A Healthful Education Doesn’t Include Soda

Re “Schools to End Soda Sales,” Aug. 28: While volunteering at my son’s high school selling snack food to raise money for the PTA, it dawned on me that there must and should be better ways to raise money than promoting unhealthful food and drink. It was great to hear that the Los Angeles Unified School District has stepped up to the challenge of confronting a problem that has long been ignored and abused by profit-seeking extremists.

I support fund-raising but find bothersome the contradiction of belief involved in the selling and promotion of unhealthful food.

Kara Frazier

Trabuco Canyon

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It is not the school district’s place to decide what children eat and drink. That is up to their parents. Does the school board think that by not letting the kids drink soda they will lose weight and be more healthy? Get real. They will just go off campus and buy what they want. It’s a choice. That’s what freedom is--the freedom to be obese if you want to.

Why not address the real issue? Thirty years ago there was money to teach the kids and for the extracurricular activities that the soda money now pays for. Why is there not enough money for sports and dances? It’s wasted somewhere. Cut the waste. Stop worrying about all the fizz on campus and get back to basics: reading, writing and arithmetic. That should be the job of the public school.

If the loss of soda money forces the schools to cut back on the physical education department, isn’t that defeating the purpose? The problem is not soda or health, it’s education!

Judy Herbst

Beverly Hills

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It’s high time the schools expel the junk food! We all know questionable items like soft drinks and candy bars are filling kids with sugar and helping them to make very poor health choices. Why are schools willing to be parties to this compromising behavior?

Lorraine Smith

Woodland Hills