A Stitch in Haste

The "vending machines in schools" hysteria jumps to Utah:

The Utah Department of Health wants to find out if school districts are justified in their fears that offering pupils only healthy snacks will cut into their vending-machine revenue.

It is asking some school districts to compare sales from an all-healthy fare machine to that of traditional machine snacks...
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The data concern some Utah officials. And some are turning their sights on vending machines. The state Board of Education urges schools to offer long enough lunch times so students won't forego long meal lines for easy-access machine snacks.
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Vending-machine revenues bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to schools trying to get by on the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation and efforts to regulate the sales have met strong opposition from most districts. However, some districts are acting on their own.

The Wasatch School District is the first in the state to limit vending machine and classroom sweets. It now requires 70 percent of student vending machine fare - allowed only in the junior high and high school - to be water, milk, 100 percent fruit juices and foods meeting district minimum nutritional standards.

Some hasty stitches:

• Any vending machine law or regulation that claims to be motivated by health concerns, yet allows whole milk while banning diet soda, is a vicious fraud. See generally, "Senator Pat Leahy."

• Kids have to be given longer lunch hours as an enticement to actually eat lunch? Is this an AP story or something out of "The Onion"?

• Not to get all liberal or anything, but if Utah is so concerned about kids, maybe they shouldn't have the lowest per-pupil spending in the country.

• Along the same lines, why exactly do students, while in school, have to get their water from a vending machine? Mormons can't drink from fountains?

The politics of the warm fuzzy feeling (a.k.a., the "'Do Something!' Doctrine") strikes again.

(Cross-linked with Outside the Beltway.)