Brendan Iglehart
If you’re a Davenport Community School student, chances are you’ve heard about the efforts of the School District to combat childhood obesity and improve student health in their recently revised wellness policy. The actual policy contains more specific information, but that is the gist of it.

Lately, there has been some disagreement about what constitutes a healthy meal. In an e-mail sent out district-wide by a Davenport Schools food-service employee, an issue was raised about pizza parties held during students lunch period. Apparently, it is a violation of federal law to serve any food during the school day that competes with a school’s food service program. For some reason, food brought into schools a half-hour after lunch is okay. From the wording of the e-mail, fiestas would also be in violation of district and federal policy. I can handle it when people threaten my pizza, but when my enchilada rights are infringed I start to get “un poco loco.”

News flash: in the real world, companies have to play by the rules of business and fair competition. Nobody gets to say, “You can’t buy from them, but you can buy from us.” Antitrust and monopoly acts passed in 1890, 1914, and 1976 prevent companies from controlling industries by gaining unfair advantages.

Corporations are forced to compete by offering a better product rather than just buying or controlling competition. No teacher in his or her right mind would order school pizza when HyVee is available.

Apparently someone realized just that, so now pizza parties arranged through schools will offer Papa John’s pizza. According to the e-mail, their pizza meets federal requirements when bought through the school, but not when ordered independently.

I am pretty sure that unless Papa John’s is making our school special pizza, this extremely nutritiously-challenged food is just as unhealthy for students. And, since when do district officials really care about student health? Anyone can see that the fries, tacos, and chicken nuggets that are sold in the cafeteria are not the best foods to encourage students to make nutritious choices.

Keep in mind that I am not calling anybody a liar. Pizza parties might be a violation of federal law, but I wouldn’t know . I was unable to wade through the long list of policies on the U.S. Food and Nutrition Services’ website.

I think that this is a prime example of the constant over regulation that we have become accustomed to at all levels of government. It’s ridiculous to nit-pick at pizza parties when our school’s own food service offerings have a lot of room for improvement. And that’s OK any way you slice it.