eat your vegetables

You can lead a horse to water...

At least putting the minimum daily recommended amount out is a big step forward. My kids now have to take a fruit AND a vegetable every day and I'm happy about that b/c I know they're likely to eat it since I've raised them on healthy well-balanced diets (and it's not unusual for them to choose the entree salad for their meal). No, you can't make kids eat it, but if you couple it with education from the parents about the merits of eating healthy (and if they themselves provide a god example by not eating at McDonald's every other day), then it'll work. Obesity isn't just a problem for each individual, it's a terrible financial burden on our health care system (even before national health care). If we reduced what we spent treating chronic diseases, it helps us all - healthier people work more days and hours and GDP goes up, etc.

lol You need both - mandates help because they set the guidelines, which can't be based only on common sense (cuz too many people don't have none [yes, I'm purposely using my gooder Eeenglish here]), but require research data to back them up. Schools, other institutions, and parents have to implement them or the effort is useless.

Sorry, that's my bad. You're right that a mandate is required, whereas a guideline is not. I had in the back of my head that if it's not law, then even a mandate is really a guideline so I went searching for the exact definition of "mandate" to confirm - it turns out a court can issue a mandate, and an electorate can "mandate" a representative to do something, but it looks like a mandate from a non-judicial government branch is called a law, but a law isn't necessarily a mandate? (if I'm reading it right, it's fuzzy word semantics). So these food "mandates" would be guidelines, if they haven't officially been made law. I think.

Parents are absolute authoritarians, no democracy or vote required, so no mandate necessary. lol it's also law that they buckle up their kids in the car, but that's broken every day too. Just because it exists doesn't mean it's followed, even if it is in the best interest of the child. Parents make bad decisions for their kids all the time, but no I wouldn't want to live in a world where it was necessary to pass a test in order to get permission to have a child; although I see the merits in the arguments for it (philosophy class in college was one of my faves!). The problem is that it would become a slippery slope all too quickly. Number 18 indeed - I grok that.