritionists blame companies for being guilty of people’s future health complications because they sell junk food to children, like PEPSICO is going to do to increase their sales quota. Big Companies make sponsorship deals with schools and they give them facilities in order to sell their products, depending on the demand, there. Because the companies operate in many schools they even get themed days at schools. Companies also extend to teaching materials in order to increase publicity. Mr. Downey says that it’s not clever to fatten up the students in order to get extra revenues.

In other words, nutritionists are classified as people, who complain and interfere with big junk food companies’ goals. But as we can see in the previously presented issues, this discussion is becoming a war, one of the many wars of the 21st century.