Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Schools have been banning candy sales and even expelling students who buy candy from others. Treatment Online thinks that policy tactic is rather short-sighted.

• Treatment Online: Educate to Avoid Candy Bans’ Unintended Consequences

As the US learned during its experiment with prohibition, outright bans on products often times have unintended, negative consequences. Making candy unwelcome on school property does nothing to actually reduce children’s candy intake as it doesn’t address the actual demand for candy. Any student who wants candy will now turn to the black market, or will wait till they get home, or will leave school property, or will just smuggle candy into class on his own. None of these are the desired outcome, but they are the likely outcomes, even as schools go so far as to suspend candy buyers and sellers.

Instead of wasting energy on policing, schools need to focus more of their attention on addressing the issues that leads to unhealthy eating. Health and nutrition classes need to stress the importance of food choice and the biological mechanisms that benefit and lose out when individuals make certain choices. Cafeterias need to offer high-quality, tasty options to keep students’ energy levels high. For their part, teachers and administrators, with the help and support of parents, need to let students know that rules against candy aren’t about creating an adversarial relationship, but about encouraging certain behaviors and discouraging others.

Even those measures might not help, but expelling students from school just because they have candy on their person is idiotic.